What to do with PDFs that rank well?

[JFA]

Looking at some reports, I found that a client's site has PDFs that are ranking well for niche terms and getting some traffic.

What can I do to get more out of them from a marketing standpoint?

The obvious issue is that a PDF doesn't have the interactivity of a site visit, where we have analytics and CTAs. Someone has to follow a link back from the PDF to the site for us to even register a visit, let alone try to get their email or have them otherwise convert.

My first guess is to make landing page summaries of the PDF content that link to the PDF, and canonical the PDF to the respective landing page.

Has anyone tried this, or done something else that they would recommend again in this situation?

[R0bin_L0rd]

Sounds like a smart plan to me!

[JFA]

Thank you, Robin!

I agree that there's a danger of splitting authority with the solution I've proposed and either of the alternatives would be stronger. The issue here is that I've got PDFs with 80+ pages of content, so making that into a HTML page  would be it's own can of worms.

I'm thinking of doing one or a couple as an experiment and seeing the results before putting effort/taking on the risk of doing a whole bunch.

[R0bin_L0rd]

Hi there, good question! I've run into a similar situation and had all the same concerns as you. I think my recommendations would be (in order from most preferred to least preferred)

• Convert pdf to full HTML page with internal links and ability to convert, redirect PDF
• Replace PDF with HTML page which has the PDF as the content but also contains things like the internal nav (sometimes this is the only possibility with limited resource)
• Create summary page and link to pdf with canonical on pdf page (just as you say)

Making the content of the PDF more easily readable by search engines (by turning it into a HTML page as in solution 1) would hopefully boost ranking potential as well as helping give users a better experience.

The only reason I put your solution as lowest on the list is because if we're creating a page then we may as well create the full page, rather than creating a page which kind of  gives the same information as the PDF but still relies on the PDF existing. You could find that the two pages compete and neither ends up ranking.

Hopefully that helps!