SEO and Content Strategy for International Student Recruitment

Spring EAIE Academy, The Hague, April 2014

Megan Brenn-White, Director and Founder of The Brenn-White Group, USA Yvonne von Bischopinck, Account Director at NETEYE, Germany

Search engine usage

Google search engine result page (SERP)

31,400,000 search results for

“study in germany” in the Google index

Goethe Institute is visible as an

advertisement. What about in the index?

(Organic / Natural)Index

Instrument: SEO

Advertisements (Sponsored Links)Instrument: SEA

Google’s Page Rank

Target website Link distributor 1st level Link distributor 2nd level

Representation and recursive evaluation of the cross-linked web structure:Analysis of link strength

Search engine relevance criteria

On-page ranking factorsApprox. 40-45% share in relevance criteria

• Page title (<title> tag)• Content structure,

headlines• Keyword presence and

density • Internal links and link texts• Crawler accessibility• Site structure / information

architecture / hierarchy…

Off-page ranking factorsApprox. 55% share in relevance criteria

• Backlink quantity (number and source of links)

• Backlink quality (authority links, content synergy of linked websites)

• Age and history of a domain• Keyword competition

Content strategy in five steps

• Step 1: Allocate resources• Step 2: Audit/assess• Step 3: Develop core strategy• Step 4: Create or modify

content/implement workflow• Step 5: Measure and adjust

Step 2: Audit and assess

• Conduct audit of all content that impacts an international student’s decision-making process– Central university pages– Departmental pages– Program pages– Application pages– {What happens when they call or write?}

Assessment

• How can you tell which pages are working?– Pageviews– Conversions– Exit or bounce rates– “Gut” feeling about what’s working and not

• How do you want to track it?– Word– Excel– As many factors as are important to you…in a

format that will be useful

Clicks alone are not enough: The optimization circle

Promote information (e.g. special website section with enrollment information or regarding student life for foreign students…)

Keyword: “student life Cologne"

Website analysisExpand & optimize content / optimize usability

Student life in CologneGet information about living costs, accomodation options and morewww.uni-cologne.com/student-life-cologne

Check rankings, optimize campaigns

Ad or search result Information on landing page