This post was written by Anja Glauch.

As competitive as the online world becomes, it also is crucial that a website is noticed online.

As repetitive as this might be, Search Engine Optimization ensures that your web content appears when a user is searching for it. It is essential that search engines can read the content from a website therefore optimizing PDF files as well as normal HTML/ XHTML web content would be an excellent step to take.

Search Engines rate websites based on their relevancy to content and keywords, but also on many quality links the sites has – outgoing and incoming. The same way Search Engine Optimization specialists can optimize websites, PDF documents can be optimized too.

How to optimize a PDF file:

  • Make all PDF’s in text format, so that the search engine can read it;
  • Complete the document’s properties, (especially the title) – what usually happens is that people forget to set a title, that way the search engine will pick content from the PDF file and it might not be exactly what you would want.
  • Optimize text, by making sure that selected keywords are there and can easily be identified;
  • Add links to PDF files, so that readers can always be redirected to your website;
  • Save files at the lowest possible Acrobat version, so that readers can easily open it, and search engines can find it;
  • Sizes should be kept as small as possible, if files take too long to download users will abandon the site;
  • Place links to your files on your web page where it can easily be found, i.e. closer to the root level of the site’s file structure.
  • Specify reading order, in terms of text and headlines;
  • Publish articles in different directories that directly link to your PDF documents

In order to achieve a higher ranking, it is important to use a set of well chosen keywords and relevant content, by optimizing PDF files. They can achieve a higher number of links and the opportunity to have more content associated with your website and your business, which would ultimately affect one’s ranking on the most popular search engines.