
Just like web pages have title tags, PDFs have titles. Some of the best information on the web is buried in PDFs. I’ve seen lots of great content in PDFs like technical documentation, whitepapers, etc. Even if it’s not a web page, good content is good content. Google’s company mission is to organize the world’s information. So let’s discuss a few ways to optimize PDFs for SEO: Many are also there for accessibility reasons. Most on-page SEO elements that you’re used to seeing in HTML have an equivalent version in PDFs and are used in the same way you’re used to.
#Google file pdf search how to#
If that’s the case for you, keep reading to learn how to optimize your PDFs for search. That said, I’m well aware that there are some situations where there’s no way around using a PDF for your content. Most common trackers run JavaScript on a web page and don’t work in PDF files. Because PDFs rarely change, they tend to be crawled less often than pages that are updated more frequently. PDF files have equivalent versions of many SEO elements, but there are also many elements missing like individual link attributes like nofollow, UGC, and sponsored. Most PDFs do not include navigational elements, making it more difficult for people to explore other content. That means there is no such thing as a mobile-friendly PDF. PDFs are made to have a consistent appearance across devices. Even though Google indexes and occasionally ranks PDFs, the format has a few disadvantages over web pages:
