For a lot of researchers in the sciences, SEO—short for search engine optimization—seems like little more than an internet marketing buzzword. But as published research enters an increasingly busy scientific marketplace, knowledge about what SEO is and how to use it matters.
SEO refers to the way search engines such as Google prioritize or rank web pages when they come up in someone’s search results. A good ranking will make your paper show up earlier in search results, thereby making it more likely that interested readers will find it and, ideally, cite it.
The major academic publisher Wiley notes that more than half of all traffic to their online library “comes directly from Google, Google Scholar, and other search engines”, which should give an indication of the kind of weight search rankings carry in who finds your research.
So, what gets ranked higher? Search engine algorithms favour content identified as being high quality (containing good spelling and grammar, which all scientific publications should have covered), original (that is, not a copy of another page), and relevant to the user’s search (the page’s content includes the words a user searches).
The more a page fits these requirements, the higher it gets ranked. Fastidious researchers aside, one is only going to go so far in their scrolling to get answers, so the first page is where you want to be.
Keywords, keywords, keywords
The term that comes immediately to people’s minds when you mention SEO is keywords, and with good reason. Keywords are like topic headings for your content. They can be single words or short phrases that appear in your article.
There are also long-tail keywords, which are slightly longer combinations of words that are less-often searched for. Long-tail keywords define a very specific niche, which can make them perfect for the narrow focus of scientific research.
For example, the keywords “grapevine” or “grapevine canopy” might garner a lot of hits in your research field, but “dynamic modelling of grapevine canopy” stands a better chance of leading someone right to your paper if they search that phrase.