What to do with PDFs that rank well?
-
Looking at some reports, I found that a client's site has PDFs that are ranking well for niche terms and getting some traffic.
What can I do to get more out of them from a marketing standpoint?
The obvious issue is that a PDF doesn't have the interactivity of a site visit, where we have analytics and CTAs. Someone has to follow a link back from the PDF to the site for us to even register a visit, let alone try to get their email or have them otherwise convert.
My first guess is to make landing page summaries of the PDF content that link to the PDF, and canonical the PDF to the respective landing page.
Has anyone tried this, or done something else that they would recommend again in this situation?
-
Sounds like a smart plan to me!
-
Thank you, Robin!
I agree that there's a danger of splitting authority with the solution I've proposed and either of the alternatives would be stronger. The issue here is that I've got PDFs with 80+ pages of content, so making that into a HTML page would be it's own can of worms.
I'm thinking of doing one or a couple as an experiment and seeing the results before putting effort/taking on the risk of doing a whole bunch.
-
Hi there, good question! I've run into a similar situation and had all the same concerns as you. I think my recommendations would be (in order from most preferred to least preferred)
- Convert pdf to full HTML page with internal links and ability to convert, redirect PDF
- Replace PDF with HTML page which has the PDF as the content but also contains things like the internal nav (sometimes this is the only possibility with limited resource)
- Create summary page and link to pdf with canonical on pdf page (just as you say)
Making the content of the PDF more easily readable by search engines (by turning it into a HTML page as in solution 1) would hopefully boost ranking potential as well as helping give users a better experience.
The only reason I put your solution as lowest on the list is because if we're creating a page then we may as well create the full page, rather than creating a page which kind of gives the same information as the PDF but still relies on the PDF existing. You could find that the two pages compete and neither ends up ranking.
Hopefully that helps!
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
-
Content change and variations in ranking
Hello, I have create a new webpage and asked google in the webmaster tool to crawl it. Within minutes it is ranked at a certain spot. I did make changes to it to increase the ranking and right away I could see variations in ranking either up or down ? I have done the same same thing for a page that has been existing on my website for many years. I changed the content, asked the webmaster tool to re-crawl it. It got the new content within minutes but the ranking doesn't seem to change. Maybe my content isn't good enough but I doubt. Could it be that on old pages it takes a couple weeks to see ranking changes whereas on new page it is instantaneous. Has anyone experienced something similar ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics1 -
Erratic Rankings Earlier This Month - UK
Can anybody tell me what happened here? http://5lx.co.uk/images/searchconsole2015-12-22 13.37.16.png That is the ranking pattern of my UK site on Google UK for my main keyword. It reached number 1 on 7 December but three or four days later, dropped like a stone. It has been very erratic ever since, slumping as low as the mid-30s. I checked the search console but there were no manual penalties. There is an update signalled on the chart but I can't find any info about it and anyway it seems to have happened after the drop began. I barely touched the site between its top ranking and the slump and certainly didn't do anything to deserve that roller coaster (as far as I know). Does anybody have any ideas? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | neilmac0 -
Impact of Domain Authority on Keyword ranking
Experts Please advise if there is any impact on Keyword rankings due to high or low Domain authority?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | INN0 -
Branded Links : But not got any ranking..
Hi there. I'm SEO expert myself. I am building quality and authority backlinks with branded anchor text. My website has now over 1.5k backlinks with branded anchor text and generic keywords. But my website still not showing in SERPS with my targeted niche or anchor text. Do i need to build backlinks with exact match anchor text if yes then how much? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | globalitsoft0 -
Post your 3 best ways to rank well on Google
Hi, Anyone care to share what are your 3 best ways to rank well on Google? As for me i think: 1.) Link building & Social Media 2.) Onsite optimization 3.) Quality Content What about you?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chanel270 -
Tips to increase page rank in 2012
Can you suggest what are the ways to increase page rank of website and blogs? and according to current scenario, i can see google updating page rank anytime is it true?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | surajrathore0 -
What is wrong with my once highly ranked site?
Hello, I'm really desperate for some help. I believe I've been hit by Panda as traffic started diminishing late March for my 6 year old website. I've never had a sharp drop, only gradual. I've lost a load traffic since then. I did change shopping carts in June since I had a a canonical issue from my old cart that couldn't be corrected. The old cart also did not allow me to have unique product titles and the urls were garbled with letters, numbers, etc... I know Panda did not like that. I've made several changes (cleaned up broken links, added more content to my site, added Disallow: /search/ and Disallow: /search to my robots.txt file to avoid duplicate content from my search box.) My most prized keywords (tutu and tutus) are on page 15 or so of Google now, when they used to be on page 1 or 2 at the worst. Other good ones are slipping too. I do need to hire an SEO to optimize my titles eventually as I believe my they are still a bit stuffed but before I do that, I am just trying to get the other stuff done first. My main questions are this... Do any of you see something else that looks bad to you in the eyes of Google? I'd love the cold, hard truth as I'm pretty desperate for my site to recover, if at all possible. Thank you in advance! Here is my site: http://alturl.com/mvmux
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tutugirl0 -
Sudden and Aggressive Fall in Rankings
I have seen a sudden and aggressive drop in rankings for my site. The site was ranking #4 for rental insurance and now sits at #9. It was ranking #16 for renters insurance and now dropped to #171. We vary anchor text in our link building campaign and focus on getting links from PR3+ sites as well as produce content for quality sites in exchange for being a featured author + link. The site has not been over optimized (i.e. keyword stuffing, etc.). I would appreciate any insight into what could be causing this significant drop in rankings and what my course of action is to reinstate my rankings - Penguin?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mj7750