PDF files serve as a powerful medium for sharing information, whether it’s research papers, e-books, product catalogs, sheet music, or instructional guides. But what if your best PDF content is on lock down?
Unfortunately many content creators overlook the potential of using their PDF files to enhance visibility on search engines, not realizing that search engines will parse accessible PDF files for content. There’s a whole untapped source of content, right under your nose PDF!
At PDF Ink we spend a lot of time promoting PDF security, but sometimes PDF content can be too secure – so secure that only your paying or logged-in users get to see it. If you are trying to generate leads or improve SEO, it might be time to share parts of your PDFs — sample PDF files.
Remember Costco and Trader Joes free samples as a business strategy? Feed ’em goodies = introduce new product, keep ’em in the store and convert!
By strategically creating and sharing sample PDFs that are freely accessible, you can significantly improve your online presence and attract more website visitors. Below we will explore how to create effective “free sample” PDFs that are not behind paywalls or login requirements, ensuring they are indexed by search engines and contribute positively to SEO.
The Importance of Accessible PDFs
PDF is a structured and visually appealing, easy-to-share file format. However, if PDF documents are locked behind login screens or require payment, they become inaccessible to both users and search engines. By offering sample PDFs that are freely available, you can:
- Increase Visibility: Search engines can index accessible PDFs, making them discoverable in search results. This can lead to increased traffic to your website, since sample PDFs can give search engines (and potential buyers) great insight to what your business/service is all about.
- Showcase Expertise: Providing valuable content in the form of PDFs allows you to demonstrate your knowledge and expertise in your field, building trust with potential customers. Allow visitors a teaser file and prove to them they will be getting a great ROI!
- Generate Leads: Free samples can entice users to engage with your brand, leading to potential conversions or sign-ups for newsletters and services. Who knows? Months down the road they might find your sample PDF file in their Downloads folder, and be reminded again of your brand.
If you are trying to solicit new customers, it pays to show them up front what they will be getting. Samples are effective here.
As always, in e-commerce we want to provide great product descriptions, fantastic, practically-tangible product photographs, product statistics (such as dimensions and weight, etc.). We do this to build confidence in our future customer. With more information, they feel confident buying a new-to-them product. With very little information, they are likely to shop elsewhere. Use your words.
Tips for Creating Accessible Sample PDFs
To maximize the visibility and reach of your sample PDFs, consider the following best practices:
1. Share Relevant and Valuable PDF Content
Select topics that are relevant to your target audience and showcase your products or services. This could include:
A Truncated Version
Cut your PDF file off after so many pages, and share the opening pages. You can split PDFs, delete PDF pages or extract PDF pages using free tools at smallPDF.com. Make sure your audience will be hooked with juicy content, but leave them hungry. Finally, make sure that the final pages link back to where you want them.
Tell your audience what to expect if they access the full PDF file product. What are your credentials? Why is your product valuable? Wow them and make them stop in their tracks! This is your chance to shine.
Case Studies
Share success stories and/or testimonials that highlight the benefits of your offerings. How did other people benefit by buying into the full product version?
Product Guides
Create detailed guides that explain how to use your products effectively. Share the user manual. Share exploded diagrams. Share informative accompanying documents for the product you are trying to sell. Sometimes these morsels of information keep people on your website longer, which in itself is good marketing.
2. Reduce Your PDF File Size
Frankly, we are talking sample PDFs, and they should be tiny. Think KB, not MB.
File size important because nobody wants to wait for a huge sample file to finish downloading (especially if they are on metered bandwidth) and nobody really wants to store that file, either. The larger the file, the omre suspicious it might seem. When embedding fonts and images in your PDF, trying to make it more attractive, re-consider how important it really is to be “pretty” or “fancy.” In most cases, the words are more important then the font or the images.
If it’s important to share with gorgeous, fancy display, then resize and minify images, and compress the file to the smallest size possible.
3. Use Descriptive Filenames
When saving your PDF, use a descriptive filename that reflects the content. For example, instead of naming it document1.pdf, use 2025-Acme-product-guide.pdf. Use hyphens (dash -) to separate words, rather than underscores (_). There are more characters to avoid in filenames.
Care in file naming helps humans and search engines better understand the content of the file, now and months/years down the road.
4. Ensure Text-Based Content
Use this opportunity to talk about your product and about what your end user could expect to find in the rest of the article. Make your PDF authoritative with fresh, fact-filled (and/or funny, fanciful) Skyscraper Content.
The main content of your PDF should be text-based rather than image-based. If you must include images, use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to make any text within images searchable. This ensures that search engines can index the content effectively.
If most of your content is text-based, and it is valuable to the public for some reason, not only will your file size naturally be small, but your reach will grow. Good job!
Extra credit will be had if your PDF content is tagged and has a table of contents. Tagged PDF structure helps search engines (and users with disabilities) understand the hierarchy and organization of the content within the PDF.
5. Optimize PDF Metadata
Before publishing your PDF, ensure that it is optimized for SEO by conscientiously applying metadata. This can be done with Adobe Acrobat Pro as well as many other professional-grade PDF editors, or try your luck with free online PDF metadata-editing tools like PDF Candy.
Title
Use a clear and descriptive title that includes earnest & relevant keywords. It’s often true that if the title field is left blank in the metadata, the file name will be displayed instead. Another reason to have great filenames!
Description
Keep this on-topic and brief, about 160 characters maximum.
Author
Clearly state your name or your company’s name in the metadata.
Keywords
Add relevant keywords, separated with commas. Some people say semi-colons, but we say commas. Be modest with adding keywords, selecting a handful of words that describe both what the PDF is about, and what you suspect your target audience would type in trying to find it. (Remember, your lingo is probably different that your customers’ lingo.)
Because other aspects of your PDF can be more difficult to parse, metadata is absolutely key in PDF SEO optimization.
Other items like language and date can be set, too. A current date can work in your favor, and some parsers like to be told what language to anticipate.
6. Include Internal and External Links
Incorporate links within your PDF to relevant pages on your website or to authoritative external sources. This not only enhances the user experience but also helps search engines understand the context of your content.
Sometimes people do not understand the difference between PDF internal and external links. In a PDF, an internal link is one, which when clicked, leads to another page of the PDF. A PDF external link, when clicked, leads to a URL (outside the PDF). Hopefully this makes sense. Internal links can be leveraged to bring more structure to your PDF, such as with a Table of Contents (TOC). External links can be leveraged to bring people back to your website. Take advantage of click tracking when adding external links to your PDF file.
7. Promote Your Sample PDFs
Once your sample PDFs are created, promote them through various channels to get eyes on your product.
On Your Website
Feature sample PDFs prominently on your website, perhaps in a dedicated resources section, in blog posts promoting specific PDF files, or in your product descriptions, maybe labeled as “free samples.”
SearchWP is a great way to make sure your users find the correct PDF while on your website, since it can index PDF contents.
Social Media & Email Marketing
Share links to your PDFs on social media platforms and in newsletters or promotional emails to increase visibility and drive traffic.
It might be that if your PDF content is crucial to sales/marketing, you make its file location very easy to type into the address bar. For example: acmePDF.com/pdf leads your visitor right to the PDF file. This is so simple it could even be shared over the radio or telephone. Note: Having an HTML landing page at acmePDF.com/pdf, instead of this just being a redirect to the file location, would be even better for SEO, since an HTML page describing the PDF page linked to within, will have more content clout than just the file alone.
You could even use a QR code on a business card to lead to your impressive sales PDF file!
8. Monitor Performance: How is it Working?
Use tools like Google Analytics (or maybe Plausible.io or Matomo or other tracking with GDPR compliance) to track the performance of your PDF files. Monitor metrics such as page views, file downloads, and user engagement. In order to track user engagement with the PDF, you will need to insert UTM codes or similar into any external link URLs inside your PDF content, so clicks are measured.
Monitor how well your sample PDFs are performing and make adjustments as needed. Nobody said your sample PDF cannot evolve over time. Hone it until it consistently does its intended job.
What Are You Waiting For?
You can still lock down your full product with PDF Ink encryption and passwords, but share teasers as a preview — and show ’em what you’re about!
Creating accessible sample PDFs that are not behind paywalls, login requirements, or PDF passwords can significantly enhance your visibility on search engines. By carefully optimizing and promoting your sample files, you can leverage the power of PDF to showcase your expertise, attract potential customers, and improve your overall marketing and SEO strategy. In a very competitive world, making bits of your valuable content easily accessible is key to standing out and driving traffic to your website.
Embrace the overlooked potential of PDF and watch your online presence grow!