There was quite a lot of interest in today’s eSeminar on how to prepare PDF content for the Web. In this session I covered all the basics you need to know in order to make your documents both accessible and optimized for search engines.

There are six areas you need to consider;

Searchable PDF
Is there text in your document? If you have scanned material, make sure you perform OCR (Optical Character Recognition) so that search engines can read through the content!

Document Properties
Make sure the metadata within the PDF is included and correct. The more information, the more likely to get a high ranking within a search engine

Tagged PDF
Have you considered the needs of users with accessibility requirements? Make sure you tag your PDF and ensure you include other details such as Alt Text on images.

Optimized PDF
Is your PDF optimzing for viewing on the screen? Have you enabled fast web view so the first page is displayed while the rest of the PDF is loading?

Document Navigation
Have you provided bookmarks & links to let your readers navigate through the document with ease? Have you used Open Parameters to set URLs to the document to open to the desired view?

Secured PDF
Have you  secured the document so that your audience can only do what you want them to do?

In the presentation I not only discuss what you need to do, but how to go about it using Acrobat 9 or the latest Acrobat X. I’ve included my slides from today’s session;

A recording of the 1hr eSeminar is here;
http://pacific.adobe.acrobat.com/p53905971/

The final part of the demo demonstrates how to use the Action Wizard feature to automate the Prepare for Web process. Definitely worth watching!

Slides from this week’s presentation in Canberra on LiveCycle Designer ES, including some pointers on creating accessible forms from Adobe’s Andrew Kirkpatrick;

Note that the workshop was mostly hands on demonstration, so the slides are minimal.