SEO Metrics for Enhanced Academic Research Visibility: A Comparative Study of Global and Country-Level Traffic
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Search engines play a crucial role in discovering and disseminating academic work, making academic search engine optimisation (A-SEO) vital for enhancing research visibility. Consequently, the collection of robust A-SEO data is essential. This study compares four leading SEO tools—Ahrefs, Semrush, Serpstat, and Ubersuggest—to evaluate their performance in measuring the organic traffic of gold open access academic publishers, using MDPI and Frontiers as case studies. The findings reveal significant discrepancies in the web traffic metrics reported by each platform, likely attributable to their diverse and often opaque traffic estimation methodologies. These differences may lead to divergent interpretations, thereby limiting the replicability and reproducibility of studies, and hindering the development of standardised web traffic indicators. This study highlights the need for greater methodological rigour and standardisation in academic SEO research, offering both theoretical insights and practical guidance to improve the online visibility of research within a platform-driven scholarly ecosystem.
