Forum Discussion
Keywords field in Project Info
Hello, I wanted to learn more about the “Keywords” field in additional Project Info at the time of publishing to an LMS SCORM 1.2 file. If I add keywords to the field that are separated by commas, does this add any benefit for SEO with Google, Bing, etc? Any tips on adding SEO info to a SCORM file for Google, Bing, etc., would be a big help. Thank you.
Hi ShaneLuciow-b97 these keywords are included in a document called the imsmanifest.xml. This document is used by SCORM compliant LMS. The information is parsed, and information such as the launch file, course title etc are present. In the SCORM specification, the <keyword> element is included in the manifest. It does not specify how the keyword should be formatted, other than being a string. It would be up to the LMS how this data is used (if at all). Some LMS may completely ignore the element and not parse it.
If you are working with a particular LMS, you would need to make some enquiries about their implementation of SCORM and whether they parse keywords from the manifest, and if they do, how are those keywords used (for search, or just shown alongside the course).
So, in a nutshell, the intended use would be for LMSs to parse the keywords, and use them in search functionality to make the course more searchable.
What I can tell you, is that these are not used by search engines such as Google, Bing unless an LMS has specifically parsed and made these keywords available to search engines. The chance of that being true is close to zero.
If your course is being published as SCORM, and hosted on an LMS, users will need to authenticate to access the course, therefore any data within the course pages, scripts etc cannot be accessed by search engines. Therefore you would need to use a different method for SEO, that would somehow link that SEO to the course. It cannot be done in the course those, due to the files being hosted securely.
