What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a powerful process that can help make you and your research more visible to search engines like Google and Google Scholar.
Here are some ways you can make your profile easier to find and increase the visibility of your research.
Using SEO to improve your visibility
The easier it is for other researchers to find and access your research, the more likely your work will be read, cited, and used in future research. If your research is available on ResearchGate, it may make it easier for search engines like Google to find your work and list it in their search results.
Here are some additional tips you can follow to help maximize the visibility of you and your research.
1. Link to your ResearchGate profile on other websites
Adding links to your profile and publications on sites outside of ResearchGate is by far the best way to improve your visibility to search engines. People who add links to their profiles on other websites can get up to 5 times more publication reads. You can add links to your profile to your personal blog, institution or department page, or lab website. To find out how, contact your website administrator.
2. Add a profile photo
If you don't already have one, adding a photo of yourself to your profile is a simple and effective way to improve your visibility and get more profile views. For example, publications on profiles with photos get 50% more reads on average.
Learn more about adding or editing your profile photo.
3. Complete your profile
We've found that the more complete a profile is, the more likely it will appear in search results. This helps people find you and your research.
We've also learned that certain parts of your profile can have a big effect on how your profile is ranked by search engines. For example, complete profiles get 3x more views on average.
Some other ways to enhance your profile that can improve your visibility include:
- Add your education history and affiliations and keep them up to date
- Add any awards, grants, and scholarships you may have received
4. Confirm authorship of your publications
You can increase the visibility of your research by confirming you're the author of all your work on ResearchGate.
When someone has confirmed they're the author of a publication, that publication gets up to 10 times more reads on average than publications without confirmed authors.
You can see suggestions of research we think you authored here.
Additionally, creating publication pages for your preprints, posters, and presentations is a great way to make all your research more available and accessible.
5. Add full-texts, abstracts, and other data to your research
We know that publications with more available information and metadata are more likely to be ranked higher by search engines, which means they're more likely to be read and cited by other researchers. This is because the more relevant information and metadata a publication has, the more information search engines have to link the publication to relevant searches.
Here's a list of things you can add to make sure all your research can be found easily online:
- Full-texts – publications with full-texts get up to 15 times more reads than those without
- Abstracts – publications with abstracts get up to 160% more reads than those without
- Clear and correct titles for your publications and other research help others find your work more easily
- DOIs (if applicable)
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Additional data about your publications, such as:
- Chapter information – add the book that your chapters are a part of
- Conference papers – link your papers to the conference where they were presented
- ISSN, ISBN, and other information help identify your research.
You can find instructions on how to edit your publication information here.
Note: Before you share any content on ResearchGate, please make sure you have the rights to do so.
SEO can be complicated because search engines are always reevaluating and changing how they prioritize search results. As a result, we cannot guarantee that your research will be at the top of every search result.