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

By: Optimise Your Site PDF’s | MC-Tooling's Blog

Optimise Your Site PDF’s | MC-Tooling's Blog — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 20:05:06 +0000

[...] They then compound this first error by not bothering to optimise them for use on the Internet by not correctly filling in the document properties (link for information on the advanced PDF setting from Proteus Marketing). [...]

By: Galen De Young ( @GalenDY )

Galen De Young ( @GalenDY ) — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 12:52:43 +0000

Hi, John. Glad the information was helpful. It’s been a while since we posted this information, and we probably should revisit it and edit it for any new changes, but the aim of the tips remains the same…helping to ensure search engines can properly get to the information and helping make sure the information is optimized. Those values still hold true for Google and the other search engines. Thanks for leaving a comment.

By: John Keating

John Keating — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 08:03:04 +0000

Thank you for this information. I was just about to create approx 10 PDF’s for download and didnt even consider the depth of detail you have covered here. Excellent post and of course, like all good ideas, its almost common sense. I just hope these values still hold in google today.

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!

By: Seachcap SEO Aware Style- Favorite Articles From the Past Year SEO Aware

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

[...] en asvoir un peu plus sur le référencement des pdfs je ne peux que vous conseillez cet article Tags : astuces, google, pdf, referencement. Partager et découvrir : Ces icônes sont des liens [...]

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?