First, why would anyone want to search engine optimize their PDF files? Well, if you had an eBook, brochure, product description or technical document in PDF format, you may wish to optimize these to pick up some extra search engine traffic.

Can search engines read PDF files?

Yes, most of major search engines now can read basic contents of PDF files, though getting these pages to rank as well as HTML files is still questionable.

How is it supposed to work?

This is how workflow is supposed to work. Create your file in MS Word, or in a draw or page layout program that later can be distilled into a PDF (with some applications you will have to create an EPS file first and then distill it and with other applications, you can distill right out of apps). If you are using a program such as MS Word, be mindful to apply H1, H2, H3 tags where necessary and optimize body text as you would an HTML file.

When you are finished, distill file. Bring this file into full version of Adobe Acrobat 6 for editing. Plug in appropriate content, post PDF on your website and let search engine robots index file.

How do I plug in appropriate content?

In Adobe Acrobat 6 there are two places to input content into a PDF file. The first place is under File / Document Properties and second place is under Advanced / Document Metadata. Under File / Document Properties there are several menus but most relevant for our purposes is Description menu. Under Description menu, there are fields for Title, Author, Subject and Keywords.

Now to confuse matters more, let’s go over to Advanced / Document Metadata menu. There are a couple of choices here, but let’s once again look at Description menu. Under this Description menu, there are fields for Title, Author, Description, Description Writer, Keywords, Copyright State, Copyright Notice and Copyright Info URL.

How does PDF store data?

With duplicate fields, it is important to find out how data is stored so that we may make some educated guesses as to how search engines read this data. I performed a few small experiments and here is what I have found. The Title and Author fields seem to be linked to each other because when you change one and check on other you will see it too has changed. Also, Subject field of Document Properties menu seems to be linked to Description field of Document Metadata menu for same reasons. The Keyword fields, however, are not linked. Separate sets of keywords can be added to both fields. When file is saved, both sets of keywords are stored in PDF file.

Which set of keywords is correct then?

Why?

Well, particularly because people want results of what service does, which is rank your website very high and in prominent ranks within search engines.

The following are most common scams within SEO industry, amounts within titles can be any amount, so I have inserted an "X" to signify numbers.

Ok,...

SEO Myth #1 -- "If You Build It, They Will Come..."

Did you see movie "Field of Dreams"? Well, this is very much like it.

You develop a site or pay someone to develop one for you. And after its all finished, you tell all your friends to go look at it.

However there's only one problem, only ones that have looked at it are your friends who you told to go look at it.

Heck, its on World Wide Web, whole world should see it. Right? Wrong.

Having a website, doesn't simply "automatically" alert everyone to go see it. People don't just start "showing up" on your site, just because it is YOUR website.

If you want to have visitors to your website (and, hopefully, you do), you have to take ACTION and do things for it to happen. a.k.a Advertise. You have to get word out, about your site.

And if done correctly Search Engine Optimization will position your website correctly on search engines under your appropriate keywords and people will come.

SEO Myth #2 -- "Get A Guaranteed #1 Position In XX days/weeks..."

This has got to be one of worst claims ever, and most used scam with engines of all time. I'm sure you've seen it titled this way or a variation thereof.

See, engines constantly change and alter their "rules" or "algorithms" to which and how they rank websites. So, constantly having a site ranked #1 is almost impossible, as we don't know how or when these rules will change.

But twist to this Myth is that getting a #1 position is easy, however, it's usually only for keywords that will not do you any good, or keywords that people are not searching for.

So, whats good of having a #1 rank for keywords that no one searches for? There isn't one. For those unaware it's like; "WOW #1 in search engines!!", however, it's not bringing you any traffic, since it is a very UNcommon keyword phrase.

Being #1 with very common searched for keywords and phrases is what SEO is all about. And this is where fierce competition in search engines are.

SEO Myth #3 -- "Submit To X,XXX Search Engines..."

Now, this may sound good at first, but search engines that your site are submitted to, no one knows about or knows anything about them. So what good are submissions?

And as above they won't bring you any traffic, as no one knows about them.

Most or all of these search engines are too obscure and are "unknowns", and they aren't being used much, if at all. So, adding your website to a directory or search engine database of some 45,000,000 web pages or more, is no good.