: When having versioned PDF documents, how to ensure the newest version ranks highest? So I have a site, which basically consists of an archive of 10k PDF files with technical specifications. When

Posted in: #CanonicalUrl #Noindex #Pdf #Seo #Serps

So I have a site, which basically consists of an archive of 10k PDF files with technical specifications.

When an updated version of one of the PDFs gets published, the old version gets archived and is removed from the default listing page (you won't find it on the listing page unless you are logged in and switch to "archive mode").

The problem now is, that the older versions often rank higher in the SERPs, while 99% of the users would of course like to have the most recent version of the technical specification, when they are only randomly googling for it.

So my goal is to make sure, that the newest version always ranks highest.

I have a few ideas on how to achieve that, but wonder what the best approach would be:

Set a noindex header on any PDF that's not the most recent version.
Set a canonical header on all PDF's that always points to the newest version of the PDF.
Rework all the listing pages so the download URLs won't point to a specific version of the PDF (if not in archive mode), but instead are generic to the exact document version and always link to the newest version of the document.

My thoughts regarding this possible solutions are as following:

I would rather not do this, as I fear I could loose a lot of my ranking this way.
This may work but I'm not sure if this is the correct approach, because while there are often only minimal changes, it's not the same document, so I would think a canonical tag might be inappropriate.
I think this might be the cleanest way, but I doubt I will get a go to invest so much time only to solve this minor problem.

I would really appreciate any input!