SEO Using A PDF

For a couple of years now, Google has been able to crawl PDF documents, and as certain businesses were launching new products — I began to notice they were taking a non-traditional approach to Search Engine Ranking and Internet Marketing: These companies would slap together a PDF with a couple of pages of text content about the product, upload it to their web site, link to it from their home page, and in no time flat that PDF file would have the No. 1 ranking in both Google and Yahoo! for the relevant keywords. They were doing search engine optimization using a pdf and they weren’t the only company doing so.

One of these companies main competitors was also launching a similar product, sourced from the same manufacturer. One thing that benefitted both companies was that the product they were launching didn’t have much search history, so neither company had much competition for the relevant keywords on the internet.

More interesting still is the fact that this second company didn’t know about the use search engine optimization using a pdf in their Search Engine Optimization. They took a more traditional approach to SEO with their new product: They built out a web site with some good descriptive content, did their backlinking as you normally would, created some Press Releases, and submitted the site to the Search Engines.  The problem was, they had a heck of a time getting their traditional website with the great content they developed to outrank the search engine optimization using a pdf technique from the first company. Ultimately, the second company followed the “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” scenario and produced their own search engine optimization using a pdf which immediately started battling the competitor’s PDF for search engine supremacy.

With so many businesses — especially retailers — having access to PDFs full of product information, here are some thoughts on search engine optimization using a pdf for search engine visibility.

Search Engine Optimization Using A PDF

1. All three major engines can crawl and index text-based PDFs. If you need proof, just do a search on each SE with [pdf] in the query. Google: white paper pdf … Yahoo: white paper pdf … MSN: white paper PDF

2. search engine optimization using a pdf is similar to optimization for a regular content page. Try this: good use of keywords/phrases, appropriate headlines and sub-headlines, solid content that reads well to a human eye, etc. If the PDF will include images, a caption underneath each image would be a good idea, especially if the caption includes a targeted keyword/phrase. (Of course, don’t overdo it. Remember my mom’s advice about SEO.)

Search Engine Optimization Using A PDF

Download Search Engine Optimization Using A PDF Here

Proof: Using the search above, we find this PDF ranked prominently in all three engines. On page 9 of this PDF, there’s a bold content heading (the equivalent of an H2): Awareness and Usage of the XML Button. Let’s not use the exact text, but something close: Here are the SERPs for [xml button awareness]: Yahoo, Google, and MSN. In each case, you find the PDF ranked highly in the SERPs and that exact bold content heading showing prominently in the snippet.

3. The most important thing where search engine optimization using a pdf is concerned is how the PDF is created. Don’t use Photoshop to make your PDF, because when you do that, you’re actually making a big image file, not a true PDF — and the spiders cannot crawl or “read” the text from that image file. The PDF should be created with a text-based program, like MS Word or Adobe Pagemaker, so that the final product is text-based and can be crawled.

4. Your PDF can reside anywhere on your site, but the same rule about spiders not being likely to crawl content that’s too deep applies. The safest thing to do is to put it as close to the root directory as possible.

5. When publishing a PDF on your site, you should very visibly link to the PDF from the home page, or from some page that gets crawled regularly. You have to lead the crawler along so it finds the new content as quickly as possible. Don’t just post the PDF and then cross your fingers that it gets crawled. (See my old post, Training the Crawlers for more.)

6. It’s probably a good idea to use a keyword when naming the files, such as main keyword.pdf. I have done some serious investigation on what impact this has, so it would seem to be a good idea to use a keyword when naming the file — to be safe, in case there’s a little boost to be had.

So that’s my quick and dirty overview on search engine optimization using a pdf.