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Optimizing PDF Documents for Search Engines

Feb 14, 2003

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Search Engine Visibility

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General Guidelines

The same optimization guidelines that apply to HTML documents apply to PDF documents:

Make sure your PDF documents contain text that the search engines can index: Search engines are unable to index Image Only PDF documents. Thus, if you create a PDF document by using a flatbed scanner, the search engines will not be able to extract that text.
Use keyword-rich text in your PDF documents.
For PDF documents with multiple pages, the most important text is on the first page of your PDF document: Be sure that the titles, headlines, and text on the first page of your PDF documents contain your most important keywords.
Minimize download time: In general, search engines representatives recommend keeping document file size to less than 100K. If you find that your PDF documents are larger than 100K, consider creating abstracts.
Create optimized HTML pages with abstracts of PDF documents: If your PDF document, such as a manual or a catalog, is large, consider creating HTML pages that summarize PDF files. The abstract pages should contain at least 200–250 words of quality content within the <body> and </body> tags. Title tags and meta tags should also contain keywords.
Whenever possible, the anchor text to the PDF file should contain keywords: Be sure to have links to your PDF documents on your Site Map page as well.
NOTE

Site visitors want to know that they will be viewing a PDF document before they click a link. Because many PDF documents tend to be greater than 100K in size, visitors like to know file size information as well.

For example, on the fictional TranquiliTeas site, a simple way to let visitors know that they will be viewing a PDF document is to make the hypertext link look like the following:
```
View the TranquiliTeas Organic Tea Brochure – PDF (360K)
```

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