- Why Convert PDF into Website?
- Method 1: Convert PDF into HTML
- Method 2: Make Shareable PDF links
- Method 3: Embed PDF Directly in Existing Website
- Which method is the best for me?
- Common Challenges and Mistakes
- FAQs:
PDFs are a widely used format when sharing files. Just think about it, you share a brochure, you share a report or you share the menu of your favorite restaurant, all of these are PDFs.
When sharing the files though, you may encounter some problems. The file size of your PDF goes beyond the limits or the platform has no attachment option. What can you do then? How can you share large PDF files through email? Well, instead of an attachment, you send a link!
This article will show you three different ways you can turn your PDF into a website and share with just a link.
Let’s begin!
Why Convert PDF into Website?
- Nobody, sender or receiver, will have to worry about the file size because links do not have a size.
- By converting any PDF into a web page, it becomes easy to read it. There is no need to download it. Whether you have a phone, tablet or laptop, just click on the link and you can access it.
- When you share a PDF in email, you cannot see if receiver opened it or not. There are simply no analytics. When your PDF is a link, you can track analytics easily.
- Rather than sharing multiple PDF files, you can convert the files into multiple web pages and share all PDFs in one link.
Converting PDF into Website
There are three ways in which you can turn your PDF into a website. Let me give you an overview.
- Turning PDF into HTML: You put PDF through conversion apps, and you get web page as output which you can host and share.
- Instead of attachment, make your PDF a link: You upload the PDF online and share it with a link generated through these websites or cloud storage.
- Embed your PDF in your existing Website: Your hosted PDF can be directly embedded in your web page with your other existing content.
Now that you know these methods, we will further break them down into detail.
Method 1: Convert PDF into HTML
PDF to HTML conversion is beneficial if you have dynamic content that would change but you don’t want to share this file multiple times. If your PDF becomes a web page, you don’t have to worry about the device your readers and visitors are using.
Note: We recommend you to read through all the steps first as conversion can be a little tricky sometimes.
Step 1: Pick a Conversion Tool
There are an uncountable number of tools out there that will convert your PDF into web page in a snap.
Note: Check the type of PDF you have. It can be text-based (where you can select text easily) or a scanned PDF (where someone used a scanner or phone to scan something to make a PDF). To convert any scanned PDF, you need a way where the tool converts your PDF into text and then HTML. Tools like Adobe Acrobat and Marker can help you handle this.
- For simple conversions with text and minimal formatting: Xodo, PDF24, FreeConvert, Adobe Acrobat
- For complex conversions, choose: CloudCovert, Zamzar
- Tools powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI): Marker, Docling
- You can use these tools if you are familiar with a little coding and want more control over output: Tabula, pdf2htmlEX
- For batch conversions: CloudConvert, Marker, pdf2htmlEX
Some tools I’d personally pick from this list are Adobe Acrobat (though you need the premium version that costs $14.99), Xodo, Cloudconvert and Marker.
Step 2: Upload and configure the file for conversion
You can visit the website of the tool you choose, then select the settings for the PDF. Most of the tools listed above will have similar options for parameters.
- Choose the output format to be HTML or HTML Webpage.
- You will see an option to split into multiple web pages or keep a single one. If your PDF is of more than 20 pages, split it so browsing becomes easier in the output.
- Set the image quality to high if you have multiple graphs, images or special characters. Keep to the default if there are none.
- If your PDF has links, enable “Preserve hyperlinks” option.
Step 3: Convert and Download
Once configured, convert your file!
Perfect, your HTML files are now ready. If there are multiple files, you will get a ZIP containing all!
Step 4: Review your output file
Click on the downloaded file or the unzipped HTML files, and it will open in your browser. Check for any:
- Distorted images or diagrams
- Incorrect tables
- Misprints
Take out some time and fix these so that when you share the webpage, the visitors don’t have any issues connecting!
Step 5: Share Your Website now
Once you have fixed all the errors, it’s time to share it. There are many tools like Tiiny Host, Hostinger, GitHub Pages and Vercel that you can choose from to upload.
I would personally recommend you to try Tiiny Host as you can upload in only a few steps and get customized name for your link and even analytics.
Here’s a sample PDF I converted using CloudCovert and uploaded to Tiiny Host.
Bonus Step: Optimize your page for SEO and performance
Your website is ready now but we can take care of a few things that can make your page even rank when people search for it.
- Make sure all the <head> section in your page/s have:
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<title>Your Page Title Here</title>
<meta name="description" content="Brief summary of the page.">
- Give a descriptive <title> tag for pages.
- All the headings have a proper hierarchy like one H1 followed by one or more of H2, H3, etc.
- Add alt texts for the images for accessibility.
Advantages of converting PDF to HTML:
- It becomes easy for anyone reading from any device to access the file as it is responsive.
- Due to HTML’s formatting, screen readers and assistive technologies can scan your website and help people browse easily.
- Once your web page is ready, you can add interactive elements to it. You can add forms people can fill out, have different designs for different pages and much more.
- If the page has proper heading tags, metadata, and structure, your page will be indexed faster and thus rank too.
Disadvantages:
- The fonts and colors used in the PDF might not convert as is. You can format it manually, though.
- If there are multiple columns and more elements, things can break in the output. If you take out some time and clean it up, the website comes out quite well.
- If you have PDFs like travel brochures, magazines or a portfolio which has a lot of pictures and colors, it would not have a good output. In this case, you should actually turn your PDF into a flipbook or share PDF as link rather than converting.
Method 2: Make Shareable PDF links
You don’t need to create a website out of a PDF to get a link. You can host your PDF online and share a link.
There are files like:
- Magazines
- Portfolio of designers, photographers, illustrators
- Restaurant menus
which, if converted to HTML, would lose the essence. So instead, you can host these PDFs online and share them with anyone you like! When someone clicks or reaches the link, they can view, share or download the PDF on their device. Let’s see how you can turn your PDFs into links.
Host Your PDF using Tiiny Host
You can host your PDF in just four steps, and your link will be ready to be shared.
- Go to the Tiiny.host homepage and sign up or login to your account.
- Upload or drag & drop your PDF file.
- There is an option at the top to give “link-name”, you can write your company’s name or your name to get a personalized link.
- Time to hit “Publish”
Your link is ready! You can now share the PDF on Facebook, via text message, email or send it anywhere. If your PDF is confidential, you can also protect your PDF with a password. A major bonus to use Tiiny is that, you can track analytics even when it is not an HTML website. Go ahead, get sharing!
Share your PDF Using Cloud Storage Platforms
Share your File using Google Drive
- Login to your Google Account and go to drive.google.com
- On the left panel, you will see “New” Button, click that and then “File Upload”
- When the upload completes, open the file. On upper right corner, click on the “Share’ button.
- You can now set access here. If you want to share it with only a few people, add their email addresses for access. Otherwise, you can select “Anyone with the link”
- Next, set permission to “Viewer” so the file remains safe
- Finally, Copy link and share it wherever needed
Share your PDF with Dropbox
If you prefer using Dropbox or just are looking for an alternative to Google Drive to upload and share files, here’s how you can do it.
- Sign in to dropbox account
- Upload your PDF on the mobile app, desktop app or browser
- Right click on the file and click on “Share”
- You will get an option to “Create a link”, select that
- Copy the link, and you can paste it anywhere you want
Create a shareable link of PDF with OneDrive
OneDrive is another alternative for cloud storage. It makes sense to use OneDrive if your office or workplace uses Microsoft extensively. Otherwise, the link looks a bit fishy to open.
- Upload your PDF to onedrive.live.com
- Right-click the file and choose “Share”
- Set access to Anyone with the link can view
- Copy and share the link
Advantages of turning PDF into a link:
- If you don’t know how to code, this is the best method for you to follow. You don’t need to worry about code or formatting. And the websites we use are easy to use as well.
- Turning PDF into a link directly consumes less time and there is no manual cleaning needed anywhere either!
- Receivers or visitors don’t have to worry about file-size or having to download any unknown files.
- Setting access is in much more control here. You can choose who sees or opens the file.
Disadvantages:
- Your PDFs are not HTML, and the hierarchy or formatting might not be the same as HTML, so it might not give you a SEO-friendly website.
- If your file is very large, you might encounter initial storage limits, but you can upgrade to any beginner plan and continue uploading.
Method 3: Embed PDF Directly in Existing Website
Till now, we saw how we can convert PDFs into links, but now we will see how we can showcase the PDF to visitors on your website. If you have a magazine and want to showcase a few pages to readers, have a travel brochure you want to showcase on your website, or want to showcase all monthly reports on your company website, this is the way to follow.
Embed without writing code
All the embeds you make are using a small piece of HTML code, but you don’t need to write one. Tools like Tiiny Host let you just copy and paste to your website. It has all the features visible within the panel: scrolling, zooming and even downloading.
Embed using iFrame
The <iframe> tag is most widely supported and easiest to control amongst all the methods.
<iframe src="https://beige-morissa-21.tiiny.site" width="500" height="500" allowfullscreen></iframe>Here is the example code I copied from Tiiny Host to embed the PDF into HTML. You can change the width and height of the PDF you want to showcase.
Below is what the output would look like!
In general, embedded PDFs aren’t responsive but you can use the following wrapper to make the experience better:
<div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 75%; height: 0;">
<iframe src="YourDocument.pdf"
style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border: none;">
</iframe>
</div>Embed PDF from Google Drive
You can embed a PDF that you have uploaded to the Google Drive as well!
You can use the following code, and you just have to insert the File ID for your uploaded document here.
<iframe src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/YOUR-FILE-ID/preview"
width="100%"
height="600px">
</iframe>Embed using object tag
If you want to focus on accessibility of your website, you should use the object tag as it lets you include a fallback message or a download link for anyone who faces an issue seeing the PDF on the page.
<object data="document.pdf"
type="application/pdf"
width="100%"
height="600px">
<p>Your browser cannot display this PDF.
<a href="document.pdf">Download it here</a> instead.
</p>
</object>Embed using the “embed” tag
Embedding using the “embed” tag will give you the lightest possible code. Though it is not accessibility friendly and does not support a fallback message.
<embed src="document.pdf"
type="application/pdf"
width="100%"
height="600px" />Embed to WordPress
A lot of people have their websites on WordPress, and you can embed PDFs easily using plugins. There are some plugins like PDF Embedder, WP File Download and Divi PDF Viewer that let you upload and embed your PDFs.
Advantages of Embedding a PDF file into website
- Embedding is beneficial as it keeps the visitors on your website, so you retain your traffic.
- The PDF formatting remains the same, so you don’t need to do any manual formatting of the PDF content once uploaded.
- You can embed multiple PDFs on the same page at once.
- You can design the page around the embedded PDF and make it look attractive.
Disadvantages:
- Embedding a PDF will not help you in SEO
- If the embedded PDF is too large, it slows down page performance, and your page will start ranking lower.
- Screen readers and accessibility devices cannot read through embedded PDFs easily, so if you want accessibility, consider other methods.
- Some browsers, ad-blockers and corporate networks have configurations that auto-block the embeds so it might not be visible to some people.
Which method is the best for me?
| Type of Website | Method to Choose | Why to Choose the Method? |
|---|---|---|
| Blog post or article | Method 1: Convert to HTML | Content needs to be searchable, readable on mobile, and indexable by Google |
| Product catalogue | Method 1: Convert to HTML | Product pages need SEO, images need to rank in search, most shopping happens on mobile |
| Restaurant menu | Method 3: Embed, or Method 2: Share link | Exact formatting matters; menus update frequently; embedding keeps visitors on the page |
| Portfolio or CV | Method 1 for your website + Method 2 for applications | HTML for branding and Google visibility; original PDF for applying to jobs (ATS systems prefer it) |
| Company report or whitepaper | Method 2: Share link | Professional documents are typically downloaded and read offline; branding needs to stay intact |
| Academic paper | Method 2: Share link | Formatting and citations must be preserved exactly; downloads are the expected format |
| Event brochure or flyer | Method 3: Embed | Designed documents look best as-is; visitors can view it without leaving the page |
| Internal policy document | Method 2: Share link (restricted access) | No SEO needed; access should be controlled to staff only |
| User manual or documentation | Method 1: Convert to HTML | Long documents benefit from searchability, anchor links, and mobile-friendly reading |
| Invoice or receipt | Method 2: Share link | Exact formatting required; recipients need to download and print |
| Newsletter or magazine | Method 2: Share Link +Method 3: Embed | Share the created PDFs as is and also embed them to the website. |
Common Challenges and Mistakes
There are a few things that people miss out in the process of converting the PDFs, so the output isn’t what they wish for. Look out for them so you don’t have to rework the output multiple times.
- People don’t check if the PDF is text-heavy or a collection of scanned images. Choose the tool that supports your PDF the best.
- Once converted to HTML from PDF, there are chances the file would need cleaning. If you don’t clean it before publishing, chances are your visitors will face errors.
- The converters you use online will often use the name of PDF as HTML, and you get a similar URL. When you get the HTML file, change it to something meaningful.
FAQs:
Can I convert a PDF to HTML for free?
There are multiple tools that help you convert PDFs into a website for free. Some options include Xodo, PDF24 and CloudConvert, but paid versions often give you better results.
Can I password-protect my PDF link?
Yes, and if your file has sensitive files, you should password-protect it. Most PDF hosting websites offer password protection in their plus or premium plans. You should invest in tools like Tiiny Host or the Dropbox Plus plan if you have important documents to share often that require more protection.
Does converting a PDF to HTML improve Google rankings?
HTML pages are indexed more deeply than PDFs. Since HTML has heading and subheading structures, indexing will be better than in a PDF. So it can definitely help.
How do I make my converted HTML page mobile-friendly?
Try to use tools that allow you to make responsive outputs rather than fixed-layout outputs. If the output still isn’t responsive, you will need to do some manual rework on the file to make it more user-friendly.
