As you probably know, PDFs are a very popular document format – mostly due to the fact that they can be viewed on any platform while preserving the document layout and formatting. Because of this universal compatibility they are often used for distributing or printing documents. The one area where PDFs have traditionally not been very popular is as online content on websites. Although most web browsers can view PDF documents , the misconception that search engines could not index PDF files meant that many people avoided them for quite some time. That myth has been completely debunked now, and Google confirmed that they have been indexing and ranking PDF documents since 2001 . Still, it is important to understand that PDFs are a very unique type of content and if you do decide to use them online you will need to optimize them in several ways. This is a friendly A-Z guide on PDF SEO and best practices. Contents [ hide ] Make Sure the File Size is Low One of the main issues wit