Index pdf files but redirecto to site
-
Hi,
One of our clients has tons of PDFs (manuals, etc.) and frequently gets good rankings for the direct PDF link. While we're happy about the PDFs attracting users' attention, we'd like to redirect them to the site where the original PDF link is published and avoid that people open the pdf directly.
In short, we'd like to index the PDFs, but show to users the pdf link within a site - how should we proceed to do that?
Thanks,
GM
-
Thanks for the follow-up ... if it weren't for phrases like
- The page displayed to all users who visit from Google must be identical to the content that is shown to Googlebot.
I'd be quite comfortable with that ... in the meantime, however, I might try some pdf2html conversion tools to see if there is a viable way to present PDF-information on a HTML page and block the PDF link for robots.
Regards,
Gert
-
Hi Gret,
After further research, it might not be considered as cloacking that much as the Google First Click Free for Web Search system works the same way and check the HTTP referer.
For more details, read the official Google Webmaster Central blog post about it here :
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/10/first-click-free-for-web-search.htmlBest regards,
Guillaume Voyer. -
Thanks for your detailed reply, Guillaume,
I guess the possible "cloaking troubles" with this strategy are probably too risky for our project. However, I like the "click here" idea, we'll check if we can automate that somehow to drag users reading the PDFs back to our site.
-
Hi Gert,
Technically, this is not possible unless you use cloaking to display the PDF to the search engines and redirect the users to a different page.
What you could do to avoid cloacking is to include a banner at the top of your PDF with something like "Click here to see all our related PDFs" that would link to your website, this way users might be interested in going to your website.
Otherwise, you could detect the referer with htaccess and redirect the user to the user if he is coming from google, but this might be considered as cloaking. Here's an example :
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (.)google.(.)
RewriteRule ^pdf/(.*).pdf /pdf-list [R=302]If you are running a apache server and you put this in your .htaccess file, the first line activate mod_rewrite, the second line check if the referer matches anythinggoogle.anything and the third line redirect all .pdf files in the pdf folder to the /pdf-list page if the referer matches.
Best regards,
Guillaume Voyer.
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
-
Sitemap - 200 out of 2100 pages indexed
I submitted the .xml sitemap in Google Webmaster Tools and only 200 out of 2100 pages were indexed.
Content Development | | Madlena
Why is that and what can I do ?0 -
Breaking a Big Website into Multiple Unrelated Sites
I have a big cluttered website that I want to simplify. There is content for patients, researchers, therapists who are looking for grants, etc.. Would it be a bad ideas to turn these into 3 or more, completely different sites with each focused on their specific demographic? Or should I just figure out how to organize the one site better? Thanks for your help!!!
Content Development | | bosleypalmer0 -
Is there a way to automate finding low quality content on your site?
Hi all, I have a site that was once #1 for many keywords. Fast forward a number of years and I am sinking lower and lower and it really started to sink low from September 2012 and appears to be due to an algo update. How should I go about finding my low quality pages? I am told that I might have pages bringing my entire site down. I deleted heaps of low quality pages but not seeing any improvements (might be a little impatient). Any tips for finding bad content?
Content Development | | BatmanGoonie0 -
Smaller Index
Hi guys, We are a price comparison website with thousands of webpages. Most of them are product webpages with not so good quality content. Only price information and product image, no product details nor costumers reviews. We are planing to focus on less product categories by adding reviews, details, better images etc... and I would like to know if I should maintain the other "not-so-good" products in other categories or if I should remove it from index to leverage domain average content quality. Our index size is 200k pages and we are planning to focus on 10k pages max. Thanks for your help.
Content Development | | Kuantokusta0 -
Which is better for seo purposes? site/blog or site/community?
Hi Guys I was wondering if you could help on this one. We are in the process of setting up a wordpress blog for our website to aid our content marketing efforts, and was wondering what main url for this blog is going to be the best for seo purposes? So of the following 2 which one is going to be the better one? site.com/blog or site.com/community If anyone could get back to me on this I would appreciate it. Thanks David
Content Development | | DavidZA10 -
Same article published to 3 different client owned sites
My client is publishing their own articles simultaneously on three sites, sites which they own. What can and should they be doing to ensure the get maximum exposure without penalty?
Content Development | | DonnaDuncan0 -
Multiple Domains pointing to one site?
Due to takeovers, different strategies and a certain amount of historical lack of control, we have a dozen sites covering many different specialist areas of our business. To make things easier to manage, we are thinking of merging website content, then repointing some of the domains to the new section within the larger website. The content on each site is all different, but the subject matter is sometimes the same.This will make content, design and management much easier. We propose to choose the best content, then repoint the underperforming domains. Is there an seo risk of having many domains pointing to one site?
Content Development | | GardenGamer0 -
What are the advantages/disadvantages of a blog residing on a website as opposed to free-standing and linked to site
I have a cleint with a web site and with 3 freestanding wordpress blogs - should we be housing those blogs on the site? should we combine them (its an insurance compnay with several business units). thanks
Content Development | | thirsty30