PDF best practices: to get them indexed or not? Do they pass SEO value to the site?

[hlwebdev]

All PDFs have landing pages, and the pages are already indexed. If we allow the PDFs to get indexed, then they'd be downloadable directly from google's results page and we would not get GA events.

The PDFs info would somewhat overlap with the landing pages info. Also, if we ever need to move content, we'd now have to redirects the links to the PDFs.

What are best practices in this area? To index or not?

What do you / your clients do and why?

Would a PDF indexed by google and downloaded directly via a link in the SER page pass SEO juice to the domain? What if it's on a subdomain, like when hosted by Pardot? (www1.example.com)

[Pavloff]

repeatedly noticed that google index PDF files. But only their headers, without the contents of the file itself.

If you format the file description correctly, you can do it through the PDF Architect (http://pdf-architect.ideaprog.download/) program, or any other convenient for you.

[EGOL]

PDFs can be canonicalized using .htaccess.  Google is usually very slow to discover and obey this but it can be done.  However, if your PDF is not close to being an exact copy of the target page, Google will probably not honor the canonicalization and they will index the PDF and the html page separately.

https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/website/how-to-canonicalize-images-and-pdfs-with-the-htaccess-file

PDFs can be optimized (given a title tag) by editing the properties of the document.  Most PDF - making software has the ability to do this.

You can insert "buy buttons" and advertising in PDFs.  Just make an image, paste it into the document and link it to your shopping cart or to your target document.

PDFs accumulate linkjuice and pass it to other documents.

Use the same strategies with PDFs as you would with an html page for directing visitors where you want them to go and getting them to do what you want them to do.

Some people will link to your PDF, others will grab your PDF and place it on their website (in that situation, you lose the canonical but still get juice from any embeded links), and benefit from ads and buttons that might be included.  Lock the PFD with your PDF-creating software to prevent people from editing your PDF (but they can always copy/paste to get around it).

Other types of documents such as Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint documents, Google images, etc can have embedded text, embedded links and other features that are close to equivalent to an html document.

[effectdigital]

PDF documents aren't written in HTML so you can't put canonical tags into PDFs. So that won't help or work. In-fact, if you are considering any types of tags of any kind for your PDFs, stop - because PDF files cannot have HTML tags embedded within them

If your PDF files have landing pages, just let those rank and let people download the actual PDF files from there if they chose to do so. In reality, it's best to convert all your PDFs to HTML and then give a download link to the PDF file in case people need it (in this day and age though, PDF is a backwards format. It's not even responsive, for people's pones - it sucks!)

The only canonical tags you could apply, would be on the landing pages (which do support HTML) pointing to the PDF files. Don't do that though, it's silly. Just convert the PDFs to HTML, then leave a download button for the old PDFs in-case anyone absolutely needs them. If the PDF and the HTML page contain similar info, it won't affect you very much.

What will affect you, is putting canonical tags on the landing pages thus making them non-canonical (and stopping the landing pages from ranking properly). You're in a situation where a perfect outcome isn't possible, but that's no reason to pick the worst outcome by 'over-adhering' to Google's guidelines. Sometimes people use Google's guidelines in ways Google didn't anticipate that they would

PDF documents don't usually pass PageRank at all, as far as I know

If you want to optimise the PDF documents themselves, the document title which you save them with is used in place of a <title>tag (which, since PDFs aren't in HTML, they can't use <title>). You can kind of optimise PDF documents by editing their document titles, but it's not super effective and in the end HTML conversions usually perform much better. As stated, for the old fossils who still like / need PDF, you can give them a download link</p> <p>In the case of downloadable PDF files with similar content to their connected landing pages, Google honestly don't care too much at all. Don't go nutty with canonical tags, don't stop your landing pages from ranking by making them non-canonical</p></title>

[Dalerio-Consulting]

Yes, the PDFs would help increase your domain rank as they are practically considered as pages by Google, as explained in their QnA here.

Regarding hosting the PDFs on a subdomain, Google has stated that it's almost the same as having them on a subfolder, but that is highly contested by everyone since it's much harder to rank a subdomain than a subfolder.

Regarding the canonical tags, they are created for "Similar or Duplicate Pages", so the content doesn't have to be identical, and you'll be good so long as most of the content is the same. Otherwise, you can safely have them both be and have backlinks linking from the pdf to the main content to transfer "link juice", as they are considered as valid links.

I hope my response was beneficial to you and that the included proof was substantial.

Daniel Rika

[hlwebdev]

Thank you.

Could you address my question about what's best practice? What do most companies do?

I am not sure what the best choice would be for us -- to expose PDFs which compete with their own landing pages or not.

Also, do you know if  PDFs pass SEO "juice" to the main domain? Even if they are hosted at www2.maindomain.com?

Where can I see some proof that this is the case?

If the PDFs have a canonical tag pointing to the parent page, wouldn't this be confusing for the search engines as these are two separate files with differing content? Canonical tags are usually used to eliminate duplicates for differing URLs with identical content.

[Dalerio-Consulting]

Whether you want to index the pdf directly or not will mostly depend on the content of the pdf:

• If you are using the pdf as a way to gather e-mails for your newsletter, or if you are offering the pdf as a way to get users to your site, then it would be best not to have them indexed directly, but instead have the users go to your site first.
• If the pdf in itself is a way for you to promote your website or content then you can index it so that it can be accessed directly and may help you to get a bit more rank or clicks.

If you are looking to track pdf views, there are options to connect GA and track your pdf views, such as this plugin.

If the content is similar to the web page, then you can put a canonical tag to transfer the ranking. You can add it to the http header using the .htaccess file as explained here.

Daniel Rika