Will a PDF Pass PageRank?

[IPINGlobal54]

From what i have seen its a little unclear, and would largely be dependant on how you create the pdf. Provided your pdf has been created using a text editor for the text (and not mad up of a bunch of images) then if pdf's are crawled - at least you stand a chance of the text and so on ranking in the first place. (You can google search by file type, including pdf, so one would assume they should rank in their own right if tagged and as text).

Whether a pdf will pass rank or not? I would suggest it should - provided it actually ranks itself in the first place (sounds obvious I know).

[EGOL]

Links in .pdf documents will be displayed in your Google Webmaster Tools Backlinks, they will accumulate pagerank (I have some PR6 pdf documents), and they will pass pagerank.

It is a good idea to place links into .pdf documents that you give away on the web not only for pagerank reasons but also to give users an easy link to visit your site for more information.  Think about usability when you create .pdf documents in the same ways that you think about usability for your website.

Also, if you complete the "properties" attributes of .pdf documents you can give them a title that will appear in the SERPs like a title tag on an .html webpage.  I get lots of traffic from the SERPs that come straight into my .pdf documents and then click a link in the document that takes them to a relevant page on my website.

Finally... in addition to .pdf documents you can also get viable backlinks and clickthroughs from .ppt (PowerPoint) .xls (Excel) and other types of files.  Consider allowing other webmasters to include them on their site.  That way they can bring you links from other domains.

[alhallinan]

Wow, way to give an absolutely excellent answer. I wish I could give more than 1 thumbs up!

[EGOL]

Thank you.  I really like this subject and enjoyed preparing that answer!

[JerDoggMckoy]

Thanks a ton EGOL, I have been looking around for more info on this subject for quite a while. What are your thoughts on how to create the links? Is it considered black hat tactics to place invisible links in those pdf's? My thinking here is that I know competitors will start stealing our pdf documents to use for their own websites. I was thinking of placing invisible links on some key phrases that link to product pages, and then when competitors upload our pdf's to their site, we get backlinks from their websites. Does that make sense, and does it seem like a viable strategy or a potentially penalizing one?

[Dan-Petrovic]

What an interesting topic. Has anyone done any testing around effectiveness of PDF vs HTML resources and whether it treats anchor text in the same way?

[Thos003]

I'll help you by adding one.

... And a thumbs up well spent.

[EGOL]

We make our links very obvious.  I would not try to hide them because I want them clicked (it is hard to monetize a .pdf but easy to monetize an .html page - so I want the visitor to get onto my .html pages).

You can lock .pdf documents so that they can not be edited.  Then other webmasters are free to post them on their own domain and give me backlinks.  Of, course they could rewrite their own just as any other content can be spun or rewritten.

[Thos003]

Very interesting discussion indeed.  I wonder if "creating a workpath" for text would make it easier to read. But I guess a OCR is going to have a difficult time associating the actual text with the link regardless.

[EGOL]

Adding more...

The buttons from some shopping carts will work in .pdf documents.  So if you write one with a parts list, you can place a buy button beside each part to make it really easy for the person to purchase.

Also, type your domain name in the pdf.  That way, if people print it and want to go back to your website you might get a navigation query.   Typing the URL where it can be found might do the same thing.