Many digital repositories are mostly invisible to online users. Donors and collection managers are often disappointed to find that their collections are not being found by search engines such as Google. While digital collection managers recognize the importance of search engine optimization (SEO), search engines can be a bit of a black box. Practical and experienced guidance is needed. This book represents one of the few resources that focuses on SEO for digital repositories.

The authors explain the differences between black hat and white hat techniques for SEO because search engines are vigilant for dishonest attempts to influence their ranking algorithms and are quick to punish offenders. An introductory chapter explains the basic of search engine indexing and how to improve search results for library websites, which are the wrappers, so to speak, of digital collections.  They describe several methods for optimizing content and metadata so that digital collections are more comprehensible to search engines. A running theme is that digital collection managers need to think of their users, which not only includes online visitors and donors, but also the machine visitors such as index crawlers and spiders.

As to be expected, special attention is given to Google and related resources. The book shows how to use Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools to generate statistics to gauge the effectiveness of SEO efforts. Particular attention is given to Google Scholar and how it differs from Google web search.

The authors stress that SEO is not solely the domain of the IT department, but that it should be an organizational effort. While parts of this book are technical, it will also be useful for archivists, collections managers and administrators at all levels. This book addresses a specific problem, but an important one nevertheless, as the visibility of digital repositories demonstrates their relevance.

This review first appeared in Catholic Library World; December 2013, Vol 84 Issue 2. p.135.