With so much focus on the code of a site, many companies overlook the need to optimise the objects on pages. Search engine optimisation affects every element on a page. Every aspect of your pages should really be working hard to attract the attention of the search engines. This means documents and PDFs as well as the other aspects.

Some objects give more trouble than others. Businesses waste a lot of SEO time when it comes to Flash content. Video comes in for its fair share of criticism regarding optimisation as well. When you consider how easy it is, in comparison, to optimise a PDF for the search engines, it’s a crime not to do it.

PDFs have been quietly making their way into company web pages for a while now. They are such a handy format that most companies can’t afford not to use them. Adobe made a smart move in supplying a reader for free. You can pretty much guarantee that this highly specialised form of content can be read by whatever users wander across your site. It can be helpful to consult your SEO firm for advice on on-page object optimisation. You can talk to us at SEO Consult.

From a site perspective, PDFs allow you to present documents in an unalterable form, giving you more control over how the document is presented. They can also be used to shrink document size, which improves page download times.

Shrink it down

Often, the business use of a PDF is a high-quality document designed for printing. This is almost the opposite use you could desire for the web. While printers require a very high dots-per-inch (DPI) ratio, computer screens are happy with quite low DPI. You need to check the specs for your PDFs and perhaps lower their thresholds before you upload them to your servers.

Check on-page objects

PDFs have a lot in common with your web pages. Some of the things that contribute to a large PDF size are things like images and fonts. One way to reduce the weight of a PDF on your page is to simplify your fonts and lower your image resolutions. This should be done with careful attention to what will actually work on a computer screen – it is possible to lower image resolution too much.

Image type has an impact on PDFs as well. Most image formats are generally less desirable than a JPEG, as JPEGs tend to be compressed more efficiently.

Keep your compression up-to-date

Different versions of Acrobat compress documents differently. The newer versions generally have a more efficient compression.

SEO surrounding tags

Like most objects on your web pages, PDFs don’t generally appeal to search engine spiders, so it’s important to optimise the content around the PDF. Ensure you tag and title the content properly, and include a short, optimised description nearby.

Keep it simple

The absolute best guideline for PDF optimisation is to keep things simple. Keep the number of fonts down, keep images simple, and your PDF will work better on your pages.

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