Applies to: PastPerfect Online add-on for Version 5.0
One of the best kept secrets in today’s internet related society is exactly how Web pages are ranked with popular search engines like Google. The criteria search engines use to index websites and display them as ranked search results is constantly changing. That said, here are a few things that you can do to make your PastPerfect Online site more “Search Engine Relevant:”
- Tell them you exist. This might seem obvious, but if you haven’t asked us to submit your Sitemap to Google, they most likely don’t know that you exist! It’s easy and free. Just read the rest of this document, use our suggestions, and then send us an email. We’re happy to submit your site for you!
- Provide Web content that is interesting and complete. Search engines look at the content of a web page to decide its relevance. If you post an image to PastPerfect Online with only a few fields like Object ID, Object Name, Date, and Title, you might end up with a very sparse record and a great image. Because of the limited information on the page, that image may NOT ever be indexed with search engines. Including Description or Exhibit Label fields, along with Search Terms, Subjects, and People will help increase the content on your catalog record pages. Look at your data and choose the fields that help search engines understand what you are sharing with the world.
- Field order counts! Pick the fields you want to display on each record, and then put them in a “Search Engine Friendly” order. The first field listed on your PastPerfect Online record becomes the title of the webpage. Picking Accession Number as your first field might seem logical to members of the museum community, but it is probably not as logical to the rest of the world. The Title field is usually the best opening field to introduce your records. However, if most of your Title fields are not populated in PastPerfect, selecting the Object Name field instead may be better. Pick something that humans would want to see and search engines will like it!
- Link! Link! Link! Share links to your online collection everywhere you can think of. Your reputation with the search engine improves if they see that your site is linked from other sites with great reputations. Talk to the town webmaster, the community newspaper, your local schools and cultural centers. Ask them to create a link to your PastPerfect Online site and make a link back to them from your PastPerfect Online Landing Page.
- Use social media to publicize your site. Whether you use blogs, Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, share examples of your collection with the world regularly. By having your collection cross referenced on a variety of websites, you get a better reputation, but more importantly, you meet your original mission for being online: to share your collection with the world!
Doing these five things will not always guarantee that your items will be listed with Google and ranked as the number one search result. But not doing these things will ensure that if you make the list at all, your site won’t be listed very high in their search results. Just having your sitemap submitted will help a little, but following up with all five steps will help a lot!