Can PDFs on your website be picked up in search engines?
-
Can PDFs on your website be picked up in search engines? There's a ton of info online that says it can and can't be picked up.
-
Agreed! I had an issue with many PDFs ranking. I've done what I can to clean things up so better pages rank instead (my goal is to sell; I'd rather someone end up on my page that has an "add to cart" button AND a link to the catalog/PDF info).
Anyone who says it can't happen - well, it did to me.
-
Short answer, yes. Search engines are still not as good at crawling and indexing them as well as they are with HTML pages, but they have definitely made strides in recent years. Do a Google search for "filetype:pdf" and you will see all of the PDFs that are indexed in Google.
That being said, they are still not ideal for SEO so I recommend not using them whenever possible. I wrote a couple of blog posts about this issue - http://streamlinemetrics.com/blog/seo-for-pdfs-optimizing-pdf-files-for-search-engines.php and http://streamlinemetrics.com/blog/how-to-redirect-pdf-files-with-php-asp-or-htaccess-for-seo-seo-for-pdfs-part-2.php.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Do Search Engines Try To Follow Phone Number Links
Any SEO thoughts on using rel="nofollow" when inserting a link to a phone number? To make a phone number click to call we use (555) 555-1234 Wondering if search engines are trying to follow that link or if this is standard and not to worry. Any thoughts on if I should add rel="nofollow" to these or does it not matter? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Lions-Pro0 -
Optimizing images on website. Is it bad to use the same alt names and keywords?
I have a webpage that I have 6 separate images showing step by step instructions of how to use our product with a sentence describing instruction inside image. I took screenshots of the instructions from the products App and uploaded them to webpage because they provide a great visual. I want to make sure I optimize correctly, can I use the same keywords for all the image names?
On-Page Optimization | | artscube.biz0 -
H1 tags are ok for my website?
Please review the H1 tags for my website and let me know if they are ok or I need to change them? Website - brandstenmedia.com.au
On-Page Optimization | | Green.landon0 -
Author avatar in homepage search result
Hello I actually see some websites which the owner don't want to display the google+ profile avatar when homepage is displayed in search result, except blog posts only For example: yoast.com Is it a good practice in wordpress? or we must claim authorship & display the google+ avatar for all pages & all posts? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | dklong23450 -
Search Pages outranking Product Pages
A lot of the results seen in the search engines for our site are pages from our search results on our site, i.e. Widgets | Search Results This has happened over time and wasn't intentional, but in many cases we see our search results pages appearing over our actual product pages in search, which isn't ideal. Simply blocking indexing of these pages via robots wouldn't be ideal, at least all at once as we would have that period of time where those Search Results pages would be offline and our product pages would still be at the back of ranking. Any ideas on a strategy to replace these Search Results with the actual products in a way that won't hurt us too bad during the transition? Or a way to make the actual product pages rank above the search results? Currently, it is often the opposite. Thanks! Craig
On-Page Optimization | | TheCraig0 -
Does Google Bias Against Homepages for Search Queries that are a Question?
If you are trying to rank for a keyword phrase that is a question (e.g. how to ___) does it matter if your page is the home page of your site or an article on your site? I suspect that Google would treat question search queries differently and would show preference for articles over a home page in most cases. An article would be more likely to satisfy the searcher by providing the answer to their question, whereas the home page usually doesn't provide specific answers. I looked at one keyword phrase that is a question and only 1 of the first 20 results was a home page. Any thoughts or experience with this?
On-Page Optimization | | Charlessipe0 -
Authorship and 50% Drop in Search Traffic
Hi. I had some problems with my content being copied by other sites, and was suggested to claim my pages. Immediately after Google started listing the posts with my photo next to them my traffic picked up slightly but since, over the past few weeks, it has dropped by about 50%! It seems that the average position has declined (as has the CTR) At the same time as claiming authorship I added the post date to my articles which I have now removed. Does anyone have any ideas for me? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | ben10000 -
How can we get Google to offer postcard verification for our Place Page?
Most of the time, when we claim a Google Place Page, they give 2 choices to verify ownership: 1) phone verification and 2) postcard verification. But right now (and for several weeks), for our listing, they are only giving the phone verification choice, which unfortunately won't work with our automated phone system. How can we get our Place Page listing verified through a postcard sent to our address, when Google isn't presenting that as an option?
On-Page Optimization | | DenisL0