How-to
How to make your lab website show up on Google (and in AI answers)
Simple, honest search engine optimisation for research labs: the names and words people search for, page titles, Google Scholar tags, sitemaps, links and the mistakes that keep lab sites invisible.
You built a lab website, but searching for your lab's name brings up your university's directory page, an old conference abstract and someone else's lab. Search optimisation sounds like marketing, but for a lab it's simple: help Google understand who you are and what you work on.
1. Know what people search for
People find labs in three ways:
- By name: "Rao lab", "Ananya Rao chemistry" — usually from someone who heard of you.
- By topic: "sodium-ion battery lab", "plant genetics PhD position India".
- By paper: the title of one of your publications.
Make sure your site answers all three: the PI's full name and the lab's name on the home page, your research topics in plain words, and each paper on its own page.
2. Get the basics right
- Page titles: "Rao Lab — Sodium-ion batteries — Deccan Institute of Science" beats "Home".
- Plain-language text: write "we develop safer batteries for storing solar power", not just "electrochemical energy storage paradigms". People search for the plain words.
- One topic per page: separate research pages for separate themes help you rank for each.
- Image descriptions (alt text) for figures and people photos.
- Fast, mobile-friendly pages: most visitors arrive on phones.
- HTTPS on your own domain.
3. Publications: let Google Scholar index you
Google Scholar indexes papers from websites that tag them correctly — title, authors, date and journal in specific meta tags, one paper per page. A publication list in a single block of text gets none of that benefit. See Google Scholar profile vs a publication list on your lab site.
4. Sitemaps and Search Console
A sitemap lists every page for search engines. Submit it in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools (Bing also feeds ChatGPT search). Search Console then shows which searches find you and flags problems.
5. Links from places that matter
Google trusts sites that trusted sites link to. Ask for links from your department's people page and lab directory, your university profile, your Google Scholar and ORCID profiles, collaborators' sites, conference pages and press releases. When you move institutions, keep these links working with a redirect.
6. Keep it fresh
Sites that change regularly get crawled more often. A news post every month or two — a paper, an award, a new member — keeps the site alive in search results and tells visitors the lab is active.
7. AI answers
ChatGPT, Gemini and other assistants increasingly answer "who works on X?" questions. They draw on the same signals: clear text about your research, structured information, and links from reputable sites. A well-structured lab site helps here too.
On Labsite
Labsite handles the technical parts: descriptive page titles and descriptions, a sitemap, fast mobile pages, HTTPS on your own domain, structured data, and a page for every paper tagged for Google Scholar. You write the words — our guide on writing your lab's research page helps with that. Start free or browse templates.