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8 Tips to Make Your PDF Page SEO Friendly

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So lets push out the notion that PDF’s cannot be SEO friendly because they can. But search engines won’t go out of their way to rank PDF pages because search documents don’t have HTML tag structures which tell Google what it is about. Too much work i guess! Nonetheless certain cases are best put across in PDF format so as to explain matters to detail like an instruction manual. The way around this is to make your PDF pages as SEO friendly as possible and we got 8 tips on how to do that.

 

1. Use PDF Text Files

If necessary, try as much as possible to use text in your PDF file other than pictures. Search engines recognize text much easier than they do pictures. Make it simple for search engines.

 

2. Prescribe title

You can put the ‘title’ tag in the document properties, search engines go crazy for documents with ‘title’ tags.

 

3. Set the SEO-friendly URL

Give you document a simple name and make that part of the URL.

 

4. Use standard SEO methods

These tips are all well and good but don’t forget about the standard SEO methods, placing internal links to PDF pages, linking to relevant pages and search. Keep in mind keywords and image optimization.

 

5. Cut down the size of the file

The smaller the size of the file the faster it takes to load the better chance you have of impacting users positively.

 

6. Avoid duplicating content

Repetitiveness is a NO-NO, make sure you take action dealing with duplicate content. There might be a possibility of having the same content both in HTML and PDF formats which is not necessarily a bad thing but only if problems with duplicate content are dealt with.

 

7. Do not save the file to read in the latest Acrobat version

Having the file saved in the latest version of Acrobat will cut out users who have not upgraded which might be quite a few users. It is possible to find users who will upgrade their version for purposes of reading you file but it is highly unlikely.

 

8. Write protection

This is done to prevent the possibility of someone else uploading your file and changing it as they please.

 

Though search engines can index PDF pages webmasters still recommend the use of HTML. If necessary, now you have a few tips to help you make your PDF file seo friendly.