Did you know that PDFs can be ranked for search results? In fact, they can rank very well and may do better than the actual website. The same search engine spiders that crawl the website will also index the PDF to categorize it and use it as a search result where applicable. But to get your PDF to rank highly, you need to optimize it.
The page itself will be index based on the date found on it; i.e. the keywords. In this way, just as with a web page, keywords are very important. You want to make sure that you give thought to your keywords in everything you publish on the web, even PDFs.
Too often, PDFs contain technical data or information that is an addendum to the web content, and not enough thought is given to optimizing. You don’t need to compromise the integrity of the content by adding keywords just for the sake of adding them, but adding a summary paragraph or an introduction can help. You could also just add a title with keywords, company name and other important elements.
Beyond the page and content itself, we need to look at the meta data for the page. If you review your document properties under the description tab in an Adobe document, you will see that there are several fields to complete with some questions relating to search engine optimization (SEO).
Fill in all of the fields to optimize your document, but be smart about your responses. The title should feature your important keywords and be a clear description of what is contained on the page. The author doesn’t need to just say the person’s name, you can better optimize by adding your company name or website if this is what you want to optimize for. The subject will appear as a meta description on the search results page, so you want to be thoughtful and make it very clear what the document is about. The keywords segment gives you a vital opportunity to re-emphasize those important words and concepts.
If you find that a PDF is an important element you need to add to your website, do not let that opportunity slip through your hands. Make sure you touch the document properties page and give it the love it needs so you can reap the rewards.
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