Do search engines rank pdfs? Yes, provided that the pdf is actually converted text and not scanned. Optimizing a pdf for search engine ranking is similar to optimizing an html page. Here is a link that gives good basic information for optimizing a pdf.
http://www.small-business-software.net/pdf-seo.htmDo you want to optimize a pdf? Consider this; if I were searching for a product to buy or a company to do business with, I would never click on a pdf if it came up in the search engine listing. If I am ready to act, a pdf is not going to be the place for me to take action. Furthermore, if I did click on a pdf, what am I going to do? You can put calls to actions on your pdf and you can put links to your website, but the truth is, a pdf is simply not as engaging as a website. It stands to reason that the conversion rate coming from a pdf is much lower.
However, if I were researching some material properties, or trying to find a product specification, I would certainly click on a pdf. I am looking for information but I am not ready to act, I may take action someday, but usually information searchers are not going to convert.
The answer to whether you want to optimize a pdf depends on the type of searcher that would be interested in the content. If you are hoping that it is someone who is ready to act and potentially convert to a lead, then I think you should convert that pdf to an html document before optimizing it.
If you want you can still keep the pdf version on your site, just be sure to keep the search engines from indexing it. Easiest way is to put the pdf you don’t want indexed in the same folder and use your robots.txt file to instruct the search engine to not crawl the contents in that folder.
