Are PDFs good for SEO?

[Carribeanking]

Hello,

I came across a site similar to mine that has hundreds if not thousands of PDFs that you can click on and a file opens (the files are taken from other sources i.e. someone else wrote them) The PDFs have a great deal of information which is useful. One of the PDFs had 475 pages so it was pretty big. My question is does that help you with SEO or hurt you? I know or have been told that the more quality html pages that you have on a site will help with the rankings but I would think PDFs would do the same. Any thoughts? Thank you in advance for your replies.

[fisicx]

All the search engines can index PDF documents. As to helping your rankings, it all depends on the content of the document, just like any other SEO activity.

Are you intending to do your own PDFs or paying someone to write them for you?

[tomfrederick]

Pdf is good use of keywords/phrases, appropriate headlines and sub-headlines, good content ,accruing more traffics. Search engines can crawl and index text-based PDFs.

[seo_india]

PDF is perceived as any other html, asp, or php page by search engines. They can easily crawl through pdf files.

[RDewick]

Pdf's are crawled by the search engines and as EWD says it's like any other piece of content on a site and is treated similarly. You should optimise the files the same as a web page, headings and keywords etc. but the verdict is still out on the effectiveness:

PDFs and Search Engines

Richard

[f1seo]

Google does read and index PDFs.

As well as the good tips mentioned above, if you're producing PDFs that can be downloaded be sure to put a hyperlink in there back to your site. 1) lets the reader find the site where it came from 2) gets you a link back (they all count) 3) makes it more difficult for people steal your pdf for themselves.

There's nothing wrong with give your audience a downloadable version of your info and you can make ebooks too.

[Persicum]

Thought I'd pop in on this one and add my comments - but in fact everything has been said (and I've learnt a thing or two too.)

[terryson01]

PDFs is good for SEO. PDFs have own index in search engines. I think it provide good results for you.