seo for education organizations #emcdigital

SEO FOR EDUCATIONAL SITES

#educationseo at #EMCdigital by @aleyda from @orainti

Growing Enrolments Maximizing your Search Visibility



Must follow Steps, Criteria & Tools to Grow Enrollments

I’m Aleyda Solis

ORAINTI.COM @ALEYDA FB.COM/ALEYDASEOTIPS/

I Do SEO I PublishI Share

BITLY.COM/LIBROSEOALEYDA


http://ORAINTI.COM

http://@ALEYDA

http://FB.COM/ALEYDASEOTIPS/

http://BITLY.COM/LIBROSEOALEYDA




I Blog I Speak I’m Featured


I’m Aleyda Solis





Organic Search is the main traffic driver for the online Education industry





However not many educational organizations are also organic search leaders





You’re losing the opportunity to connect & attract your audience through SERPs





Maximizing your rankings & visibility in a multi-device, platform & format search world

SNIPPETS

KNOWLEDGE GRAPH

MAPSMULTIDEVICEAPPS





Making the most out of search engines functionalities





While aligning your SEO efforts along the ones you do for other channels

SE

PRODUCT BRANDING

USABILITY

CONTENT

DESIGN

DEVELOPMENT

PPC

SOCIALEMAIL

SEOAFFILIATES

DISPLAY





With the goal of supporting the path towards conversions across the customer journey





And achieve growth





like this





Or this





Here’s how to make sure your content is ready to drive these results from SEO





Understand how your potential students search in order to

connect with them





Always start by doing a “keyword research” to identify your audience search behavior

USED TERMS IN THE

INDUSTRY SUGGESTIONS

COMPETITORS TERMS

CURRENTLY RANKED TERMS FOR CONTENT

YOUR TERMS, TOPICS

& CONTENT TARGET

BUSINES GOALS, VOLUME & PROFITABILITY

CURRENT VISIBILITY &

CONTENT EXISTENCE

SEARCH VOLUME,

SEASONALITY AND COMPETITION

RELEVANCE & INTENT





Understanding which are your current best performing site categories, programs, etc.

GOOGLE ANALYTICS &

SEARCH CONSOLE





Your most linked and shared site pages

BUZZSUMO & COGNITIVE

SEO





Obtaining the terms that have been used to search for them

URL PROFILER + GOOGLE SEARCH

CONSOLE





Do the same with the ones providing already the highest share of visibility to your competitors





Identifying the existing gaps and where they are outperforming you





Verifying the visibility & queries specific from each type of device





As well as search functionality & feature that is providing additional visibility





Organize the terms by topics & areas and expand each one to identify synonyms & related topics





… as well as more permutations & granular phrases & questions around each





… as well as more permutations & granular phrases & questions around each

YEAR: 2017

MODALITY: ONLINE, ABROAD

CHARACTERISTICS: CHEAP, CERTIFIED,

SHORT-TERM





That will allow you to establish your Website personas

BACKGROUND

CHARACTERISTICS

ACTIVITIES & MOTIVATIONS

CONTEXT SCENARIOS





To Establish & Prioritize those topics, areas & queries that you will target in your SEO process

BEHAVIOR relevance volume

competition seasonality

persona intent

scenario

BUSINESS availability profitability

STATUS content existence

content format rankings

traffic conversions

growth





Develop a Web structure & content that fulfills the identified search need





Main issue with today’s Websites content is that they’re not relevant, unique and it’s “too thin”





Specially if you’re competing with these players: Online, Free offering & community content.





This is why you need to use the established terms to drive your Web architecture & content

map topics with web

architecture

identify content type & format to target each

topic

optimize content (pages,

images, videos) for targeted keywords

use structured

markup to give a meaning to

your content

verify that your content is

correctly seen by search

engines

make sure your content is correctly shown

in all devices

facilitate your content share-ability





Map your different topics & queries with your already existing or to-be-created Web areas

x

community

product category

2

learning center

events

home

product 1a

product 1b

product n1

product n2

category a

category b

blogproduct category

1

product category

n





As well as content format

x

community

product category

2

learning center

events

home

product 1a

product 1b

product n1

product n2

category a

category b

blogproduct category

1

product category

n

www.distilled.net/blog/the-content-matrix/

https://www.distilled.net/blog/the-content-matrix/





Allowing you to develop highly targeted content that will fulfill your search audience needs

Informational queries

Transactional queries





If you’re targeting multilingual & country markets select one of these options based on pros & cons

FOR COUNTRY TARGETINGccTLDs

Sub-directories

Sub-domains

Sub-directories

Sub-domains

FOR LANGUAGE TARGETING

www.yourbrand.es

www.yourbrand.es/categoria-a/

www.yourbrand.com/es-es/

www.yourbrand.com/es-es/categoria-a/

es-es.yourbrand.com/

es-es.yourbrand.com/categoria-a/

www.yourbrand.com/es/

www.yourbrand.com/es/categoria-a/

es.yourbrand.com/

es.yourbrand.com/categoria-a/

http://www.yourbrand.co.uk






http://www.yourbrand.com/es/


http://www.yourbrand.es

http://www.yourbrand.es





FOR COUNTRY TARGETINGccTLDs

Sub-directories

Sub-domains

Sub-directories

Sub-domains

FOR LANGUAGE TARGETING

Ideal alternative to geolocate if competition is not too high More technical resources More efforts to grow popularity

Less technical resources Less efforts to grow popularity More chances to get all versions penalized if something goes bad More efforts to geolocate

Require more technical resources Require more efforts to grow popularity Better than sub-directories to organize larger & more complex sites More efforts to geolocate

Less technical resources Less efforts to grow popularity Deeper url structure More chances to get all versions penalized if one of the versions has issues

More technical resources More efforts to grow popularity Shorter URL structure which can be better for larger sites

If you’re targeting multilingual & country markets select one of these options based on pros & cons





Each page should be optimized with unique, relevant, useful content

Meta description

Headings

Title

Body text

Images

URL

Terms or topics in

Videos




Making the most out of each page element to maximize its relevante, like titles & metas


title

meta description

url

Begin with targeted term ~ 55 characters for desktop & ~ 60 for mobile

descriptive and attractive expanding title, inviting users to click ~150 characters for desktop & ~115 characters for mobile

short & descriptive

targeted terms in url




Add your USP in them in order to attract attention from user and increase CTR

title

meta description

url

Begin with targeted term ~ 55 characters for desktop & ~ 60 for mobile

descriptive and attractive expanding title, inviting users to click ~150 characters for desktop & ~115 characters for mobile

short & descriptive

targeted terms in url

http://www.siegemedia.com/seo/title-tags


http://www.siegemedia.com/seo/title-tags




Optimize your Images

surrounding text

alt description

file name

optimize w/ the targeted terms

structured markup





and Videos too

caption or description

title

file name

optimize w/ the targeted terms

structured markup

Not conversion but awareness and informational oriented? Publish it in Youtube





Use structured markup to give meaning to your content & increase your SERP visibility





From breadcrumbs to reviews and business information

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/intro-structured-data


https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/intro-structured-data




Too technically complex? Use GTM to do it

#educationseo at #EMCdigital by @aleyda from @oraintihttp://www.simoahava.com/analytics/enrich-serp-results-using-gtm/

http://www.simoahava.com/analytics/enrich-serp-results-using-gtm/




This content should be now also mobile first





Making sure it follows search accessibility and usability best practices





This is a whole specific topic! Check out this preso I did about it

#educationseo at #EMCdigital by @aleyda from @oraintihttp://www.slideshare.net/aleydasolis/mobile-visibility-to-the-max-2016-edition-bigdigitaladl

http://www.slideshare.net/aleydasolis/mobile-visibility-to-the-max-2016-edition-bigdigitaladl




-All this is so much effort just for content already-Follow this flowchart to make it profitable





And remember balance your optimization efforts based on your context to focus on growth

Your Site

Technical Configuration CRAWLABILITY & INDEXABILITY

Content RELEVANCE

Links POPULARITY

Your Competition

Current Organic Search Performance

Audience Search Behavior &

Industry Potential





Check out this preso I did to drive your SEO efforts

Your Site

Technical Configuration CRAWLABILITY & INDEXABILITY

Content RELEVANCE

Links POPULARITY

Your Competition

Current Organic Search Performance

Audience Search Behavior &

Industry Potential


http://bit.ly/auditgrowth

http://bit.ly/auditgrowth




Remember it’s all about this ;)





Thank you!


seo for education organizations #emcdigital

Marketing