I have a page where you can download a PDF of the material - should I exclude the PDF from the search engines?

[MarieHaynes]

In my niche, there is a controversial research article that is very popular.  I am writing a rebuttal to this article and giving another point of view.

My article has the potential to be really good link bait for my site.

The original article is often printed out to be shown to professionals in my niche.  My hope is that people will do the same with mine.  So, I plan to have a PDF version of my article available on my page.  The article that is visible on my site (i.e. non PDF) will be a graphic rich article that is easy for the reader to go through.  I plan to have the PDF have all of the same text, but it won't have as many graphics - it will look more like a scientific research article.

So, should I exclude the pdf from search engines so that it isn't duplicate content?  Or does that even matter seeing as it is a duplicate of my own content?  I want people to link to the main article, not the pdf.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

[PhiloMedia]

I don't think there's a problem with hosting the PDF. Just make sure you've got strong branding in the PDF and links back to your online article. People will most likely pass your PDF around to others and you want them to come visit the source --> YOU.

[EGOL]

Do not exclude.

People will link to it.

PDF documents can rank in the SERPs if you complete the properties portion of the document.  The title in the properties will serve as a title tag for Google SERPs.

PDF documents can accumulate pagerank and pass that pagerank though any links in the PDF document.  (Be sure to place a few links to your website in the PDF.  Because....pdf, .ppt, .xls and many other file times display in my google webmaster tools backlinks).

Encourage other webmasters to download your pdf and post it on their server and link to it from their website.  That will give you backlinks from their domain.  You can get a kickass number of backlinks from this.  (I usually don't advocate giving content away but I have seen success from "whitepapers" like this.  You might  consider offering them a "branded" copy of the document to post on their own site - you would add their branding for them.)

Its a good idea to lock the .pdf document so that others can't change it.  They can always make their own document from your content but don't make it too easy for them.

I have used .pdfs and have not seen a duplicate content problem from them.  However, the content of the pdf is not exactly the same as what is on an .html page of my site.  It sounds like you are planning to have richer content on your site than in the .pdf so I would not worry about dupe content. Just be sure that there is a significant difference.

[MarieHaynes]

Thank you!  This is exactly the kind of information I needed!

I was thinking contacting webmasters who published the original article to tell them about mine.  But now, perhaps what I will do is not just contact them but attach a copy of the pdf for them to use.