I'm designing a simple informational page, and I want to maximise readability and make the page as efficient as possible. Currently, I have two PDFs embedded into the page that users can scroll through and read. According to this site, people don't spend that much time actually reading the page. With that in mind, my question is thus:
Is there a 'best practices' standard for using links to content over embedded content (or vice versa)?
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SEO is a prime consideration. If the main body of your content is hidden on the other end of a link, search engines won't find your page. I'd say decide what a page is about and anything that doesn't address that topic directly can be relegated to a link.– Graham HerrliCommented Jul 30, 2014 at 16:50
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I do not know what your page looks like, but I cannot really imagine a scenario where embedding PDF's which I am assuming are at least a page of solid text each ends up as anything but something annoying that the user wishes they did not have to look at. I would say that you should provide links that describe what is in each PDF, and then let the user use their entire screen real estate to read the big document. If the information on the PDF's is important, I would try and present it in more bite-sized chunks that do not require links or embedding so that the user will not ignore whatever it is you are trying to communicate.
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Thank you, now that I look it over it is a tad over-complicated. I think I'll extract pertinent information from the PDFs and link the full version for any who are interested. Commented Jul 30, 2014 at 16:46