SEO Live! Higher Ed Web SE

#hewebSE #wkse2

SEO LIVE!

©2014 Fathom® All rights reserved.

SEO LIVE! #wkse2 #hewebSE@JPogact

@stephpflaum

Jonathan Pogact@JPogactDirector of Enterprise Solutions

Stephanie Pflaum@stephpflaumSenior Digital Marketing Strategist

www.fathomdelivers.com/industries/education

http://www.fathomdelivers.com/industries/education



@stephpflaum

Jonathan Pogact@JPogactDirector of Enterprise Solutions

Stephanie Pflaum@stephpflaumSenior Digital Marketing Strategist

www.fathomdelivers.com/industries/education

WHY SEO?

DESIGN & DEV

ON-PAGE OPTIMIZATION

KEYWORD SELECTION

CONTENT

POPULARITY & LINKS

ANALYTICS

Let’s Get Dangerous




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HIGHER ED SEARCH TRENDS


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Queries grew by 6% in Q1 2014 in the Colleges, Universities & Post-Secondary Education Category

Source: Google internal search data, based on pre-categorized queries for the Colleges, Universities & Post-Secondary Education. Note: In-quarter metrics for Query Volume and Ad Depth are only available.

Desktop queries grew by 1%, while Mobile queries grew by 23% and Tablet searches grew by 10% YoY in the same period




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@JPogact

@stephpflaumSEO LIVE! #wkse2 #hewebSE


http://www.google.com/trends/ comparing (Harvard University, Yale University, the University of Michigan, the University of Virginia, and UCLA)

http://www.google.com/trends/


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Try it for Yourself!


SEARCH ENGINES: HOW DO THEY WORK???


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web spider

websites

Maps where words appear and other relevant data

about each web page

Builds an index based on a system of weighting (algorithm)

search results!

search query…

HOW PEOPLE SEARCH


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Source: http://www.eduventures.com/2014/04/drives-students-enrollment-decisions/

“international culinary center”

“international culinary center

tuition”“culinary schools”

http://www.eduventures.com/2014/04/drives-students-enrollment-decisions/


HOW PEOPLE SEARCH


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4 Key Factors That Have the Strongest Influence on the Enrollment Decision

Perceived Value of Your Institution

“What is my expected outcome?”




HOW PEOPLE SEARCH


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Student Conversations with Key

Influencers

“Notable alumni”





HOW PEOPLE SEARCH


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Student Research and Information

Gathering





HOW PEOPLE SEARCH


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Communication Throughout the Application Process

“how often are we reaching out?”





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DESIGN & DEV

“Vision is the art of seeing the

invisible.”

CRAWLABLE CONTENT


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Your most important content should

be in HTML text format

Things search engines can’t read:1. Images2. Flash or Java plug-in contained

content3. Video or Audio

How to View Your Site Like a Search Engine:

• Go to google.com

• Type in cache:url

• Select Text-only version

LINKED PAGES


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Pages must be linked for the spider

to reach them. Gated Content

Javascript links or links

in Flash

Page is blocked by robots.txt

Frames or I-Frames

Spiders can’t use

site search

Page has 100s of links

Why pages may be unreachable

Anchor text: The visible portion of the link

TECHNICAL ROADBLOCKS


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Technical SEO problems can prevent your site from ranking



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404 errors



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RedirectIssues



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Missing or outdated sitemap



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Robots.txt



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Slow Load Time



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Not mobile responsive


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ON-PAGE OPTIMIZATION

“Relevance is a search engine’s Holy

Grail. People want results that are

closely connected to their queries.”

SEO LIVE! #wkse2@JPogact

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• Unique title for every page (50-60 chars.)

• Unique meta description for every page (156 chars.) – include a call-to-action

• Only 1 H1 tag per page• Optimize H2s – less important content

can go in H3s, H4s etc…• Don’t over-stuff keywords

Useful Tool:

ON-PAGE SEO BEST PRACTICES

http://moz.com/blog/new-title-tag-guidelines-preview-tool


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• Put important keywords in your

site’s navigation

• Link from other relevant pages

on your site with anchor text

• Anchor text should align with

the keyword focus on the page

you are linking to

INTERNAL LINKING


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• URL should allow the visitor to

predict the content on the page

• Include keywords if possible

• Keep URLs as short as possible

• Separate words with hyphens

• Static URLs are preferred –

avoid dynamic URLs

• Try not to bury important SEO

pages several directories deep

URL STRUCTURE

www.college.edu/academics/college/bachelors/humanities/degree-program-page

BURRIED

www.college.edu/humanities/bachelors-degree-program

PREFERRED


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Case Study


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Micro data, also called rich snippets or schema, allows you to call out certain types of content to the search engines.

• Address or location• Phone number• Events, dates & times • Reviews• Books, movies & recipes

(creative works)

MICRO DATA

http://www.schema.org

http://www.schema.org/


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KEYWORD SELECTION

“It’s not just about getting visitors to your

site – it’s about getting the right

visitors to your site.”


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• Pick keywords that are relevant to

your site’s content

• Make sure keyword phrases also align

with your marketing goals

• Check for search volume

• Search for the phrase

• Look at competition

• Look at Google Trends

• Use PPC data if available – which

keywords convert best?

• What are you already ranking for?

KEYWORD SELECTION BASICS Useful Tools:

• Google Adwords Keyword Planner

• Ubersuggest

• Google Analytics

• SEMRush

https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner

http://ubersuggest.org/

http://www.semrush.com/

SEO LIVE! #wkse2@JPogact

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LONG TAIL VS. SHORT TAIL


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SEARCHER INTENT


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CONTENT

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t

understand it well enough.”


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ACQUISITION FUNNEL


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SEARCHER INTENT


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CONTENT PENALTIES


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POPULATIRY & LINKS

“It’s hard to forget someone who gave

you so much to remember.”


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LINK SIGNALS

• Global popularity

• Local or niche popularity

• Anchor text

• Trust/relevance/quality

• Link neighborhood

• Freshness


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LINK EARNING STRATEGIES

• Have partner sites link to

you

• Blogging – valuable,

informative & entertaining

content

• Create content that inspires

sharing and natural linking

• Be newsworthy


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Have partner sites link to you


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Blogging – valuable, informative & entertaining content


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Create content that inspires sharing and natural linking


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Be newsworthy


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LINK PENALTIES


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ANALYTICS

“What gets measured, gets managed.”


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SEO KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS

Rankings

Traffic

Quality metrics – session duration, bounce rate

Conversions


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GOOGLE ANALYTICS: SEO DASHBOARD

https://www.google.com/analytics/web/template?uid=acTRIHcrTB2RoUHl4Yu-FQ





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Q&A


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What’s Your Digital Marketing GPA?

bit.ly/1q1fMJU

Business

SEO Live! Higher Ed Web SE