SEO: OPTIMIZING LIBRARY WEB RESOURCES FOR ENHANCED DISCOVERY Marshall Breeding Director for Innovative Technology and Research Vanderbilt University http://www.librarytechnology.org/
Marshall Breeding Director for Innovative Technology and Research Vanderbilt University
Jan 03, 2016
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SEO: OPTIMIZING LIBRARY WEB RESOURCES FOR ENHANCED DISCOVERY
Marshall BreedingDirector for Innovative Technology and ResearchVanderbilt Universityhttp://www.librarytechnology.org/
Abstract
Breeding discusses how search engine optimization, or SEO, tunes a website so that its contents are easily retrieved through Google and other search engines and results in higher visibility for the library web presence. Proper use of SEO involves providing the mechanism for search engines to easily discover and index your site. Breeding highlights specific SEO techniques that have been successful for sites that he manages, including Library Technology Guides and the Vanderbilt Television Archive
Search Engine Optimization Benefits
Libraries benefit from increased access to their resources
Move library collections out of the dark / hidden Web
Opportunity to provide exposure to libraries and their collections
Lost opportunities when resources remain hidden
Problems
Most digital object management systems do not interface well with search engines
Need to follow techniques that have been established in the e-commerce arena for optimized discoverability and access
Complications
Rules of harvesting and page ranking constantly evolving
Deliberate absence of information on how sites will be indexed and ranked Avoid scamming the system
No search engine does 100% indexing of large repositories
Library SEO cookbook
Use analytics to establish initial performance benchmarks
Develop content Create metadata Publish content Optimize content delivery Use sitemaps to facilitate search engine
indexing Benchmark and fine tune
"Clip art licensed from the Clip Art Gallery on DiscoverySchool.com"
Analytics
Understand the use patterns of your repositories
Understand the benchmarks to document impact of SEO techniques
Web site performance: not just page views, but specific goals.
Search engine optimization
Discoverability depends on high-quality content, clean structure, and strategic metadata
Don’t attempt to cheat the system Penalties make your site invisible
Step 1 – Create great content
Unique content is best. Focus on resources not available
elsewhere
Step 2 – Create high-quality metadata
Compact description rich with meaningful keywords, terms, and phrases
Use any appropriate database schema or metadata format
Step 3 – Implement a Web-based delivery environment
Many different products or tools available Commercial
CONTENTdm (OCLC) DigiTool (Ex Libris)
Open Source
SEO Implementation issues
One page for each object in the repository Use metadata record to create full
description of the item Minimize non-descriptive content
Navigational elements Canned text not relevant to the object described
Persistant URL Permalink Simple URL structure No session keys or other unessential elements in
query string
Step 4 Carefully craft page headers
Create unique <title> text for each object
Create <description> content Used by Google to create snippet Must be brief Rich in unique terms that will populate search
engine indexes
Page header example
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xml:lang="en" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head> <title>Beaumont Library District -- Beaumont, CA [lib-
web-cats 15565]</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=iso-8859-1" /> <meta name="description" content="Beaumont Library
District -- Beaumont, CA. Type: Public. Address: 125 East Eighth Street, Beaumont California 92223-2194 United States (Riverside County) Coordinates: 33.932455,-116.981015 Phone: 909-845-1357. Automation system: Library.Solution." />
Page header results
<title>
<description>
Interface trick
Bring Google search into local interface
Step 4 Generate Site Map
XML Sitemap protocol http://www.sitemaps.org/
Initially proposed by Google, now used by all major search engines
Provides a structured map of resources in repository 50,000 URLs per sitemap Multiple sitemaps used for larger repositories Sitemap index used to organize multiple sitemaps
Update frequency and priority Does not impact page rank
Sitemap Index Example
<sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"><sitemap>
<loc>http://www.librarytechnology.org/SiteMap-libraries-Afghanistan.xml</loc>
<lastmod>2009-10-26T02:00:00+00:00</lastmod><priority>0.9</priority>
</sitemap> <sitemap>
<loc>http://www.librarytechnology.org/SiteMap-libraries-Albania.xml</loc> <lastmod>2009-10-26T02:00:00+00:00</lastmod>
</sitemap> ….<sitemapindex>
Sitemap Example
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"> <url>
<loc>http://www.librarytechnology.org/lwc-displaylibrary.pl?RC=38703</loc> <lastmod>2009-09-23T07:52:32+06:00</lastmod> <changefreq>weekly</changefreq> </url> <url>
<loc>http://www.librarytechnology.org/lwc-displaylibrary.pl?RC=38652</loc> <lastmod>2008-08-15T16:04:08+06:00</lastmod> <changefreq>weekly</changefreq> </url> …
</urlset>
Submit sitemaps to search engines
Add to robots.txt Use Google Webmasters Tools
Monitor, maintain, and tune
Webmaster tools shows quantity of URLs indexed
Constantly check for errors Track keywords that drive traffic to your
resources Make incremental improvements based
on search performance Changes take days or weeks to propagate
Observations
Search engine optimization is a long-term strategy
Effective for repositories of unique content
Not as effective for repositories with highly redundant content Online catalog for ILS Subscribed electronic resources
Vital to bring library content into the global Web
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