by Carla DeSantis
Recently there has been a lot of discussion among Editors Canada members on the SEO of the Online Directory of Editors (ODE) after it was revamped two years ago. Carla DeSantis shares how you can boost your online presence – in particular the visibility of your Editors Canada ODE profile.
Now and then I google my name, because it helps me to know how my online presence is ranking with search engines. Clearly, other editors do this too, since at a recent Editors Canada Vine meeting some members expressed frustration with the fact that their Editors Canada Online Directory of Editors (ODE) profile didn’t show up as a result when they searched their name in a search engine (such as Google).
This was an issue two years ago when the Editors Canada platform was revamped. After having a professional software developer analyze the site, I sounded the alarm that, with the way the pages were coded at that time, search engines would never be able to index the ODE profiles properly. Editors Canada did its due diligence and had the ODE rebuilt last year in a way that facilitated search engine indexing. Several months later, my ODE profile was finally showing up again as a result in online searches (actually, the second result). So, the design and coding flaws of the first revamped ODE have now been fixed.
Some attendees of the recent Vine meeting also searched online and did, in fact, find the profiles of other members in attendance who weren’t finding their own profiles being returned as a search result. Still other members who didn’t see their profiles returned in a normal search found them indexed when doing a search in incognito mode.
I was asked to share my input, and I offer these tips with the caveat that I am not a tech person, but someone who has attended various webinars and conference sessions on marketing and maximizing online content.
The fact is that there is much more involved in getting a search engine to index a web page beyond simply posting it; just setting up your website doesn’t mean it will automatically be indexed. In my case, I spent time on my website building SEO, with keywords and quality content; sharing the links to various pages externally; and creating internal links between the website pages. And it took many months before it started showing up in Google searches.
There is a lot of competition out there on the web! The search engine will give preference to content that it deems important and trustworthy. Here are some things that editors can do to show the engine that your ODE profile is just that:
1. Build quality links to and from your profile.
Internal and external links help your profile to rank well. For example, I have embedded links to my ODE profile on at least two pages of my website, my LinkedIn profile, and my profiles on the sites of the Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA) and Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP). Likewise, I have external links on my ODE profile going out to these other online sources (my website, LinkedIn, EFA, and CIEP). These multiple links, in and out, show the engine crawler that your profile is important and trustworthy. According to my software developer consultant, these links are the most important factor in improving your page rank.
While including the link to your ODE profile in an email signature may drive some traffic to your profile, it is not enough, as search engines can’t crawl your personal emails for those links.
If you previously had external links back to your ODE profile before the ODE was rebuilt, make sure that you updated them, as the URL for the individual profiles changed last year. Broken links to your profile are a detriment to crawling and indexing.
2. Create rich content on your profile.
Search engines prioritize high-quality, unique, and useful content. It’s not enough to check off the built-in drop-down boxes of categories. Provide an engaging summary of what you do, how you are unique, and what your specializations are, but in a structured way of clear sections to help readability (and crawling). Simply stating that you are a fiction editor who is precise and reliable, for example, is too general for the search engine to deem “important.”
3. Include keywords.
Building on the second point above, include keywords that your potential clients might use to find you and your specializations. A great resource for how to do this is Greg Ioannou’s free online webinar, “Getting Work with the Online Directory of Editors.”
4. Update your profile now and then.
Google and other search engines will be more likely to crawl your profile page if it detects new activity. Also check the links on your profile occasionally to make sure they didn’t break, which happens sometimes.
5. More frequent traffic by unique visitors increases the chances of indexing.
The more users that visit a particular ODE profile, even by using the internal ODE search function, the more likely the profile is to be crawled by the search engine, and the higher that page will rank in indexing. Traffic indicates the value of the page to search engines.
See also the section “What can I do to help Google discover my content more easily?” at “Google Search Indexing and Ranking FAQ” and this blog on website indexing issues.
If you have done all the above and waited an appropriate number of months without seeing a search engine return your profile, then perhaps Editors Canada may request indexing from Google again. However, keep in mind that many members’ profiles do show up in online search results, which shows that the ODE is, in fact, being crawled and indexed.
In my experience, my ODE profile is just one piece of my marketing pie, and I can’t rely on that listing alone to bring me enough clients to run my business. But if my ODE listing brings me at least one or two projects that cover the cost of my listing and membership, then I consider that well worth it.
Carla DeSantis is a freelance editor, translator, authenticity reader, and indexer based in Toronto. She holds a doctorate in medieval Latin language and literature (minor in Romance philology), and specializes in working on scholarly/academic texts in the humanities and social sciences, especially multilingual texts. Carla is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading, as well as a member of Editors Canada and the Editorial Freelancers Association. In 2020, she was awarded the Ewart-Davuley Indexing Award for excellence in indexing by the Indexing Society of Canada. Carla is a published author on medieval Latin topics and the author of the blog Parchment to PDF. For more on Carla’s experience and the types of projects she works on, see www.carladesantisediting.com/.
This article was edited by Amy Scanlon Boughner, a communications professional and freelance editor living in Ottawa. She holds a professional editing standards certificate from Queen’s University and is an experienced writer, developmental editor and copy editor. Visit her website at www.amyboughner.ca.
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