SEO for Book Titles and Metadata

Writing SEO-friendly titles and metadata for academic books means wrangling the vagaries of scholarly standards within a framework of digital marketing. In this guide, you will learn specific strategies to help with title optimization and metadata development to get your book discovered.

Academic Book Title Optimization Strategies

Your academic book title needs to fulfil a number of different functions: communicating its scholarly content, getting picked up by search engines, and appealing to your academic audience segment (Majhi et al., 2023; Park, 2018). The best academic titles describe well but also use keywords and populate phrases strategically and do it with the weight that scholarly publishing demands. Try to integrate your main area of research interest, theory or method straight into your title. However, since the title itself has to be very academic, subtitles give some more space for including more keywords. Academic books that have long, descriptive, keyword-rich titles tend to be found more readily in academic databases and search engines, according to research.

Key Metadata Elements for Academic Books

Abstract Optimization:

Your book abstract also acts as important metadata for search engines and academic databases segment (Majhi et al., 2023). Write good abstracts that do contain appropriate keywords, but are written in a way in which keywords still flow naturally, and that also summarise the entire content. Basic guidelines: Academic abstracts should offer a research contribution, method and results.

Keyword Selection

Develop comprehensive keyword lists that include:

Primary research topics and themes
Theoretical frameworks and methodologies
Related academic disciplines and subdisciplines
Alternative terminology used in your field
Geographic or temporal specifics relevant to your research

Subject Classification

Having the right subject can make or break your book in term of its academic categorisation. Rely on standard classification systems such as Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) or applicable disciplinary classifications.

Metadata Best Practices for Academic Publications

Rich metadata helps your book be found and accessed from diverse platforms and databases (Rovira et al., 2018; Schilhan et al., 2021). The metadata of scholarly content should contain full bibliographic details, complete abstracts, careful keyword indexing, and subject divisions. Permanent link to this book and improve Citation elsewhere. ISBNs need to be complete and consistently formatted across all of your channels. Information about the publisher, the publication date, and the edition, must be coherent between all digital platforms and databases. Detailed Table of content (TOC) data are also extra data that can be indexed by search engines. Titles should be descriptive and, if necessary, include keywords in titles of chapters. Full author details including institutional affiliation(s) and ORCID detail(s) However, information establishing of author’s academic credibility and expertise in the area of nutrition security were not requested for or received in the submission process.

References

Ale Ebrahim, N., Salehi, H., Embi, M. A., Habibi, F., Gholizadeh, H., & Motahar, S. M. (2014). Visibility and citation impact. International Education Studies, 7(4), 120-125.

Ebrahim, N. A. (2016). Strategies to enhance research visibility, impact & citations. In University of Malaya workshop at Sakura Room, Level (Vol. 4).

Majhi, S., Sahu, L., & Behera, K. (2023). Practices for enhancing research visibility, citations and impact: review of literature. Aslib Journal of Information Management, 75(6), 1280-1305.

Park, M. (2018). SEO for an open access scholarly information system to improve user experience. Information discovery and delivery, 46(2), 77-82.

Rovira, C., Guerrero-Solé, F., & Codina, L. (2018). Received citations as a main SEO factor ofÂ Google ScholarÂ results ranking. Profesional de la Información, 27(3), 559-569.

Schilhan, L., Kaier, C., & Lackner, K. (2021). Increasing visibility and discoverability of scholarly publications with academic search engine optimization. Insights, 34(1).

Shahzad, A., Nawi, N. M., Abd Hamid, N., Khan, S. N., Aamir, M., Ullah, A., & Abdullah, S. (2017). The impact of search engine optimization on the visibility of research paper and citations. JOIV: International Journal on Informatics Visualization, 1(4-2), 195-198.

Vállez, M., & Ventura, A. (2020). Analysis of the SEO visibility of university libraries and how they impact the web visibility of their universities. The journal of academic librarianship, 46(4), 102171.