As you 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.

Make Sure the File Size is Low
One of the main issues with publishing PDF documents as online content is that their file size can be very large – which is especially true for long documents that have lots of images. That is far from ideal for online content, as it means that it will take longer to be displayed, which in turn could result in readers clicking away rather than waiting for it to load.

Additionally search engines regard page speed as an important metric when ranking webpages, and a large PDF file that loads slowly is likely to suffer on that front too.
Although there are no hard and fast rules, you should try to keep the file size of any PDFs you intend to use as online content as low as you can.
That can be done through several means:

Avoid Creating PDFs That Are Too Long
Thousand page PDF documents rarely make for good online content, and you’re better off sticking to much lower page counts. Not only will shorter PDFs have a lower file size, but they’ll also retain more readers.

If you do have a PDF document that is too long, you may want to consider breaking it up into several shorter PDF documents. Alternatively you could extract the important parts and publish them individually.

Only Use Images When Necessary
Don’t go overboard inserting images in PDF documents as each image can contribute significantly to its file size. Initially you should only insert images that are essential to the content, and later add others if the file size permits.

The quality of the images that you add (for JPG especially) can make a large difference to the file size of your PDF documents.

Compress The PDF Files
When you export PDF files you will often find several options that you can use to compress or reduce the file size of your PDFs. It is worth taking advantage of these options, or using other PDF compression tools to reduce their file size.

If you do compress PDF files (especially using other tools) you should check to make sure their formatting, layout and image quality is still satisfactory after you do.

If you can get your PDF files as low as 15MB or 25MB it should be fairly good. On the other hand if your PDF files start to approach 100MB or more then you’re likely to want to look carefully at them.

You can see several other steps on How To Use PDF Files Online from http://www.gobuzz.com.ng/how-to-use-pdfs-files-online/

A file with the .pdf file extension is a Portable Document Format (PDF) file. They are used to distribute read-only documents like user manuals, eBooks, application forms, and scanned documents, to name a few. This guide explains what a PDF file is and everything else you need to know.

https://www.novabach.com/what-is-a-pdf-file-and-how-do-i-open-one/