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Article originally appeared in Business Lexington Magazine
10 Tips For Optimizing PDF Files for Search Engines and Accessibility
by Scott Clark
Since the early 1990s, Adobe Acrobat has been ubiquitous for distribution of documents on corporate networks and the Internet. Google’s been indexing PDF files since 2001, but few take the time to optimize their files for search engines after publishing them. By taking the time to optimize, you’re more likely to find attractive printouts of your company’s white papers, tips sheets, or instructions on a C-level executive’s desk, while a competitors’ messy web-page-printouts fall into the trash. Here are a few tips for PDF distribution to increases your chances of success in this growing area.
 Put your materials on the decision makers' desk while your competitor's web page printouts hit the trash can. |
Tip 1: Convert all scanned PDFs into text using OCR. If you’ve scanned an article or something from paper, use the Adobe Acrobat Optical Character Recognition (OCR) function to make sure the file can be read by search engines. A quick test to see if your PDF file needs this is to try to select some text with your mouse. If it won’t work, you need to convert.
Tip 2: Give your PDF a meaningful title. Many think of their documents in the context of their website, never considering that it will need to stand alone in the Internet search results pages (SERPs) or document search results. Search Google for some PDF files and take note of how they appear in the results list. Which would you click on?
Tip 3: Separate words in the PDF filenames with dashes, not spaces or underbars. Search Engines prefer dashes as word breaks in filenames in their ranking algorithm. Think about the search phrase that users will most likely type to find the PDF document. For example, you might name a file “Ingersol-Rand-Annual-Report-2008.pdf,” instead of “Annual Report 08.pdf” as it better reflects the likely search query.
Tip 4: Add alternative text descriptions to images and illustrations. If you’ve included photographs, charts, or other graphics in your file, make sure to enter the “Alternate Text” description for each under the Accessibility menu. This helps both search engines and people better understand your document.
Tip 4: Check meta data. Take a close look at “creator” information or other hidden information in the document’s “meta text.” Make sure there is not embarrassing or confidential information hidden therein. Privacy experts say that many competitors and journalists pour over this data looking for tidbits day and night.
Tip 6: Add appropriate password protection. Search engines can’t access password protected files. If you plan to protect the entire document behind a password, make sure you fill in the document description thoroughly as this will be the entire text search engines see. If password protection is only needed for copying/pasting or printing, then use the least restrictive password you can get by with.
Tip 7: Add an “introduction” page to help search engines. While you may not wish to alter the original document for search optimization, you can add a title page which includes information specifically designed to help. This should be the first page and include the title of your document, the date of publication, and a 200-300 word description of the file. Make sure the description includes important keywords early in the description can assist with relevant indexing.
Tip 8: Target the PDF file to “current version minus one”. This will prevent users from being forced to download the latest version of Acrobat to see your document. Adobe allows you to change the compatibility level and you should use the most compatible version you can get away with while maintaining your document’s integrity.
Tip 9: Take hyperlinks seriously. Links are an important consideration in the indexing of PDF files. By giving documents meaningful links and link text (often called “anchor text”) you give clues to the search engines about how you’d like the file ranked. Anchor text reading “click here” is useless in while “how to seal a deck” does a much better job. In addition, many usability experts recommend an indicator to tell users they’re about to open a PDF file.
Tip 10: Use “reading order” tags. A slightly advanced method is to use the “reading order” feature you can indicate which areas of text capture the “essence” of the document and tagging those as “first to read.” Google seems to utilize this information when crawling PDF files. This method is ideal for large PDF files, since search engines allocate a limited amount of time to each page they crawl. If they stop looking at your page before the important content, it might rank poorly.
Thinking like search engines and users for a few minutes prior to publishing will help you meet your marketing, operations, and customer support goals when documents are published and for their entire lifetime of use.
Scott Clark is an accredited and certified web business expert here in Lexington and is online at http://www.WebSiteAdvice.com.
©Scott Clark - If you wish to syndicate this article, contact me.
@ photograph of faces by luc legay and used under creative commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License