To PDF or Not to PDF? That’s an Interesting Question.
Words At Work
We make complex subjects understandable for targeted audiences -- and help B2B clients build strong, profitable brands.
It’s a question our Words At Work team hears a lot. What’s better for providing content on websites—PDFs or HTML pages? It’s an interesting question because websites are housing more and more thought leadership content with the goal of it being found, read and in the best possible scenario, acted upon. While content that educates is great, the end game for companies is to warm up customers and prospects with information that makes them want to work with you.
If you’ve explored a company’s online resource library lately, you’ve probably noticed that an increasing number have HTML-based content. Why is that, you might have thought? Aren’t PDF files the gold standard? The portability and standardized printability of PDFs are a big reason this format has survived so long and will continue to be viable. However, many organizations rely on PDFs because they believe they take less time to post than HTML pages. But are PDFs really faster to create, manage and post?
The Reality and Limitations of PDFs
Actually, HTML pages are faster and more efficient than PDFs. There’s not a multitude of versions to create and manage—you simply open your content management system (CMS), add the content and post it. If you’re a global company, housing content on PDFs can be a very time-consuming process. There are many design files to manage—US sizes and A4 sizes in various languages. PDF files aren’t automatically translated into other languages beyond the original version. Often, a global company has to send the original language version to a translator and then a new PDF is created for each language. This leads to a multitude of versions to maintain and if updates are needed in the future, each PDF version has to be touched.
PDF file sizes are also typically large because they contain a lot of text and visual graphics, making them not easily shared. They are great for visual storytelling, but if a user finds the content engaging it’s more of a heavy lift to share the content with others compared to simply copying a URL and forwarding an HTML page.
Some companies use PDFs because they want to gate their content and generate a marketing qualified lead (MQL). This practice has become less common as more companies shift from lead generation vanity metrics to better align marketing metrics with revenue. Instead, some companies are opting to focus on user experience by removing form fills, realizing it’s more important to measure and determine user intent by evaluating how long they stayed on a page, how many other pages of the site they visited, etc. Gated content still has a place in some customer acquisition strategies as long as the content is worthy and carries a lot of perceived value.
PDFs have additional limitations. They’re not mobile-friendly and they typically don’t align with accessibility standards without extra effort to appropriately tag the content and images. It’s also difficult for PDFs to achieve the same search ranking as HTML pages simply because HTML-based content is easy to crawl and index by search engines. Plus, when a search engine finds and indexes a PDF, it does just that. The user is taken straight to the PDF document and not the webpage, which means the visitor does not have a chance to see what else you have to offer by navigating your website. All a visitor sees is a PDF and registers no website visit in your analytics because there was no visit to the website. In contrast, content displayed on HTML pages will drive traffic to your website, which is critical for SEO.
The Case for PDF-based Content
There are a few positives when it comes to PDFs vs. HTML formats. Because PDFs aren’t responsive, there’s more freedom with design. PDFs primary purpose is for printing because it’s a standardized format. They’re also easy to print and users might read the full content because the scroll factor doesn’t exist. However, as more companies look to reduce printing and paper usage due to environmental concerns, printability might not be the best rationale going forward for posting content in PDF form. PDFs can also be saved and read later, regardless of having an internet connection.
The most prevalent case for continuing to house PDF content on your website is that most of your content today is likely in PDF form. If your website has hundreds—or even thousands—of legacy PDFs, it would be a huge undertaking to convert them all to HTML pages. However, some companies are testing the waters and converting PDFs to HTML pages bit by bit. It doesn’t have to be an all or nothing endeavor.
You could start by reviewing your website’s analytics and select your most popular content to do an HTML test drive. Convert 10 to 20 of your top PDF content to HTML pages and measure performance. Or, you could do a hybrid exercise by creating an HTML gateway page with the most salient points from the content (keyword optimized, of course) and prominently feature the PDF if the user wants to download and take a deeper dive. This approach is good from both a user experience and SEO perspective, and it will give you an idea of how the HTML page performs through analytics. Be careful to not create an exact replica of the PDF content on an HTML page as it can result in duplicate content that confuses search engines and may impact your SEO strategy. With this hybrid model, you can convert PDFs to HTML pages over time and not overwhelm your onsite or offsite web developer.
PDFs Aren’t Going Away—Yet
PDFs aren’t extinct today, but they may be in 10 years. It’s still important to do both and most brands currently have both PDFs and HTML-based content on their websites. For longer form content, PDFs are generally preferred because the layouts are usually more visual and engaging—akin to a book. The idea of a page of a PDF is a natural way to chuck out content and it’s easier to digest and manage your way though. In contrast, an HTML page is continuous and long, making it tougher to bookmark a spot that the user may want to come back to later. Finding where you left off on an HTML page can seem overwhelming.
User experience (UX) is still a driving factor for SEO and that means brands should focus on delivering a great UX. Having all your important content in PDFs can diminish user experience. If your objective is to have users read your content online, the best practice is to move the content to an HTML page. PDFs are primarily for printing and, as mentioned before, there’s an ongoing shift away from printing as companies try to be better stewards of the planet.
If your company has only 10 to 20 PDFs on your site, your best move is to convert your PDFs to HTML pages now. If your website has hundreds of PDFs, you may want to convert a handful of PDFs now to HTML and gradually tackle the rest. Or, you could take a hybrid approach and test the waters before making a permanent shift.
Check out our other blogs for more content-related insight.
Registered Nurse, Public Health Nurse; Masters Prepared
2 年Thoughtful view! OF course, from Words @Work! Particularly, as a nurse, paragraph 6 stands out about 'accessibility'... was just in a inservice with a well known Technology Center serving different types of learners, all ages. But they could not answer if all the gadgets would interface with a 'screen reader' for the Visually Impaired. Thanks team for always being comprehensive in your insights!