Growing your readership is critical and SEO can be a powerful tool to help you with that goal.
More readers means more citations, which means more readers, which means more eyes on your journals. The more readers you have, the more authors you will draw for submissions. In short, growing your journal’s readership is of critical importance.
But there is no “silver bullet” for this particular issue. There isn’t a “one-size-fits-all” solution that you can apply to your journal. You need to be flexible.
In this article, we’ll take a look at SEO, specifically, to see how it works and how it can help you.
What is SEO?
SEO can be a bit of a confusing term as it is generally used to mean two different (though related) things. On the one hand, it commonly refers to “search engine optimization”. On the other, the term “SEO” is often used as a job title for people involved in search engine optimization. This is to say, you may want to consider hiring an SEO to take care of your SEO.
When we talk about search engine optimization, we’re basically talking about how to make your content rank on search engines. For many people, this is a bit of a mystery. They know that things do rank, but how they specifically do is a bit confusing. We’ll cover that a little bit though, so that the basics area clear.
How does a search engine algorithm work?
Briefly, “we don’t know.” What we do know is what these search engines will tell us. Google, for example, will release updates and give a broad explanation of what factors contribute to higher rankings. But they never release the algorithm itself, so we can never really know exactly what would work best. As such, SEO experts look at information that we do know, as well as the recommendations made by search engines.
Each search engine uses a different algorithm to do the same thing. Because the vast majority of internet search queries go through Google, this is where most of the industry’s focus rests. A good SEO strategy can help you to make sure you are maintaining a focus on what matters.
Broadly, because the algorithm gets changes fairly often, trying to pin down the specifics in an article can be both challenging as well as “not that useful”. However, there are always a few specific things that content managers, strategists, and writers can do to make sure they’re doing the best they can:
- H tags
- Linking and backlinks
- Content
Let’s cover the basics here about why these matter.
What are H tags?
H tags are important for SEO as they serve as a sort of “skeleton” for your content. There are H1 tags, H2 tags, H3 tags, H4 tags, etc. The easiest way to think of them is to think of them in the context of a book. An H1 tag would be the equivalent of the title of the book. That said, just like how a book only has one title, content should only have one H1 tag. H2 tags are more akin to chapters. They’re broader subjects in content. Subsections in an H2 group would be H3, and so on.
Linking and backlinks are important
Articles that are linked to have a greater weight than content that has no incoming or outgoing links. When you prepare content, you want to make sure that you’re linking to related and relevant content (and that others are doing the same for your content).
Content
The old adage of “content is king” continues to be true. When content is being produced, it is critical that this content serve a purpose. It should be helpful and informative. The algorithms have gotten quite good at determining when keywords are being added to content without justification.
Crucially, you want to make sure that you’re producing content that addresses questions, is helpful in its response, and that is informative.
How does SEO help my journal grow
Google search results matter a great deal, because when people search for things, over 90% of the links that people will click on are on the first page. This is why “ranking” on Google is so important.
But now that we’ve covered the basics of SEO, it’s important to understand how this actually helps your journal.
When people visit your journal’s articles, these will generally be academics who are interested in the subject matter (or who are actively researching in the field) that you are publishing about. This means that they may be in a position to actively cite work from your journals (which can lead to affecting your reputation and impact factor), but will also lead to potential authors being aware of your journal.
Ensuring that your website is SEO optimized and that when you publish content that it, too, is optimized, can help ensure that you rank higher on Google (and other search engines).
Remember, the more people that find your journal, the greater the odds of publications and citations become.
Other ways to grow your journal
SEO isn’t the only way that your journal can grow. There are lots of options, ranging from marketing-assisted efforts using social media to paid advertising and attendance at conferences. We will be exploring these in future articles, but for now we’ll simply remind you that there are many different avenues that you can pursue. For example, if you do not have an SEO specialist on staff, you may need to approach a growing readership through a different method.
Why journal growth matters
At the end of the day, your journal’s success is not dictated by paid advertising or SEO optimization (though these can definitely help). Your journal’s success depends on submissions and publications.
Achieve these goals is going to be complicated and challenging at times, but the most important thing to remember is that your journal’s growth means a greater reputation and further submissions. Make sure that you are able to handle your existing submissions. Biting off more than you can chew can result in slower publication times, and this can, in turn, negatively impact your business. No amount of SEO can save a ruined reputation.
Make sure that you and your team are ready to handle growth before you actively seek it. Importantly, however, when it comes to SEO, results are not immediate. There is no article or change that will result in an immediate overnight impact when it comes to search engines. These things take time, and having an expert on staff that can help guide you through the process (and to set realistic expectations) is a major benefit.