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.
What to do with PDFs that rank well?
-
Looking at some reports, I found that a client's site has PDFs that are ranking well for niche terms and getting some traffic.
What can I do to get more out of them from a marketing standpoint?
The obvious issue is that a PDF doesn't have the interactivity of a site visit, where we have analytics and CTAs. Someone has to follow a link back from the PDF to the site for us to even register a visit, let alone try to get their email or have them otherwise convert.
My first guess is to make landing page summaries of the PDF content that link to the PDF, and canonical the PDF to the respective landing page.
Has anyone tried this, or done something else that they would recommend again in this situation?
-
Sounds like a smart plan to me!
-
Thank you, Robin!
I agree that there's a danger of splitting authority with the solution I've proposed and either of the alternatives would be stronger. The issue here is that I've got PDFs with 80+ pages of content, so making that into a HTML page would be it's own can of worms.
I'm thinking of doing one or a couple as an experiment and seeing the results before putting effort/taking on the risk of doing a whole bunch.
-
Hi there, good question! I've run into a similar situation and had all the same concerns as you. I think my recommendations would be (in order from most preferred to least preferred)
- Convert pdf to full HTML page with internal links and ability to convert, redirect PDF
- Replace PDF with HTML page which has the PDF as the content but also contains things like the internal nav (sometimes this is the only possibility with limited resource)
- Create summary page and link to pdf with canonical on pdf page (just as you say)
Making the content of the PDF more easily readable by search engines (by turning it into a HTML page as in solution 1) would hopefully boost ranking potential as well as helping give users a better experience.
The only reason I put your solution as lowest on the list is because if we're creating a page then we may as well create the full page, rather than creating a page which kind of gives the same information as the PDF but still relies on the PDF existing. You could find that the two pages compete and neither ends up ranking.
Hopefully that helps!
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 get back links with higher rank ?
Hi All , These days I am finding new ways of creating back links. Could any one tell me how to get backlinks with higher DA ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mozentution2 -
Ranking #1 but Bounce Rate is 90%?!
Hi Mozers, We have a page that's ranking #1 for several very high volume queries but the bounce rate is 90%. It's puzzling that the page is ranking so well even though the bounce rate is exceedingly high. The algorithm takes user engagement metrics into account so you would think that it those metrics would push the page down. Having said that, the page does have lots of backlinks. So maybe it's ranking despite the fact that people are clicking out? Does anyone have an idea? Thanks, Yael
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yaelslater0 -
Keyword difficulty and time to rank
Hello, Is there a correlation between the keyword difficult and the time it takes to rank ? In other words let's say I try to rank for the keyword "seo" and it is going to take 2 years to rank 1 st whereas if I go for "best seo tools in 2018" and it takes just 2 weeks ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Ranking 1st for a keyword - but when 's' is added to the end we are ranking on the second page
Hi everyone - hope you are well. I can't get my head around why we are ranking 1st for a specific keyword, but then when 's' is added to the end of the keyword - we are ranking on the second page. What could be the cause of this? I thought that Google would class both of the keywords the same, in this case, let's say the keyword was 'button'. We would be ranking 1st for 'button', but 'buttons' we are ranking on the second page. Any ideas? - I appreciate every comment.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brett-S0 -
Why my website disappears for the keywords ranked, then reappears and so on?
Hello to everyone. In the last 2 weeks my website emorroidi.imieirimedinaturali.it has a strange behavior in SERP: it disappears for the keywords ranked and then reappears, and so on. Here's the chronicle of the last days: 12/6: message in GWT: Improvement of the visibility of the website in search. 12/6 the website disappears for all the keywords ranked 16/6 the website reappears for all the keywords ranked with some keywords higher in ranking 18/6 the website disappears for all the keywords ranked 22/6 the website reappears for all the keywords ranked 24/6 the website disappears for all the keywords ranked... I can't explain this situation. Could it be a penalty? What Kind? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | emarketer0 -
PDFs and images in Sub folder or subdomain?
What would you recommend as best practice? Our ecommerce site has a lot of PDFs supporting the product page. Currently they are kept in a sub domain and so are all images. Would it be better to keep them all in a subfolder? I've read about blogs being hosted on a subfolder to be better than subdomain but what about pdfs and images? thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bio-RadAbs0 -
Can Affiliate Links Harm Your Rank?
Does Google interpret Affiliate links as paid links? If so, can Affiliate links harm your rank if they are not properly tagged with a no-follow? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AWCthreads0 -
Sudden rank drop for 1 keyword
A page of mine (http://loginhelper.com/networks/facebook-login/) was ranking in the top 10 for keyword (facebook login) and has been for at least 2 months, moving between 5th and 10th. Suddenly in the last 3 days the rank for the keyword dropped from 7th to 46th, yet none of the other keywords have been affected (they target other pages) and their ranks have continued to improve. I am trying to figure out what caused this sudden drop in the ranking of 1 page (the page has quality mainly text based content and isn't in the least bit shallow or spammy) I have been thinking perhaps a crawl or server error may be to cause leaving the page temporarily unavailable or with a big load time... Otherwise what could cause one page to drop so much so quickly whilst other pages improved their rank?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Netboost0