SEO for libraries
SEO for a library means getting the collection out from behind the catalogue search box and into indexable pages, so the holdings, the archive and the services are discoverable by the people whose funding depends on them being used.
The problem
Libraries hold collections nobody can find. The catalogue is behind a search box that no crawler can enter, the digitised archive is served as image tiles with no text, and the opening hours are a graphic. Meanwhile a commercial aggregator has indexed a worse copy of the same material and takes the traffic that should have proved the library’s public value.
The catalogue is the crawl problem
A discovery layer that only renders results after a form submission is invisible. Exposing stable, crawlable records for holdings — even a subset, even the most-requested ones — changes the entire visibility picture.
Digitised collections need text
Scanned material without a transcript or reliable OCR output is an image to a search engine. The scholarship value is high and the discoverability is zero.
- Stable, indexable pages for holdings and special collections
- Transcripts or OCR text alongside digitised images
- Opening hours, branches and services as structured local data
- Event and exhibition listings that outlive the event
Local search still matters
For a public library, the most-searched thing is still whether it is open right now and where to park. Fixing that is unglamorous and it is usually the largest single traffic gain available.
Talk it through
Thirty minutes, no deck. If search is not your constraint, I will say so on the call.