University Prepares for Future Webometrics Rankings

In the latest Webometrics ranking (January 2021 edition), the University ranked number 1,887 worldwide (out of over 30,000 higher education institutions), number 37 in Africa, and number 2 in Kenya. Despite this impressive performance, there is plenty of room for improvement. Our primary target is to ensure that Egerton University ranks among the top 1,500 universities worldwide. To achieve this, DMRM has undertaken such key activities as the training of academic staff on creating an interactive staff profile on the University website.

The exercise that started on 16 April 2021 involved training the academicians on how to update their personal details, list of publications, postgraduate supervision, key projects,conferences, and invited presentations,among other parameters. Staff also learned how to link their publications, presentations, and post graduate supervision to the University website.The links created could either be inlinks (internal links) or outlinks(external links).

Inlinks are links that point from one page on a domain to a different page on the same domain. For example, a staff member has the opportunity to link a thesis uploaded onthe Library Repository to his or her profile on the University website. Outlinks, on the other hand, serve to direct visitors from our website to other sites on the internet. This happens, for example, when a staff member links a publication from an external journal to his or her profile on the University website.

Both links are core components of the mechanism by means of which search engines discover and rank a website's content. However, outlinks are more valuable to search engines such as Google, Google Scholar and Microsoft Academia. The more the reputable websites to which we link our site are, the greater our credibility as a source of academic information is. External links are also harder to manipulate, so they are one of the best ways for search engines to determine the popularity and relevance of our website.

By Communication and Communication Marketing Manager,

Egerton University