Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis
      Moz Pro

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Embedding PDF previews and maintaining crawlability/link-equity.

    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.

    Embedding PDF previews and maintaining crawlability/link-equity.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    3
    5
    2268
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • DougRoberts
      DougRoberts last edited by

      One site that I'm working on has previously had a great deal of success from the pdf preview content on the site. The pdf previews are quite substantial and rank for many many long-tail terms that drive a reasonable amount of traffic back to the site to purchase the full version of the product.

      As part of a site redesign, the way the pdf previews are embedded/presented on the page is changing slightly:

      The proposed modal pop-up on the new site the code looks like thie:

      <object data="my-pdf-preview.pdf" type="application/pdf" style="width:100%; min-height:600px; max-height:100%;max-height:100%;"><embed src="my-pdf-preview.pdf" type="application/pdf"></object>

      Where as the old code looked like this:

      <object data="mt-pdf-previewpreview.pdf#view=FitH,50&scrollbar=1&toolbar=0&statusbar=0&messages=0&navpanes=0" <br="">type='application/pdf'
      width='100%'
      height='600'>

      It appears your Web browser is not configured to display PDF files.

      No worries, you can download the PDF file here.</object>

      Note: how previously the code contained a plain, standard link to the pdf document.

      My worry is that without this link, search engines won't a) be able to discover/crawl the pdf content or b) pass any link-equity to these pdfs.

      Does anyone have any experience/recommendations about this? I'd like to have some information before I request that they add a plain link to the pdf previews back onto the on-page content.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • KaneJamison
        KaneJamison @DougRoberts last edited by

        That's the route I'd push for as well I think.

        Agreed on experimentation. Please report back if you get a chance to test this. Perhaps choose a small number of PDFs on this site redesign and leave the link off of them?

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • DougRoberts
          DougRoberts @KaneJamison last edited by

          Thanks Kane - I've managed to make the case for a real-simple "download preview pdf" link so at least I feel comfortable that they won't lose too much of this "hidden" traffic.

          It would still be nice to understand how <embed> is handled and whether any link-equity passes though the embed. Tight deadlines on projects don't mean you have time to experiment.

          KaneJamison 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • KaneJamison
            KaneJamison last edited by

            I haven't seen any studies with <embed> the way I have with <iframe>. <embed> is also used for video and flash, but neither would be indexed the same way as PDF so hard to compare. The embed tag is pretty standardized, so I really doubt they wouldn't crawl this similarly.</p> <p>IIRC in the ugly era of flash, it was proper to have a <noscript> {crawlable content here} </noscript> section after the <embed>, so that's one comparable situation, but that's due to the flash itself not being crawled well.</p> <p>If it's not a hassle, I would add the text link to the PDF that says "download full PDF" or similar. If it is a hassle and takes longer than a couple hours, then it's a harder call.</p> <p>Similar thread that could be helpful:</p> <ul> <li><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3686331/does-google-index-html-content-supplied-by-the-object-tag">http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3686331/does-google-index-html-content-supplied-by-the-object-tag</a></li> </ul></iframe>

            DougRoberts 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • The_Sage
              The_Sage last edited by

              Search engines will still be able to crawl the PDF. They crawl images, don't they?

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • 1 / 1
              • First post
                Last post

              Got a burning SEO question?

              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


              Start my free trial


              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.

              • See all categories

              Related Questions

              • Brenda.Haines

                Looking for opinions on structuring meta title tags/page title/menu title/H1

                Hi everyone I am hoping a few of you can share your opinions. I have been having conversations (okay, healthy debates) about how to write/structure meta title tag and how to compliment them with the H1, page title, menu name. To help explain the thought processes I will use a pretend keyword. How about "screwdriver". Case: (I made this up) we are redesigning a website for a construction tools manufacturing company (pretend name: ABC Tools) targeting OEMs who are interested in purchasing large quantities of tools. The product categories (to become main menu items) are Screwdrivers, Nails, Drills, and Hammers. (bear with me .... this is just an example I am making up on the fly) K. Circling back to screwdrivers - let's say we have one landing page (a primary category page and in the main menu) listing products and great details about screwdrivers. Focus keywords are screwdriver manufacturer, screwdriver supplier, construction screwdrivers Below are questions being debated. If you are willing ... how would you address these questions? And, can you explain WHY? QUESTION ONE: How would you structure the meta title tag (feel free to write one of your own) Screwdriver Manufacturer - Construction Screwdriver | ABC Tools ABC Tools - US-based Screwdriver Manufacturer Supplier Near You High-Quality Screwdrivers for Construction with ABC Tools QUESTION TWO: how would you write the H1 on the page? Would it match the meta tag? OR, would you write something different using the primary keyword? QUESTION THREE Remembering this is not a blog post ... it is a primary landing page linked to the main navigation. What would the menu title be? (remember the product categories above are how the main menu items are bucketed) Screwdrivers Screwdriver Manufacturer Typically in WordPress, the H1 and the menu title is auto-populated using the page title (not the title tag)... So, if we use Screwdrivers as the page title but we want the H1 to match the meta title tag, would we manually change the H1? Or, have the page title and title tag match, but manually change the menu item?

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brenda.Haines
                1
              • seoanalytics

                Breadcrumbs and internal links

                Hello, I use to move up my site structure with links in content. I have now installed breadcrumbs, is it is useful to still keep the links in content or isn't there a need to duplicate those links ? and are the breadcrumbs links enough. Thank you,

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics
                1
              • unirmk

                Rel=canonical and internal links

                Hi Mozzers, I was musing about rel=canonical this morning and it occurred to me that I didnt have a good answer to the following question: How does applying a rel=canonical on page A referencing page B as the canonical version affect the treatment of the links on page A? I am thinking of whether those links would get counted twice, or in the case of ver-near-duplicates which may have an extra sentence which includes an extra link, whther that extra link would count towards the internal link graph or not. I suspect that google would basically ignore all the content on page A and only look to page B taking into account only page Bs  links. Any thoughts? Thanks!

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | unirmk
                0
              • Brett-S

                Link juice through URL parameters

                Hi guys, hope you had a fantastic bank holiday weekend. Quick question re URL parameters, I understand that links which pass through an affiliate URL parameter aren't taken into consideration when passing link juice through one site to another. However, when a link contains a tracking URL parameter (let's say gclid=), does link juice get passed through? We have a number of external links pointing to our main site, however, they are linking directly to a unique tracking parameter. I'm just curious to know about this. Thanks, Brett

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brett-S
                0
              • onurcan-ikiz

                Does Navigation Bar have an effect on the link juice and the number of internal links?

                Hi Moz community, I am getting the "Avoid Too Many Internal Links" error from Moz for most of my pages and Google declared the max number as 100 internal links. However, most of my pages can't have internal links less than 100, since it is a commercial website and there are many categories that I have to show to my visitors by using the drop down navigation bar. Without counting the links in the navigation bar, the number of internal links is below 100. I am wondering if the navigation bar links affect the link juice and counted as internal links by Google. The Same question also applies to the links in the footer. Additionally, how about the products? I have hundreds of products in the category pages and even though I use pagination I still have many links in the category pages (probably more than 100 without even counting the navigation bar links). Does Google count the product links as internal links and how about the effect on the link juice? Here is the website if you want to take a look: http://www.goldstore.com.tr Thank you for your answers.

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onurcan-ikiz
                0
              • MiguelSalcido

                Does Disavowing Links Negate Anchor Text, or Just Negates Link Juice

                I'm not so sure that disavowing links also discounts the anchor texts from those links. Because nofollow links absolutely still pass anchor text values. And disavowing links is supposed to be akin to nofollowing the links. I wonder because there's a potential client I'm working on an RFP for and they have tons of spammy directory links all using keyword rich anchor texts and they lost 98% of their traffic in Pengiun 1.0 and haven't recovered. I want to know what I'm getting into. And if I just disavow those links, I'm thinking that it won't help the anchor text ratio issues. Can anyone confirm?

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MiguelSalcido
                0
              • underscorelive

                Outbound link to PDF vs outbound link to page

                If you're trying to create a site which is an information hub, obviously linking out to authoritative sites is a good idea. However, does linking to a PDF have the same effect? e.g Linking to Google's SEO starter guide PDF, as opposed to linking to a google article on SEO. Thanks!

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | underscorelive
                0
              • James77

                Posing QU's on Google Variables "aclk", "gclid" "cd", "/aclk" "/search", "/url" etc

                I've been doing a bit of stats research prompted by read the recent ranking blog http://www.seomoz.org/blog/gettings-rankings-into-ga-using-custom-variables There are a few things that have come up in my research that I'd like to clear up. The below analysis has been done on my "conversions". 1/. What does "/aclk" mean in the Referrer URL? I have noticed a strong correlation between this and "gclid" in the landing page variable. Does it mean "ad click" ?? Although they seem to "closely" correlate they don't exactly, so when I have /aclk in the referrer Url MOSTLY I have gclid in the landing page URL. BUT not always, and the same applies vice versa. It's pretty vital that I know what is the best way to monitor adwords PPC, so what is the best variable to go on? - Currently I am using "gclid", but I have about 25% extra referral URL's with /aclk in that dont have "gclid" in - so am I underestimating my number of PPC conversions? 2/. The use of the variable "cd" is great, but it is not always present. I have noticed that 99% of my google "Referrer URL's" either start with:
                /aclk   - No cd value
                /search - No cd value
                /url - Always contains the cd variable. What do I make of this?? Thanks for the help in advance!

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | James77
                0

              Get started with Moz Pro!

              Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

              Start my free trial
              Products
              • Moz Pro
              • Moz Local
              • Moz API
              • Moz Data
              • STAT
              • Product Updates
              Moz Solutions
              • SMB Solutions
              • Agency Solutions
              • Enterprise Solutions
              • Digital Marketers
              Free SEO Tools
              • Domain Authority Checker
              • Link Explorer
              • Keyword Explorer
              • Competitive Research
              • Brand Authority Checker
              • Local Citation Checker
              • MozBar Extension
              • MozCast
              Resources
              • Blog
              • SEO Learning Center
              • Help Hub
              • Beginner's Guide to SEO
              • How-to Guides
              • Moz Academy
              • API Docs
              About Moz
              • About
              • Team
              • Careers
              • Contact
              Why Moz
              • Case Studies
              • Testimonials
              Get Involved
              • Become an Affiliate
              • MozCon
              • Webinars
              • Practical Marketer Series
              • MozPod
              Connect with us

              Contact the Help team

              Join our newsletter
              Moz logo
              © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
              • Accessibility
              • Terms of Use
              • Privacy

              Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.