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.
PDF ranking higher than HTML pages, solution?
-
Hello Moz community
I know this question has been asked before but it seems there is no real answer other than putting a summary of the PDF on the HTML page. My problem is other websites are using my PDFs, I have some PDFs with very high authority links and I would like to either pass the link juice on to my product/category page or do rel=canonical somehow. I'm using bigcommerce as my platform. My website is cwwltd.com. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you
-
Thank you, I will try to add links in the PDFs and see if that helps at all.
-
Hello John
The problem with modifying headers is I don't have access to .htaccess because I use bigcommerce platform. So I'm not sure how I would add rel canonical for the PDFs? Can I somehow do it with the link to the PDF?
Thank you
-
Put links in the pdfs. Edit their "properties" to optimize them for the SERPs. You can place "buy buttons" in pdfs, include ads in them. Track the number of views through log analytics.
Search here and here to get lots more information about using pdfs.
-
Hi there! Great question and one that has perplexed SEOs for years.
You are indeed right that one of the best ways to rank the page over the PDF is to put some of the PDF content on your page and do other best SEO practices (eg build links to the page, have a better optimized title/etc than the PDF itself). It is also possible to put the rel-canonical in the header of the PDF - https://moz.com/blog/how-to-advanced-relcanonical-http-headers
Finally, if you don't want your actual PDF showing up in the search results, consider a) blocking it in the robots.txt and then b) requesting the URL be removed from the search index via Search Console.
Good luck!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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.
Related Questions
-
Website ranking stuck on 2nd page of google. How to bring it in top 10 position??
Hi I am working on a site indianhomeappliances.in that for search terms such as 'best washing machine in india' appears near the top of the 2nd page of Googl for url https://indianhomeappliances.in/best-washing-machine-in-india/ When looking at what is listed on the 1st page for 'best washing machine in india' I would appreciate any advice/guidance on what else could be done to give the site a final push to get on the 1st page of search results. I have made more than 60 backlinks along with sites from competitor analysis via moz for this page Looking at the sites that are on the 1st page I cant understand why many of them are ranking higher than me? Any insight and plan of attack would be most appreciated from any search experts on the forum. My website is 2.5 months old. Many Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Pank00770 -
Would You Redirect a Page if the Parent Page was Redirected?
Hi everyone! Let's use this as an example URL: https://www.example.com/marvel/avengers/hulk/ We have done a 301 redirect for the "Avengers" page to another page on the site. Sibling pages of the "Hulk" page live off "marvel" now (ex: /marvel/thor/ and /marvel/iron-man/). Is there any benefit in doing a 301 for the "Hulk" page to live at /marvel/hulk/ like it's sibling pages? Is there any harm long-term in leaving the "Hulk" page under a permanently redirected page? Thank you! Matt
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | amag0 -
Do 403 Forbidden errors from website pages hurt rankings?
Hi All, I noticed that our website has lot of 403 errors across different pages using the tool http://www.deadlinkchecker.com/. Do these errors hurt website rankings? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Page Rank Worse After Optimization
For a long time, we had terrible on page SEO. No keyword targeting, no meta titles or descriptions. Just a brief 2-4 sentence product description and shipping information. Strangely, we weren't ranking too bad. For one product, we were ranking on page 1 of Google for a certain keyword. My goal to reach the top of page 1 would be easy (or so I thought). I have now optimized this page to rank better for the same keyword. I have a 276 word description with detailed specifications and shipping information. I have a strong title and meta description with keywords and modifers. I have also included a video demonstration, additional photos and an PDF of the owners manual. In my eyes, the page is 100% better than it ever was. In the eyes of MOZ, it's better also. I've got an A with the On-Page Grader. Why is this page now ranking on page 8 of Google? What have I done wrong? What can I do to correct it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dkeipper0 -
Solution to Duplicate Pages within Shopify
Thanks in advance for your time and expertise. I am having issues with duplicate page content and titles on a client's Shopify subdomain. Examples below. Two questions: #1 How can I solve this issue? Do I block the duplicate pages from being crawled? With meta NoIndex? Establish the main page as the canonical version and stop obsessing? Other... #2 Is it a big concern or am I needlessly obsessing? Feels like a concern that needs to be addressed, but maybe not? Duplicate Page Content Examples: #1 URL: http://shop.shopvandevort.com #1 Duplicate URLs: http://shop.shopvandevort.com/collections/all; http://shop.shopvandevort.com/collections/all?page=1 #2 URL: http://shop.shopvandevort.com/collections/accessories #2 Duplicate URLs: http://shop.shopvandevort.com/collections/accessories; http://shop.shopvandevort.com/collections/types?q=Accessories Duplicate Page Title Examples: http://shop.shopvandevort.com/collections/vendors?q=For%20Love%20And%20Lemons http://shop.shopvandevort.com/collections/for-love-lemons http://shopvandevort.com/blog/tag/for-love-and-lemons/ http://shop.shopvandevort.com/collections/for-love-lemons?page=1 Thanks again for taking a look here, very much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AaronHurst0 -
Do Page Views Matter? (ranking factor?)
Hi, I actually asked it a year and a half ago (with a slight variation) but didn't get any real response and things do change over time. On my eCommerce website I have the main category pages with client side filtering and sorting. As a result, the number of page views is lower than can be expected. Do you think having more page views is still a ranking factor? and if so is it more important than user experience? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet1 -
HTML NAP Matching Place Page NAP
In David Mihm's article on Local Search Ranking Factors, he lists "HTML NAP Matching Place Page NAP". What is this exactly?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DougHoltOnline1 -
Blocking Pages Via Robots, Can Images On Those Pages Be Included In Image Search
Hi! I have pages within my forum where visitors can upload photos. When they upload photos they provide a simple statement about the photo but no real information about the image,definitely not enough for the page to be deemed worthy of being indexed. The industry however is one that really leans on images and having the images in Google Image search is important to us. The url structure is like such: domain.com/community/photos/~username~/picture111111.aspx I wish to block the whole folder from Googlebot to prevent these low quality pages from being added to Google's main SERP results. This would be something like this: User-agent: googlebot Disallow: /community/photos/ Can I disallow Googlebot specifically rather than just using User-agent: * which would then allow googlebot-image to pick up the photos? I plan on configuring a way to add meaningful alt attributes and image names to assist in visibility, but the actual act of blocking the pages and getting the images picked up... Is this possible? Thanks! Leona
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HD_Leona0