Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
PDF or HTML Page?
-
One of our sales team members has created a 25 page word document as a topical page. The plan was to make this into an html page with a table of contents. My thoughts were why not make it a pdf? Is there any con to using a PDF vs an html page? If the PDF was properly optimized would it perform just as well? The goal is to have folks click back to our products and hopefully by after reading about how they work.
-
This is what I came say. Have the html document, then the link to the pdf download. That way the html document can rank and also the PDF can too. I think some people over look the fact that the page a pdf is downloaded from can rank AS WELL as the pdf itself.
-
Create the page(s) in HTML and offer a downloadable PDF format. Win/Win
-
As Kevin said, HTML is a better format for the web.
Perhaps you can offer this as a downloadable PDF on a lead generation page? You can certainly use this asset in more than one way.
-
Pdf's are great--but html is better. For a few reasons: Usability (html pages look better in a browser), lack of navigation (however, we can have hyperlinks in pdf's), PDF Download/View is an extra step (ways around this, but for the most part) and etc.
Matt Cutts sums it up pretty well during an interview w/Eric Enge (from 2010):
"We absolutely do process PDF files. I am not going to talk about whether links in PDF files pass PageRank. But, a good way to think about PDFs is that they are kind of like Flash in that they aren't a file format that's inherent and native to the web, but they can be very useful. In the same way that we try to find useful content within a Flash file, we try to find the useful content within a PDF file. At the same time, users don't always like being sent to a PDF. If you can make your content in a Web-Native format, such as pure HTML, that's often a little more useful to users than just a pure PDF file."
**"**People can certainly use that if they want to, but typically I think of PDF files as the last thing that people encounter, and users find it to be a little more work to open them. People need to be mindful of how that can affect the user experience."
Certainly, you can have both and there are many best-practices you need to implement before doing this.
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
-
How to check if the page is indexable for SEs?
Hi, I'm building the extension for Chrome, which should show me the status of the indexability of the page I'm on. So, I need to know all the methods to check if the page has the potential to be crawled and indexed by a Search Engines. I've come up with a few methods: Check the URL in robots.txt file (if it's not disallowed) Check page metas (if there are not noindex meta) Check if page is the same for unregistered users (for those pages only available for registered users of the site) Are there any more methods to check if a particular page is indexable (or not closed for indexation) by Search Engines? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | boostaman0 -
When should you 410 pages instead of 404
Hi All, We have approx 6,000 - 404 pages. These are for categories etc we don't do anymore and there is not near replacement etc so basically no reason or benefit to have them at all. I can see in GWT , these are still being crawled/found and therefore taking up crawler bandwidth. Our SEO agency said we should 410 these pages?.. I am wondering what the difference is and how google treats them differently ?. Do anyone know When should you 410 pages instead of 404 ? thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
What if page exists for desktop but not mobile?
I have a domain (no subdomains) that serves up different dynamic content for mobile/desktop pages--each having the exact same page url, kind of a semi responsive design, and will be using "Vary: User-Agent" to give Google a heads up on this setup. However, some of the pages are only valid for mobile or only valid for desktop. In the case of when a page is valid only for mobile (call it mysite.com/mobile-page-only ), Google Webmaster Tools is giving me a soft 404 error under Desktop, saying that the page does not exist, Apparently it is doing that because my program is actually redirecting the user/crawler to the home page. It appears from the info about soft 404 errors that Google is saying since it "doesn't exist" I should give the user a 404 page--which I can make it customized and give the user an option to go to the home page, or choose links from a menu, etc.. My concern is that if I tell the desktop bot that mysite.com/mobile-page-only basically is a 404 error (ie doesn't exist), that it could mess up the mobile bot indexing for that page--since it definitely DOES exist for mobile users.. Does anyone here know for sure that Google will index a page for mobile that is a 404 not found for desktop and vice versa? Obviously it is important to not remove something from an index in which it belongs, so whether Google is careful to differential the two is a very important issue. Has anybody here dealt with this or seen anything from Google that addresses it? Might one be better off leaving it as a soft 404 error? EDIT: also, what about Bing and Yahoo? Can we assume they will handle it the same way? EDIT: closely related question--in a case like mine does Google need a separate sitemap for the valid mobile pages and valid desktop pages even though most links will be in both? I can't tell from reading several q&a on this. Thanks, Ted
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood0 -
Putting "noindex" on a page that's in an iframe... what will that mean for the parent page?
If I've got a page that is being called in an iframe, on my homepage, and I don't want that called page to be indexed.... so I put a noindex tag on the called page (but not on the homepage) what might that mean for the homepage? Nothing? Will Google, Bing, Yahoo, or anyone else, potentially see that as a noindex tag on my homepage?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Philip-DiPatrizio0 -
Wordpress Tag Pages - NoIndex?
Hi there. I am using Yoast Wordpress Plugin. I just wonder if any test have been done around the effects of Index vs Noindex for Tag Pages? ( like when tagging a word relevant to an article ) Thanks 🙂 Martin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | s_EOgi_Bear0 -
Multiple URLs for the same page
I am working with a client and recently discovered that they have several URLs that go to the same page. http://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebMarketingandDesign
http://www.maps.com/funfacts.aspx
http://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx?nav=FF
http://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx?nav=FS
http://www.maps.com/funfacts.aspx?nav=FF
http://www.maps.com/funfacts.aspx?nav=ffhttp://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx?nav=MShttp://www.maps.com/funfacts.aspx?nav=
http://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx?nav=FF#
http://www.maps.com/FunFacts
http://www.maps.com/funfacts.aspx?.nav=FF I am afraid this is happening all over the site. So, my question is: Is this hurting the SEO and how? If so what is the best way to go about fixing this problem? Thanks for your help!0 -
301 redirect from .html to non .html?
Previously our site was using this as our URL structure: www.site.com/page.html. A few months ago we updated our URL structure to this: www.site.com/page & we're not using the .html. I've read over this guide & don't see anywhere that discusses this: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection. I've currently got a programmer looking into, but am always a bit weary with their workarounds, as I'd previously had them cause more problems then fix it. Here is the solution he is looking to do: The way that I am doing the redirect is fine. The problem is of where to put the code. The issue is that the files are .html files that need to be redirected to the same url with out a .html on them. I can see if I can add that to the 404 redirect page if there is one inside of there and see if that does the trick. That way if there is no page that exists without the .html then it will still be a 404 page. However if it is there then it will work as normal. I will see what I can find and get back. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, BJ
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seointern0 -
Are duplicate links on same page alright?
If I have a homepage with category links, is it alright for those category links to appear in the footer as well, or should you never have duplicate links on one page? Can you please give a reason why as well? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dkamen0