PDFs With No Index Contribute To Page Ranks?

[whiterabbitnz]

I have a question I'm hoping you can help me with. If I upload a PDF and add a no index under the meta robots index so that the PDF doesn't appear in search results when I send people the link to this PDF, does it still contribute to my site traffic/ranking etc?

Basically we are deciding whether to put some PDFs with pricing options etc onto our website or on a google drive. We will be sending the links to potential clients. If visitors clicking on the link would still help with increasing traffic and increasing our google rank (without that PDF showing in results) we thought this might be the best solution.

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Hi,

There is a few things in your post that I want to help clarify:

• Just sending traffic and links to something doesn't always mean that it'll help drive your search rankings.
• Posting a PDF in Google Drive and linking to that won't help your site rank better, in the end the file is hosted on a Google owned domain, not yours. So as far as I can imagine it won't help you.
• Only if people would link to the actual PDF that is hosted on your site (including meta robots of noindex) it could help you. But only if that link is public for anybody to visit and not just something that you obviously send out in an email.

Martijn

[whiterabbitnz]

Thanks for your insight there Martjin, super helpful.

Yes, the Google drive was what I thought we'd use if there was no SEO  advantage to having people view/download on our site.