Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Turn SEO data into actionable content briefs

      Turn SEO data into actionable content briefs

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      Let your business shine with Listings AI

      Let your business shine with Listings AI

      Get found
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. Do Backlinks to a PDF help with overall authority/link juice for the rest of the domain?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Do Backlinks to a PDF help with overall authority/link juice for the rest of the domain?

    Technical SEO
    4
    4
    4291
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • MattAaron
      MattAaron last edited by

      We are working on a website that has some high-quality industry articles available on their website.

      For each article, there is an abstract with a link to the PDF which is hosted on the domain.

      We have found in Analytics that a lot of sites link directly to the PDF and not the webpage that has the abstract of the article.

      Can we get any benefit from a direct PDF link? Or do we need to modify our strategy?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • RobMay
        RobMay last edited by

        You can/need to build links from within the domain to thePDF report you want to share also. Links within the PFD file will also help for people who share the file via email, and not within the site. This will bring people back to your domain.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • firstconversion
          firstconversion last edited by

          Also have a Google for optimising pdfs for search, i know there are number of ways & options

          http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/how-to-optimize-pdf-documents-for-search

          http://searchengineland.com/eleven-tips-for-optimizing-pdfs-for-search-engines-12156

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • EGOL
            EGOL last edited by

            Add links to your site within the .pdf

            You can also add your branding to the .pdf

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            Browse Questions

            Explore more categories

            • Moz Tools

              Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

            • SEO Tactics

              Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

            • Community

              Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

            • Digital Marketing

              Chat about tactics outside of SEO

            • Research & Trends

              Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

            • Support

              Connect on product support and feature requests.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • LisaBabblebird

              Domain Authority dropped 10 points and I don't know why

              domain authority optimization

              In my latest site crawl, the domain authority dropped 10 points for no apparent reason. There have been no changes to the site. The only change I have made this month is to block referral spam to the site. My competitors' DAs have stayed the same too. website name: https://knowledgefront.co.uk/ Any ideas?

              Technical SEO | | LisaBabblebird
              0
            • Tom3_15

              Sudden Indexation of "Index of /wp-content/uploads/"

              Hi all, I have suddenly noticed a massive jump in indexed pages. After performing a "site:" search, it was revealed that the sudden jump was due to the indexation of many pages beginning with the serp title "Index of /wp-content/uploads/" for many uploaded pieces of content & plugins. This has appeared approximately one month after switching to https. I have also noticed a decline in Bing rankings. Does anyone know what is causing/how to fix this? To be clear, these pages are **not **normal /wp-content/uploads/ but rather "index of" pages, being included in Google. Thank you.

              Technical SEO | | Tom3_15
              0
            • hampgunn

              SEO advice on ecommerce url structure where categories contain "/c/"

              Hi! We use Hybris as plattform and I would like input on which url to choose. We must keep "/c/" before the actual category. c stands for category. I.e. this current url format will be shortened and cleaned:
              https://www.granngarden.se/Sortiment/Husdjur/Hund/Hundfoder-%26-Hundmat/c/hundfoder To either: a. 
              https://www.granngarden.se/husdjur/hund/hundfoder/c/hundfoder b.
              https://www.granngarden.se/husdjur/hund/c/hundfoder (hundfoder means dogfood) The question is whether we should keep the duplicated category name (hundfoder) before the "/c/" or not. Will there be SEO disadvantages by removing the duplicate "hundfoder" before the "/c/"? I prefer the shorter version ofc, but do not want to jeopardize any SEO rankings or send confusing signals to search engines or customers due to the "/c/" breaking up the url breadcrumb. What do you guys say and prefer from the above alternatives? Thanks /Hampus

              Technical SEO | | hampgunn
              0
            • Clicksjim

              WordPress - How to stop both http:// and https:// pages being indexed?

              Just published a static page 2 days ago on WordPress site but noticed that Google has indexed both http:// and https:// url's. Usually I only get http:// indexed though. Could anyone please explain why this may have happened and how I can fix? Thanks!

              Technical SEO | | Clicksjim
              1
            • Grumpy_Carl

              Domain authority and keyword difficulty

              I know there are too many variables for a certain answer, however do people take their domain authority into account when using keyword difficulty tool? I have a new domain which only has a score of seven at the moment.  When using the keyword searching tool what is the maximum difficulty level keywords people would target initially? Obviously I would seek to increase the difficulty of the words over time but to start off its a hard choice between keywords which can be ranked for in a reasonable period of time and the keywords which are getting enough traffic to make the effort worthwhile.

              Technical SEO | | Grumpy_Carl
              0
            • askotzko

              Do I need to add canonical link tags to pages that I promote & track w/ UTM tags?

              New to SEOmoz, loving it so far. I promote content on my site a lot and am diligent about using UTM tags to track conversions & attribute data properly. I was reading earlier about the use of link rel=canonical in the case of duplicate page content and can't find a conclusive answer whether or not I need to add the canonical tag to these pages. Do I need the canonical tag in this case? If so, can the canonical tag live in the HEAD section of the original / base page itself as well as any other URLs that call that content (that have UTM tags, etc)? Thank you.

              Technical SEO | | askotzko
              1
            • Freebetsuk

              DISQUS COMMENTS backlinks-good for seo? YES/NO?

              DISQUS COMMENTS backlinks-good for seo? YES/NO? I have just started commenting on "powered by disquus" websites in the Disqus comments box and left a link to my website in the name field! Having googled whether Disqus comments backlinks are any good for seo purposes i have discovered that there is a 50/50 view on the subject with some people saying they are a "goldmine" for getting high PR backlinks and others saying they are a waste of time because googlebot cannot read Java. My own experience of commenting on Disqus powered websites is that wordpress blogs powered by disqus comments ARE INDEXED by GOOGLE and the "BACKLINK IS IN THE SOURCE OF THE PAGE" When i comment on normal websites using the Disqus comment system i have found that my Disqus comments ARE NOT indexed by Google and there IS NO BACKLINK in the page source! Has anybody got any views on whether Disqus comments backlinks are any good?

              Technical SEO | | Freebetsuk
              2
            • pauledwards

              .com or .co.uk in UK index? but the .com has higher domain authority...

              Hi there i have a .com and a .co.uk for a site that has been around a while. However not much seo has been done on it, i was wonderign do i continue to optimise for the .com or switch to the .co.uk to rank in Google UK index for various search terms. .COM = 40 domain authority .CO.UK - 10 domain authority. Let the debate start 🙂

              Technical SEO | | pauledwards
              0

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            • Digital Marketers
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.