Optimizing Library Websites for Better Visibility
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Binghamton University Librarians have attempted to employ search engine optimization strategies to make their website more visible on search engine result pages. Search engine optimization is the practice of improving ranking on search engine result pages and also increasing targeted traffic to a website. The presenter will discuss the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of developing a “do it yourself” optimization strategy for library websites
![Erin E. Rushton [email_address] Binghamton University Libraries Optimizing Library Websites for Better Visibility College and Research Libraries New England Chapter 2010 Spring Conference May 14 2010](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/seoacrl-100518005607-phpapp02/85/Optimizing-Library-Websites-for-Better-Visibility-1-320.jpg)
![Acknowledgements ,[object Object],[object Object]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
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Optimizing Library Websites for Better Visibility
- 1. Erin E. Rushton [email_address] Binghamton University Libraries Optimizing Library Websites for Better Visibility College and Research Libraries New England Chapter 2010 Spring Conference May 14 2010
- 6. Search consultants and advertising agencies
- 7. ‘ Ad Age’ Search Marketing Fact Pack Charts from 'Ad Age' Search Marketing Fact Pack
- 8. Why the competition? Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/skwishy/2048677231/
- 9. Search is popular Pew Internet “Search Engine Use” August 6, 2008 http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/pip_search_aug08.pdf
- 10. Competing for prime real estate
- 11. Paid Results Organic Results How to make this happen?
- 13. How search engines work
- 14. Search Engine Optimization Techniques Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/simonpow/252312738/
- 15. Disclaimer Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/marciookabe/3102556540/
- 18. Look for opportunities to use keywords Slide from “Search Engine Guide” http://www.searchengineguide.com/stoney-degeyter/seo-101-part-12-everything-you-need-to-k.php
- 19. Keyword prominence and location
- 20. metaDATA
- 22. Indexing of webpages Pages not indexed by spider will not appear in the search engine results
- 23. Why optimize the library? Image of Bartle Libraries from: http://www.hermanmiller.com/DotCom/jsp/research/caseStudiesDetail.jsp?csId=15
- 33. Pilot Project Mission : Optimize selected pages on the Libraries’ web site with the goal of improving the ranking of these pages on major search engines. Pages included “Ask a Librarian” and pages related to Edwin A. Link (Special Collections)
- 41. Next Steps
Editor's Notes
- Out interest in SEO started back in 2006 some staff at Binghamton went to the search engine optimization conference in NYC May have seen advertisements for this conference, its held in various locations around the world such as Chicago, Berlin, Tokyo, etc Basically it’s a conference for webmasters, marketers, corportate decision makers etc. Offer a variety of workshops including workshops on designing search engine friendly pages, getting your pages to rank higher, etc.
- Rather pricey conference but the expo is always free so that’s why we initially went
- When I went to this conference initially I was first of all naïve that this industry existed and I was also really surprised to learn how much money is spent
- http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/pip_search_aug08.pdf People are using search as their primary way to find things
- It doesn’t matter if you’re getting a million trilllion results from your search, very few people move beyond even the first few results
- Aims to increase a websites visability within search results Positive branding experience because a company must be outstanding and trustworthy to be listed at the top of Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, and Ask.com. You want to have steady traffic to your sites and a high return on investment When I start on a new project, I first conduct an SEO survey. Questions include the following: * What are website goals? * How will you measure the success of the SEO? * Who is your audience? Who are the customers and competitors? * How do you describe your products and services (i.e., what keywords would you use to describe them)? * What kind of Internet marketing have you already done? * Is your Web site database driven? What kind of server does it run from? Does your site use JavaScript, Flash, PHP, CGI, ASP, .NET, or other scripting and programming languages?
- Want to increase targeted traffic that comes to your website from search engines SEO – what you do to your site e.g. modifying html code, communicating with search engines, listing website in directories, tracking traffic How search engines work the secret search engine algorithm Counts inbound links How long people stay on websites Social book marking sites and collaborative tagging How much text you have on your site, how its formated and what is says Keywords Why would the library be interested in SEO? The overall goal is to gain targeted traffic e.g. get our patrons to our website Other targeted groups Members of the press Employees at Binghamton University Alumni Other libraries Want to attract people to our website so they can view our unique library services, our digital initiatives, library exhibits Challenges: OCLC report - ************** We have a lot of competition on the internet!!!!! Our plan is to optimize the “Ask a Librarian” webpage Want to increase linkability with non commercial content since search engines count inbound links from other websites e.g. popularity Better understanding on how people search our website – e.g. how they get to our website from the internet, what terms they use to search our website Keywords important part of SEO – want to make sure we have right keywords on our site Look at both visible keywords and at invisible keywords Measuring our success Tracking statistics Looking at sucessful conversions (i.e. when someone does what you want them to do on a website e.g. click a link, contact a librarian) Website housekeeping (is really one of the most effective SEO ways) Make sure our site has good metadata Make sure our site has good HTML titles Make sure our site has good body and content Make sure our site has web page redirects Rewrite pages to reflect more commonly searched terms Cleaning up old and dead links e.g. road blocks
- Jump gears a bit and talk about how search engine optimization works and in order to understand seo its helps to understand how search engines work Use an analogy of how a car works.
- Way your pages are linked to each other and the way your site links to other sites impacts search engine visibility Quality of the sites linking to your site may have more weight than the quantity of sites listing e.g. a link from Yahoo will have more weight than lesser known site Need to link to directories such as yahoo, msn, and looksmart
- Increase: Number of successful conversions: a conversion is a favorable action that occurs on a web page. This can mean a sale on a commercial site or a request for information or page view on a non-commercial site.
- Webtrends and Google Analytics were both used to measure web traffic and website activity. Webtrends was used to extract statistics from the web server’s log files; the extracted statistical data was used to compare the number of visits and demographic information for pre and post-optimization phases. Google Analytics is a free service that provided similar data to Webtrends. We also used Google Webmaster Central, a service that provides information about how Google crawled and indexed the web site. Review keywords : The selection of keywords is a key area of search engine optimization since individuals often find webpages by typing keywords into a search engines. We selected keywords that existed on the target webpages and used the keyword generating tool called Webtracker to find other popular and related keywords. These keywords were then tested on Google, Yahoo and MSN, the top three search engines, to see if the target pages appeared in the first 100 search results. In addition, the task force measured the rankings for several other websites to see how the Libraries’ webpages ranked in comparison. The comparison websites were chosen on their similarities to the Libraries (University of Buffalo, and Florida State for their Link pages), their ubiquity (such as the Library of Congress) and the quality of their webpages (Duke’s and UNC’s “Ask a Librarian” webpage). After ranking the success of various keywords, the we sought ways to improve content on the targeted pages. There were some limitations to this endeavour. The Ask a Librarian webpage was not a text heavy page and therefore could not be edited significantly. The Link Collection pages, on the other hand, contained substantial text but because the pages were under the auspice of the Special Collections Department the task force could only suggest content changes to the web authors. Review metadata : Metadata is used to describe the content of a page. It also serves as a short description in search engine results. The task force reviewed the metadata for the target pages and came up with improvements for the description and keyword tags. Review HTML tags : HTML tags, or title tags, are important for optimization because it is the text that all search engines search. It is also the text that shows up in search engine results under the link. The task force reviewed the HTML tags for the target pages and brainstormed improvements.
- An Ask a Librarian link was added to the Libraries homepage A section about the Libraries was added to Binghamton University’s page in Wikipedia. The entry includes several inbound links to the Libraries. However, the section the task force added has been edited several times and inbound links removed. Title tags were rewritten to be more descriptive and include keywords
- Text was rewritten when possible to include optimized keywords and phrases Webpages were validated using the World Wide Web Consortium Markup Validation Service Alt Text was added to several images Images were resized based on results we received from the Webpage Analyzer tool The robots.txt file was configured in order to allow Googlebot and other crawlers to index the site And to facilitate better indexing by Google, a sitemap.xml file was created and uploaded to Google Webmaster Central
- Retest pages on Webpage Analyzer The baseline assessment using Webpage Analyzer highlighted some known problems with image and page sizes on the target pages. We kept some small images on the Ask a Librarian page and Special Collections was made aware of the large image sizes of the images on the Link Collections pages, which they are likely to resize as part of a future website redesign project. After discussion with Special Collections, it was agreed that the Link Collections Finding Aid would eventually be re-formatted into html, rather than using frames, although this too is a longer-term project. Measure effectiveness of metadata During Phase Two , metadata titles, descriptions and keyword tags were added to several of the target pages. It was not possible to measure the impact that metadata had on SEO efforts since metadata generally doesn’t impact search engine results. However, metadata can help drive traffic from search engines to a webpage, especially when it provides informative descriptions about the purpose of the site. Measure effectiveness of HTML tags During Phase Two , HTML tags were rewritten on several of the target pages. As with other SEO tactics, it was not possible to directly measure the impact that this tactic had on SEO efforts. MarketLeap Link Popularity Only slight gains were made in the overall Popularity of the pilot pages. The Link collection pages registered a "limited presence," while the Ask a Librarian page has an "average presence" on the web. Optimization did not appear to significantly alter our "link popularity."
- At the completion of the pilot, the task force concludes that SEO efforts did improve the quality of target webpages but the overall impact of SEO efforts on search engine results is inconclusive. A retrospective of the pilot strategy exposes some shortfalls. For example, the task force’s own activity on the target pages may have distorted some results such as page visits and referring websites. Another factor that may have hindered conclusive results was the fact only a few pages out of the thousand plus that reside on the library website were optimized. Optimization is a holistic practice and how a site as a whole is organized and designed impacts search engine results. In other words, optimizing only a few select pages may not have much impact if the rest of the site is poorly optimized. Finally, given the short time period of the pilot and the members' newness with optimization strategies, there were some weaknesses in the pilot design. For example, more time could have been spent ensuring good keywords were embedded into page content, metatags and HTML tags. Despite the lack of conclusive results and design flaws, the we believe that there are advantages for incorporating optimization strategies into the Libraries’ website. Optimization, after all, is not totally about achieving the number one result in Google (although it's a nice consequence). Rather, optimization is about having a quality website with good content, good metadata, good inbound and outbound links and good web standards. Although these practices may not always result in improved rankings, they will ensure that our Website is search engine friendly and easy indexed by spiders.