How to choose keywords for a manuscript?

Do you feel your article is being unnoticed? As if sunken under an ocean of millions of others, not being found and read as often as you imagined? If this is the case, you are not alone. Nowadays, in the internet era, unfortunately having just a good research is hardly enough. A fine quality text edition in your manuscript and stunning presentations may be the next step for calling some attention but making your work pop out from millions of others is a challenge that is often underthought by many researchers.

Actually, there are a few things in your power to help an article climb up the engine ranking; it all comes down to two words, that you probably you have heard a thousand times before, which can change the frequency your work is found by cyber audiences: SEO and Keywords.

Working with SEO (search engine optimization): Basically, this means helping search engines find your article relevant for certain search inputs on the internet. This is made by choosing strategic keywords that make correspondence to words in the internet user’s search. This way your article has the best chances to appear in a higher position in a probably long list of other related research.
Choosing keywords for manuscripts: Keywords are words that capture the essence of your paper. They make your paper searchable (and findable!) and ensure that you get more citations. Therefore, it is important to include relevant keywords helping others find your paper. Don’t forget these simple tips:

How to select the best keywords for a research article

The secret to choose the best keywords for your work is a matter of fine balance: on one hand, we recommend avoiding too many single-words (unless it is completely necessary) so that the search doesn’t render too unspecific; on the other, too many words may over-filter your article, making it too difficult to find.

There is also the tendency to add credibility to an article by selecting a lot of specialized keywords, however, that may dim the chances of your article being found. Rather than reducing your search chances to a specialized niche of experts, try to use more general terms used in literature to open your work to a more heterogeneous population.

Avoiding the duplication of words already in the article’s title is normally strongly recommended by journals. It is preferable to choose keywords that complete the main topic of your research, including related words and/or methodology specific terms.

Always remember to test your selected keywords. Do you think your article is difficult to find? Does the search pull up very similar articles to your own? Testing gives you the chance of tailoring your keyword selection even further and, also very important, it can also give you a valuable panorama of your competitors.

Making your article stand out is the ultimate challenging step for its massification. It might be daunting for researchers who feel overwhelmed by the digital world. However, for that Elsevier offers text editing services that not only provide excellent quality text for your manuscript but also help you make the necessary amendments to fit it into your journal’s guidelines. This way, you are also ensuring that the keywords you chose as relevant line up with the journal’s requirements, make the whole process much easier.