Goals
- Get key data found by stakeholders, raters and rankers.
- Get indexed by search engines (Google).
- Address varied preferences for delivery formats.
- Make information accessible for all audiences on all devices.
Solutions
- Think like your audience(s) and put the information where it is expected to be
- Place or link to key financial and non-financial performance metrics on the investor relations web page; make it easy to find for web crawlers and analysts alike.
- Have a separate page dedicated to showcasing corporate responsibility efforts.
- Highlight diversity, equity and inclusion programs on the careers page.
- Focus on SEO so search engines pick up the pages
- Add meta tags, alt tags, title tags to help better describe what is on the page.
- On a webpage, keywords can be placed in a certain hierarchy that make them more recognizable for SEO than a PDF would.
- Include a PDF and optimize its searchability
- Google scans the contents of PDF’s unless restricted, like a password protection, although it will never be as clean and effective as a webpage.
- Incorporate SEO attributes within PDFs (Title, Author, Subject, Keywords).
- Reduce file size as much as possible.
- Consider ADA optimization especially if a high percentage of your audience is the general public
- Accessibility can be improved simply by improving contrasts, updating tab orders, and adding alt tags to images.
- PDFs—as well as any documents posted to your site—are required to meet accessibility standards
- Most PDF’s are not optimized for ADA compliance.
- Minimal added time is needed to optimize a PDF, only AFTER it is complete.
- If you tab through a PDF, it should follow the headings and any links from top to bottom.
Keep in mind, it’s a balancing act
- Users are able to edit the text on a PDF if they are not password protected. However, Google will NOT crawl a password protected document.
- PDF’s are not as easy to read on a mobile device, whereas responsive websites are optimized for all sizes, making it easier to find information.
Conclusion:
It comes down to which solution provides the most value (to your target audience), best results, and is future ready. A combination of webpage content with a PDF as a backup will always serve you best.