The Internet has meant that academics can now have their work published quickly and easily either on article websites or on blogs.  Which is a good thing right?  Well apparently not.  An article featured in The Guardian has reported that search engine optimisation is killing the creativity of these articles because of the need to be found in search engines like Google. 

When writing articles it makes sense to include keywords and phrases in the title and the text to help it be found by the search engines but this doesn’t mean you have to repeat the same things over and over again.  Yes, you will need keywords in there but as long as everything you write is related to the topic then you don’t need to have a boring, wordy title.  The article uses the following quote to show this point.

“SEO can, however, make articles tedious to read. A headline that once read “Of mice and men” for a study that discussed the suitability of mice when testing drugs for humans might now say “Suitability of mice for in vivo drug testing” or something even more jargon-laden.”

Well I have already come up with a title that is creative and suitable for the SEO.  Man or Mouse? Are Mice Really Suitable For In Vivo Testing?  The other complaint mentioned in the article is that social bookmarking is being used as a method for the articles to gain popularity and this has turned it into more of a popularity contest, where as it used to be about the best report.  This is just a sign of the times and I know people fear change but yes, you are going to have to market your academic reports online if you want to be found in the search engines.  This may take add a bit of time to your report and may require some prior planning but as long as you use the SEO work sensibly then it shouldn’t effect your creativity or originality.

Getting on the first page of the search engines can be quite a task, you need to consider several things before you start trying to rank well.

These include

• What keywords do you need to rank well for?
• How much traffic does that search get from the search engines?
• What is the level of competition?
• Are these buying or research terms?

Once you have answers to these questions then you can concentrate on the SEO or search engine optimisation for the terms you are looking to target.

The Search engine optimisation is designed to let the search engines such as Google, Yahoo & MSN know what your web page is about, in the same way someone reading the title of a report would know what it is about.

The standard definition often used when people explain what is meant by SEO is often something like

“Getting a web site found in the search engines.”

This is fairly accurate but only scrapes the service, SEO not only helps your site be found in the search engines but if done properly will increase the number of visitors you get and also increase the sales you make on your site.

Think about the way you and those you know use the internet, you don’t always type in the name of the site you are looking for, sometimes you do not know it other times you want to see what other sites are offering a similar service.
When you do this you tend to use the search engines, the most well known of these is Google, you type in a word or phrase and the search engine delivers back to you the results, now if your site is not in the top 10 you will not be on the first page of results.

If you are not on the first page of results you are much less likely to be found by potential visitors and customers, using search engine optimisation correctly can help you gain these top positions in the search engines.