Pdfs for SEO - benefits, downfalls and promotional methods

[themegroup]

Hi fellow Mozzers,

We're just in the middle of relaunching our website (a design agency), and I had a few questions re: SEO of our service keywords.

The designers want the site to seem light on content, despite my advice that this would reduce the terms we can rank for. With that in mind, I was going to include advice pages that can be found via the site map, site search or text links but aren't promoted via the top level or second level nav. Another alternative I was going to explore was using pdfs for design case studies, so the site would feature a light case study, but with a more in-depth pdf available if wanted.

I have located numerous articles highlighting how best to optimise pdfs, but I have a few queries aside from the technical standpoint.

So:

• is this the best way to getting round the issue of keeping the site 'light' on content?

• are there stats that show CTRs on pdf pages over HTML?

• as well as optimising the pdf content and promoting them on our social media channel, is there a benefit from including them on the likes of Scribd, Edocr and so on (from either an SEO or simply from a promotional viewpoint, or both)

Hopefully that's all clear!

Nick

[Mike.Goracke]

Hi Nick,

1. My personal suggestion would be to give the illusion that your site is "light" on content through the use of whitespace. Take a look at SquareSpace.com and Desk.com - both of these sites, in my opinion, give the illusion that there isn't a lot of content, because of the whitespace and large images; however, both of these pages have OVER 1000 WORDS on their homepage... which is a decent amount. My guess is this is the idea your designers had in mind when they said "light" on content - but I could be wrong.

2. I am not aware of any studies on the subject off hand; however, I am sure there are some out there. As a side note, I do know that Google Analytics cannot track PDF CTRs out of the box, but supposedly you can add some code to the PDF's link that will allow you to track it. I suppose you could do some A/B testing on the subject.

3. If you want your PDF to rank well, promoting it anywhere would be great.

Personally, I think you should try to convince your designers to let you put the PDF content in an HTML page. It doesn't have to be at a navigational level, but within a page called Case Studies or whatever. My reasoning behind it is that I would assume for most keywords, people would rather view a webpage vs a PDF. Some people may think that if they click on a PDF that is all of the information your website would have on the particular topic, whereas if you click on a website, your assumption might be the entire website would be about a topic.

Also a personal side note - one of our PDFs ranks on page one for a keyword. We have not optimized this PDF or attempted to get it to page one... it just happened because so many people linked to it. The problem is that we didn't do a good job of optimizing the PDF, so that is where our traffic stops... people can open the PDF, but they do not have any links to lead them back to our website (which is our fault for not doing something about this). Point being - you may not get the traffic you want coming back to your site if they just open the PDF from a Google SERP.

Long story short - it depends on the purpose of your PDF. Is it strictly for users to read and be done with it? Is it something you want to rank well for and drive traffic to your website? If it is the latter, make sure you optimize the PDF so that users can get back to your website.

Personally I would rather have people linking to my website than a PDF on my website.

I hope this helps and I hope I was able to answer your question.

Mike

[themegroup]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for your response. Definitely some good food for thought here - especially about ensuring the pdfs are optimised.

It may be that we can put all the content on the site as HTML, but just not have it as part of the navigation (which we are doing with certain pages, like FAQs.

Unfortunately, when they say light on content they mean just that. As we are a design agency, the designers tend to think people are only picture led and the words distract from that. I tend to think that, while people will decide if we are the agency or them based on previous work, they also like to see stats on results, client feedback and so on.

So I'll try to persuade them to go the HTML route, but at least you've pointed out some things to bear in mind if going the PDF avenue.

Thanks!

Nick