Comments on: What you don’t know about optimizing PDFs can hurt you | 17 Strategies for success

By: e-Books: 10 Tips for Marketers | Thought Leadership Marketing

e-Books: 10 Tips for Marketers | Thought Leadership Marketing — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 18:54:27 +0000

[...] do it is too complicated for this blog, but Galen De Young wrote a helpful, succinct blog offering 17 Strategies for Optimizing Your PDFs that I recommend you [...]

By: Comment bien optimiser ses PDF pour le référencement | KubX

Comment bien optimiser ses PDF pour le référencement | KubX — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:38:58 +0000

[...] What you don’t know about optimizing PDFs can hurt you [...]

By: Steve Williams

Steve Williams — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:40:00 +0000

Great post! Very rarely do I come across a post that hits every point like this one. Thanks!

By: John Rasco

John Rasco — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 16:59:49 +0000

Great post, Galen. It’s amazing to me how many PDFs are posted on the website, but were intended for the printer…odd sizes, printer spreads or oversize paper stock. We recommend creating versions which work with 8.5 x 11 paper, so if someone hits “print,” they have a useful document.

By: Best Of B2B Search Marketing 2009

Best Of B2B Search Marketing 2009 — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:01:20 +0000

[...] What You Don’t Know About Optimizing PDFs Can Hurt You | 17 Strategies for Success | Galen De Young / Proteus B2B Marketing / Search Engine Land [...]

By: Galen De Young

Galen De Young — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:46:12 +0000

Hi, Dinara

I don’t think there’s any way to accomplish what you’re trying to do through meta tags. Generally, a PDF requiring registration is blocked by the registration process, which is generally independent of the PDF iteself. What you may want to consider doing is providing an optimized excerpt of the PDF either on or before the registration page. Make sure you optimize the other components of that excerpt page as well, not just the copy you’ve extracted.

Galen

By: Dinara Seitova

Dinara Seitova — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:34:41 +0000

Thank you, great article. Is there a way to meta tag PDFs that are “gated”, meaning they require a registration? Thank you!

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Seachcap SEO Aware Style- Favorite Articles From the Past Year SEO Aware — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 22:29:29 +0000

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By: Je galère en Dev'Web > Référencer un pdf

Je galère en Dev'Web > Référencer un pdf — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 19:57:14 +0000

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By: Deborah

Deborah — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:56:45 +0000

Great advice, glad to see all the good tips. I’ve been optimizing PDFs for several years. In the past few months, I’ve changed my workflow to use many of the tips you’ve posted.

Regarding “And although the file name of the PDF will show as the title tag of the PDF document window in Acrobat, the file name is not the PDF’s Title”, you can change the title tag of the PDF document window to display the title tag.

Go to File > Properties > Initial View. In the Windows Options section, change the Show drop down menu to “Document Title”. Click OK.

An option to consider instead of the File > Reduce File Size, is the Advanced > PDF Optimizer which allows you to configure the settings for image downsampling, saving for a specific Acrobat version, and many other settings.

Using File > Reduce File Size doesn’t give you any control over how Acrobat chooses to reduce the file size, and you may find the resulting images and text are not the quality you expect.

Advanced > PDF Optimizer allows you to customize how the file will be reduced in size.

By: Galen De Young

Galen De Young — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:08:46 +0000

Thanks, Chris

It is a lot of work…best to do things right the first time, when you create them. Going back to redo things isn’t fun.

Re InDesign, just watch the compression settings for images and the target resolution of the final document. And make sure you re-read the issues regarding reading order…things like remembering footers to influence the meta description and also perhaps making the first page or two image only if your real text doesn’t start until a subsequent page. Most of the other things you can do in Acrobat later.

Good luck.

By: Chris Moritz

Chris Moritz — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:54:41 +0000

Thorough and helpful look at the topic. Although I have to castigate you a bit for generating a ton of metadata work for me, as now I’m going to have to go back and reformat a ton of PDFs!

Any advice on creating accessible and search-friendly PDFs correctly the first time in InDesign?

By: Weekly Links for April 11th, 2008 | .eduGuru

Weekly Links for April 11th, 2008 | .eduGuru — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:02:52 +0000

[...] What you don’t know about optimizing PDFs can hurt you – Here’s a comprehensive guide to optimizing PDFs for search engines, searchers, and site visitors. [...]

By: Paul Burani, Clicksharp Marketing

Paul Burani, Clicksharp Marketing — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 20:37:28 +0000

Wow — amazing where assumptions will get you (nowhere). I always thought that the metadata was the extend of what you could do to optimize a PDF. Nice work Galen.

By: Mark Alves

Mark Alves — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 14:29:16 +0000

I’m following Graham’s lead and am subscribing, too. I found you through
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/thursday-roundup-for-the-week-of-33008

This is the first time I’ve seen the touch-up reading order tip after reading many PDF optimization articles.

Another suggestion is picking a meaningful file name. In addition to the optimization benefit, you’ll also give readers a chance of remembering what the document was if they later refer to their list of saved PDFs.