Why Libraries Should Care about Search Engine Optimization

This posting is about Search Engine Optimization.  It’s a techie term and usually of concern to marketing people and web developers, often in the for-profit sector.  But I think it needs to concern all of us in libraries, even if we’re a small library without a lot of resources for marketing or for our website.  And that’s because, in these difficult times for libraries and for our communities, it would be really beneficial if our relevant resources, programs and services were easy for people to find via Google.

Search Engine Optimization, commonly referred to as SEO, refers to a variety of practices that facilitate the indexing of one’s web pages by a search engine, so that one’s pages are more likely to rank higher among search results.  I’m going to tell an SEO success story to demonstrate.

I recently worked on revising some web content with my prison library colleagues here at the State Library.  In the process I talked to them about improving their search engine rankings.  This was important, because these colleagues are true leaders in the field, doing important work related to successful offender re-entry and more, and there’s no doubt that people are interested in finding information about their work.

This unit’s existing web page was titled “Institutional Library Development”.  Of course! This is their official name!  So why shouldn’t they use it?  Well, from an SEO perspective, this isn’t language that the average person interested in their services would likely use to find them via the web.  The average person would be more likely to use words like prison or jail, rather than institutional, to refer to this kind of library.  I performed a sample Google search to see what an average person’s experience might be.  I searched Google for prison libraries Colorado.  The Institutional Library Development web page came up number 40 in the results.  Someone would need to look through 4 pages of results in order to find them.

In addition, the web address for this page included “slinstit.htm”.  Now, if you know who we are and some about our organization, you can make sense of that: State Library Institutions.  But a search engine is not going to be able to match that up with search terms related to Colorado prison libraries.

These things in mind, I suggested that we make some basic changes to affect SEO:

• Have at least one page of content where “Prison Libraries” was the page title.  Page titles are very important for SEO.  “Institutional Library Development” could still be used elsewhere.
• Have the navigation within the larger State Library website link to that Prison Library page, with the link labeled “Prison Libraries”.
• Work with the web content itself, peppering it with words that the average person might use to find this kind of content: jail, prison, incarcerated, inmate, offender, corrections, etc.  Also good if some of those words were used in links to other internal pages or outside web resources.
• Change the web address from using slinstit to using prisonlibraries – thus the address has keywords in it that would better match a search for this kind of content.

We made these changes, and two months later, that same search in Google for prison libraries Colorado brings up this content as result number 1.  According to site statistics (we use Google Analytics), page hits have increased more than 60%, and traffic coming in from Google has increased 535%. This is a powerful example of the correlation between small SEO-related changes and increased traffic to one’s web content.

Here’s why I think libraries need to care about this. Wouldn’t it be great all around if someone looking for job information in their community, or wanting information on starting a small business, or needing internet access, or searching for activities for their kids got some results from a Google search that included the library?  Granted this is harder to achieve than increasing rankings related to prison libraries – prison libraries aren’t quite as popular as jobs and businesses and the internet.  But doing something as simple as rethinking the words used in your web content can really make a difference in your search engine rankings as the above example shows.

I hope this might inspire you to rethink your web content, even if you have so much else to do.  Because I think it really matters, especially now and especially in Colorado, that people start to see the library as the important player that it is in supporting communities, families, entrepreneurs, job seekers and more.

Note that if you are lucky enough to be a Plinkit library or are on another good content management system for your library website, you have some great SEO features built right in.  But you’ll still need to think about those page titles, link titles, menu titles, and the words you’re using in all of your content, and ensure the language you’re using is giving your resources, programs and services the best opportunity to be found.

For more ideas on optimizing your web content, search SEO or SEO tips or similar in Google, and you’ll get a lot of results, some really techie and some not.  I’d be interested to read comments about work you may have done related to SEO in order to better position your library to serve your community.