Ideally, our patrons will find every library’s website from the main site. However, realistically many patrons choose to search for websites rather than navigate them. Applying keywords and planning links can improve your individual library site’s inclusion in search engine results.
Keywords
Keywords are the search terms that people write into search engines. They are precisely the words that our patrons use to find the resources they want. Adding these exact words to your page is the first step to increasing your visibility on third party search engines.
- Discover keywords by using Google Adwords or Moz’s free Keyword Explorer
- Include keywords in the page title, and in the first few pieces of text on the page.
- Including them in the URL also helps, but be careful: a short, sensible URL is more important than adding keywords.
Note: Keyword density (keyword stuffing) does not improve ranking in search engine results. It is much better to semantically use keywords, and strategically place them at the beginning of appropriate web pages. Think of it as a substitution: if the most popular keyword is “e-book” use that term whenever you would use “e-resource.”
Links
Search engines use crawlers that “read” the Internet by travelling along links. Linking your pages together allows search engines to discover your content.
- Avoid orphaned pages: be sure every page is linked to one other page
- The number of other websites linking to your pages increases your ranking, putting you higher in the results list
Want more? Read Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO