Academic SEO: Optimizing Scholarly Documents for Discovery

Academic Search Engine Optimization of
Web Documents for Google Scholar
By
Shari Thurow, Founder and SEO Director
Omni Marketing Interactive
Copyright 1997-2015. All rights reserved.

About Shari Thurow:
• Author of Search Engine Visibility, translated
into French, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and
Polish languages.
• Co-author of When Search Meets Web
Usability, translated into Chinese.
Academic SEO of Web Documents Copyright 1997-2015. All rights reserved.

• User Experience Professionals Association (UXPA)
Board Member
Formerly the Usability Professionals Association
• Information Architecture Institute (IAI)
Board Member and Advisory Board
• ASLIB Journal of Information Management
Editorial Advisory Board
•
Bing Ads
Accredited Professional Advisory Board

Table of Contents:
• Helpful Google Scholar Links
• Goals of academic SEO
• Understanding search engine optimization (SEO)
• Fundamental principles of SEO
 Keywords and copywriting
 Accessibility and architecture
 Popularity (validation)
 Searcher goals and behaviors
• Examples of PDFs and abstracts
• Q&A

Copyright ©1997-2015. All rights reserved.
If you check out some of the sample web pages used in this
presentation, they are likely to look different…especially
search engine results pages (SERPS
The principles & guidelines that these screenshots illustrate
are relevant long after a site has changed.

Some symbols:
This is a good idea, or this document (or web page)
implemented a best practice.
This is a bad idea; don’t do this; or this document(or web
page) did not implement a best practice well.
This is really important. Try to remember this tip or user
experience (UX) and findability best practice.

HELPFUL GOOGLE SCHOLAR LINKS
Academic SEO of Web Documents for Google Scholar

For quick reference:
• About Google Scholar
https://scholar.google.com/intl/en-US/scholar/about.html
• Inclusion Guidelines for Webmasters
https://scholar.google.com/intl/en-US/scholar/inclusion.html
• Publisher Support
https://scholar.google.com/intl/en-US/scholar/publishers.html

GOALS OF ACADEMIC SEO

Not only to appear in Google Scholar:

Goals of academic SEO (ASEO):
• Make your scholarly documents easy to locate and discover via:
 Google Scholar
 Universal/blended web searches
• More citations:
 Academic
 Non-academic
• Communicate to both humans and technology that you are a topic (or
subject) authority
• Assist with your own research

Universal/blended search:

In Google Scholar:

Increase citations:

Increase citations (cont’d):

Communicate topic authority:

Communicate topic authority (cont’d):

UNDERSTANDING SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is…
• Marketing-only definition: …the process of making web
documents easy to locate/discover, interpret, and
possibly rank on the commercial web search engines
(such as Bing and Google).
• … designing, writing, formatting, programming, and
coding digital documents so that there is an increased
chance that these documents will appropriately appear
at the top of web search results.
• The optimization process also includes how one can
improve the appearance of individual search listings on
search engine results pages (SERPs).

SEO professionals are concerned with:
• Labeling website content so that it is easy to find
• Organizing website content so that it is easy to find
• Ensuring search engines have access to desired content
• Ensuring search engines don’t have access (or have limited access) to
undesirable content
• Applies to both:
 Web search engines
 Site search engines
Many optimization processes and techniques for web SEO can make
the results from a site search engine more accurate.

Site search engine:
PDF ranking
in
a site search
engine

Web search engine:
HTML page ranking in a
web search engine

Academic search engine:
PDF ranking
in
an academic
search engine

Academic search engine (cont’d):
Abstract (HTML)
in an academic
search engine

Web search engine:
PDF ranking in a
web search engine

Web search engine (cont’d):
Abstracts (HTML)
ranking in a web
search engine

SEO applies to many types of digital documents:
X
XLSX DOCX PPTX

Remember:
SEO is NOT optimizing for search engines only.

Remember:
SEO is optimizing for people who use search engines.

Remember:
• Optimize for people first, technology second.
• Web search usability refers to extent to which digital documents can be
discovered and located by web search-engine users to achieve specified
goals – with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context
of use.
• Satisfying web searcher goals has been a ranking factor in web search
engines since the 1990s.

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF SEO

Web search engines:
1. Index text
2. Follow links
3. Measure popularity (authority)
4. Accommodate searcher goals and behaviors
}All crawlers
}Ranking factors

4 building blocks of SEO:
1. Keywords, labels, and copywriting
Do your digital documents contain the words and phrases that your
target audience types into search queries?
2. Accessibility (site architecture & formatting)
Do search engines have easy, user-friendly access to content through site
architecture, navigation, page layout, formatting, and URL structure?
3. Link development & social signals
Does your website get objective, high-quality, third-party links pointing to
it (not only your home page)? In ASEO, are your scholarly documents
cited?
4. Web searcher behaviors
Does your website accommodate known searcher goals and behaviors?

All components are essential:
• These building blocks form the fundamental core of a user-friendly and
search-friendly website.
• In order for a site to receive consistent web search-engine traffic over
time, all 4 components should be present on a website.
• Search-engine rankings and traffic depend on:
+ Technology
Factors
Human
Factors

Link
Development
& Social
Searcher
Goals
On-the-page
criteria
Keywords
& Labels
Access &
Architecture

Off-the-page
criteria
Link
Development
& Social
Searcher
Goals
Keywords
& Labels
Access &
Info Scent

Keywords and Copywriting (Text)

Aboutness:
• When we refer to aboutness, most of the time we are referring to
intentional aboutness.
• Intentional aboutness describes the meaning of a document (such as a
web page, PDF, graphic image or video) from the author’s perspective.
• Please see:
 Hjørland, B. (2001). Towards a theory of aboutness, subject, topicality, theme,
domain, field, content... and relevance. Journal of the American Society for
Information Science and Technology, 52(9), 774-778.
 Hutchins, W. J. (1978, May). The concept of'aboutness' in subject indexing. In
Aslib proceedings (Vol. 30, No. 5, pp. 172-181). MCB UP Ltd.

(1) Text
• Does the PDF and abstract contain the words and phrases that people
type into search engines?
• Does the PDF and abstract seem focused on specific content?
• Are keywords used in the right order (word sequence)?
 Help desk software
 Software help desk
• Are the words featured prominently within the PDF and abstract?

Document labels:
• Document
• Navigation
• Content
• Technical

Label details:
• Document labels
 URL
 Titles
• Content labels
 Headings
 Subheadings
 Descriptions
 Annotations
 Captions
• Technical labels
 (X)HTML
 CSS & JavaScript
• Navigation labels
 Global
 Local
 Utilities
 Contextual
 Supplemental
 Hybrid (breadcrumbs)

• Title
• Primary heading (h1)
• Top of the page
• Subheadings (if used)
• Meta-tag description
(for display only)
• URL
HTML version:

http://uxpajournal.org/the-effects-of-parallax-
scrolling-on-user-experience-in-web-design/

PDF version:
• PDF title
• Author
• Description
• Keywords
• Top of the page
• URL

PDF title:
This is the PDF
title. Make sure it
matches the PDF’s
metadata title.

To go to the PDF’s metadata title:

PDF metadata title:

Top of the page:

PDF author metadata:
Click here.

PDF author title metadata:

PDF metadata subject:
Do NOT copy/paste the PDF
title in this text field.
The subject and title can be
similar but should NOT be
exact matches.
If you have a category and
subject, this would be
appropriate text for this field.

PDF description metadata:
Click here.

PDF description metadata:

PDF keywords metadata:
You can use the same keyword
list that you used in the HTML
document or abstract.
But you might want to
differentiate them a bit more
(to show that they are unique).

Google’s PDF metadata info:
• https://scholar.google.com/intl/en-us/scholar/inclusion.html#indexing
• When in doubt, use Dublin Core.

PDF URL:
http://uxpajournal.org/wp-
content/uploads/pdf/JUS_Frederick_Feb2015.
pdf

URL structure:
• Remember:
 Short but descriptive.
 Use hyphens (not underscores) to separate words.
 Minimize the use of stop words.
 Minimize the use of “funky” characters.

Accessibility & Architecture

Search engines follow links:
• Search engine follow links from one web document to another.
• How your web documents link to each other communicates (to both
humans and technology) how important you believe your content is.
• In other words, navigation matters!
• Search engines and searchers look at:
 Information architecture
 Site navigation (global, local, contextual, supplemental)
 URL structure

Is the HTML document in the search-engine index?

Is the PDF in the search-engine index?
Web analytics data can also show this
information.
The advanced search operator (site: ) is a
quick way to see if a document is in the
search index.

Links pointing to the PDFs:
• Here’s an example:
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/ryenw/publications.html

Here’s an abstract:
Abstract URL: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/toc/ajim/66/3

Here’s the PDF:
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/pdfplus/1
0.1108/AJIM-09-2013-0083

Tip:
Remember, in PDFs, always show absolute
links, not relative links.
Absolute link:
http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/people/ryenw/papers/BennettTOIS2015.pdf

PDF file size:
• Documents larger than 5MB, such as books and long dissertations, should
be uploaded to Google Book Search.
• Google Scholar automatically includes scholarly works from Google Book
Search.
• To minimize PDF file size:
 Limit the number of fonts/typefaces used in the document.
 Limit the number of graphic images used in the document.
 If necessary, reformat graphic images to be smaller in file size. You can put the
higher-resolution images on your site individually.
 Limit PDF metadata to essential information (author, title, description,
keywords, URL). Don’t put long paragraphs of information in the metadata.

Use this tool:
https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/i
nsights/about
Google only has specifications for web pages here, but the tool can help you get
specific recommendations for minimizing file size.

Link Popularity and Social (Validation)

What is link development?
• Link popularity
 Number of (quantity) external, 3rd-party links pointing to a URL
 Quality of external, 3rd-party links pointing to a URL
• Click (or click-thru) popularity
 Number of times searchers click on links to your site from a search engine
 How long end users stay on your site after clicking on a search listing
» If it’s a quick-fact search, a short time is good. Reason? Searchers got their
questions answered.
» If the query is exploratory, then a longer dwell time might signal that your site has
good information…
» …OR it could also mean that the site navigation and labeling is confusing.
 How often people return to your site from search listings

To ALWAYS remember about link development:
• The ultimate goal is to have good quantity of high quality links pointing to
the PDF and/or the abstract.
• Quality trumps quantity.
• Citations in bibliographies help in Google Scholar.

Recommendations:
• Encourage authors and researchers to link to BOTH the HTML and PDF
versions. Show users how to do it.
• Encourage link development to PDFs via social media as well, even though
social media citations are NOT a ranking factor.
• The best benefit from Google Scholar is to encourage scholarly and book
citations in Google’s preferred format.
 The text of each reference must be a formal bibliographic citation in a
commonly used format, without free-form commentary.
 Chicago, ALA, and MLA (please see following slide)

https://scholar.google.com/intl/us/scholar/citations.html#overview

Google’s preferred bibliographic citation formats:

Searcher Goals and Behaviors

To remember:
Navigational Informational Transactional

Web searcher goals:
• Try to remember: GO, KNOW, DO.
 Navigational: Go to a website or specific web page.
 Informational: Know or learn about a topic.
 Transactional: Do some web-mediated activity (listen to music, watch video,
look at photos, etc.
• Informational queries are the most common query type on all devices
(computer, tablet, phone).
• Transactional queries are the least common query type.

Most important query to satisfy?
• Navigational queries…because the search task is specific: to go to the JUS
website or a document/page on the JUS website.
 Navigational queries are difficult to displace.
 Web searchers rarely look past position #3 when conducting a navigational
query.
• If aboutness and information scent is clear for navigational queries, then
optimization for informational and transactional queries will likely be clear
to users and technology.
• Quick tip: Do 2 searches.
 Simple search: author + article title
 Advanced search

What type of query is this?

“Download” shows transactional intent:
• If a person wants to download a specific PDF from a website, the query is
both navigational and transactional.
• Transactional indicators:
 Download
 PDF

To remember:
• SEO is optimizing for people who use search engines, not optimizing for
search engines (technology) only.
• Digital documents should communicate ‘aboutness’ to both humans and
technology.
 HTML pages (abstracts and articles)
 PDFs
• Users should have easy access to all digital documents.
• Validation comes in the form of link development as well as bibliographic
citations.
• Ensure your digital documents accommodate known web-searcher
behaviors.
• Follow search engines’ guidelines.

Questions?
Shari Thurow, Founder and SEO Director
Omni Marketing Interactive
sthurow@search-usability.com

Academic SEO: Optimizing Scholarly Documents for Discovery

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