Dallas Internet Marketing

Dear Dallas Universities

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Dear University Administrator,

I know your budgets are tight, your endowments are down, and your state funding has been dropping.

Want to do something about it?

Here are 7  steps to fill your enrollments, attract the students you dream of, draw professors that become legends and increase donations to your schools – regardless of the economy.

Baseline facts:

1. 87% of 18-32 year olds in the US are online. You can only imagine that percentage increases when referring to 14-17 year olds.
2. 72% of Americans are online.
3. When Americans are considering a product or service we turn to the internet to get information. In fact, we turn to the company website for information more than our peers, more than company or school employees, and more than editorials in magazines.

Tomorrow’s top notch students, legendary professors and faithful donors are searching.

Are you giving them what they are looking for?

Here are 7 steps to help you hook them.

Step 1: Get Your University’s Website In Shape

I took a sample of 10 Dallas university websites (UT Southwestern Medical School, Dallas Baptist, UNT Dallas, Dallas Theological Seminary, SMU, UTD, University of Dallas, Art Institute of Dallas, Baylor College of Dentistry and Dallas County Community College) and checked out how your websites were doing.

The “fitness” of your website is important for two big reasons: it influences where you show up in the search results for terms important to your university (Accounting degrees in Texas, Best Poli-Sci program in Texas) and it influences how your website visitors interact with your website.

Dallas universities, you have page rank, backlink profiles and domain trust that other industries can only dream about. But honestly, you are not harnessing it.

What that means practically is that potential students are not finding your website , potential professors don’t know the strength of your programs, and potential donors don’t know what is going on at the university.

I looked at 6 factors every website trying to market itself through search engines should be concerned with:

1. Keyword Rich Page Titles: Do the page titles of important pages in your website contain the keywords you would want to rank for in the search engines. For example, if you have a great accounting program and want to attract students from around Texas, then you would want your page title on your accounting page to read something like “Accounting Degree Texas”.  Result: 6/10 weren’t using keyword rich page titles for your important pages.
2. Proper Use of Meta Descriptions:Meta descriptions are what show up in the search engine results pages underneath the page title. They should describe the contents of the page and make you feel like you must click through to the site to find out more. Result: 10/10 were not using Meta Descriptions properly for your sites most important pages.
3. Using Analytics: Website analytics are tracking programs that let you see how people interact with your site, like how did the visitor find your site, through what search term(s), what did they do once they were there, how long did they stay, etc. Analytics let you see where your site is strong and where it is weak. Result: 3/10 were not using any analytics programs.
4. Infected with Spam:Aghh, say it isn’t so, but did you know that 3/10 of your websites, had been infected with spam (specifically pages about deals for buying viagra and cialis). If you want to see it, type the following search in Google: inurl:youruniversityname.edu buy viagra.
5. Important Pages not in Google’s index: Google’s spider tries to gather information about all the most important web pages on the internet. Google stores information about these web pages in what is called their index. If a page is not in the index it means that someone searching through Google would never be able to find it. If your university has important pages, like your page about your accounting program, that aren’t included in Google’s index, that means no one searching in Google could find your program. 3/10 of your websites had important pages on your site that were not indexed in Google.
6. Duplicate Content: Google only wants to keep one copy of a certain page in its index. There is no point in having 7, 10 or 100 pages that say the exact same thing. So if Google finds multiple copies of the same information, they put the extra copies in the supplemental results, that will never get showed in search results. Quite simply if you have web pages on your sites that are saying exactly the same thing, word for word, you are missing out on good opportunities to communicate with students & you are sucking ranking power from your other important pages on your website. 3/10 of your websites had pages put in Google’s supplemental results.

Take Away: Make sure to get your websites in shape and ready to compete for those valuable visitors! Why? A tuned up website gets better rankings in the search engines and thus gets more visitors (aka high quality students who take the time to research their future schools).

2.Information Architecture: Where do you want me to go?

I remember my university’s website when I was in college (1998-2002) and it was hard to navigate at best. There were so many categories, so many links and so much information being thrown at me at one time, it almost required a second major to find what you were looking for on the website.

I was hoping times had changed with university websites. They have not. I come to your websites and have no idea where you want me to go. It seems you have adopted the philosophy of throw as much stuff at the visitor as possible and hopefully some of it will be what they want.

Your public facing website, the one you want to promote, only has four purposes: recruit students, recruit faculty, recruit donors and promote your university as the leader in its field. That is it.

All the needs of current faculty, staff and students can be served elsewhere- either on a separate site or on a subdomain like students.youruniversity.edu and should not be a prominent option from your main homepage.

Why?

You have access to your students and faculty all the time. You can let them know that everything they need related to the university is at blahblah.university.edu. They are not finding this information using search and don’t need to find it prominently from your homepage. Give them a dedicate portion of the website and only put things that pertain to them there. They will be happier for it. I promise.

You have access to a potential student or professor for but a moment. Don’t waste your opportunity just hoping he/she finds what he/she is looking for!

The classic reference to this point is a book called “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steven Krug. The title communicates it all. Take a look at the difference between Southwest Airline’s website and American Airline’s Website. Do you see how Southwest leads you through the four main processes 95% of their visitors are trying to accomplish. Do you see how American Airlines website looks like a bunch of spaghetti noodles thrown against a wall, and the visitor needs to find the noodle they are looking for.

Now look at your university’s website. What changes could be made to focus and clarify the site? What keywords and phrases are important to you to rank well in Google for? It should be more than just your university’s name. When that top-notch student is searching for “Best Engineering Programs in Texas” do you show up in the search results? If you do, when that student enters your site is it clear where he can find the information he is looking for? Do you call him to take an action by emailing you, filling out a form, or calling your offices? Is your website guiding him as much as one of your campus tour guides do potential students on an recruiting weekend?

3. Who is your site for?

Like I said before, your public facing website is for only four types of people- potential students, potential professors, potential donors, and people you are looking to demonstrate your expertise to.

Are you targeting them with your website?

How can you target potential students with your website? Start by thinking about the reasons people choose a particular college. Off the top of my head I can think of five: a particular degree program, campus life, location, quality of the degree in getting a job,  family legacy and cost. I am sure there are more. Does your website appeal to the reasons various types of students would come to your school?

What about attracting top-notch professors? What are they looking for, what would appeal to them?

Do the same thing when thinking about donors.What were the reasons your donors gave last year? Find out and create part of your site to feed those reasons.

Can you tailor your to not just be a library of impersonal random facts, “Good Luck, hope you find what you are looking for!” but a warm welcome and helping hand to compel your website visitors?

4. Social Proof of Value

Americans love social proof of value. We love to see “This University was ranked #27 for Best History Program by Best College Guides” or “Our professors have been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and so on…” Are you tapping into your social proof of value?Is it clear and up front on your website all the great awards and recognitions your university has achieved?

5. Harness your Analytics

Your website analytics program can show you TONS of information about your website and give you clear steps to progress. You can see what keywords people are using to find your website, and what keywords you are not being found with. You can see how long people spend on your site. Are they actually reading your content? You can follow their path through your website to see where they are being confused and you can track which keywords or region of the country is leading to the most inquiries and target your strategy accordingly.

6. Strut Your Stuff.

Your university has tons of great projects and an incredible amount of knowledge brewing in your buildings. Strut it! There is no reason why your university should not have the most dynamic, referenced and talked about sites for your specific area of expertise.

Is your university into civil rights? Why couldn’t you have a website like The Innocence Project to raise awareness and demonstrate your school as being on the cutting edge of the field?

Do you have a great classics program? Why couldn’t you have a website like The Perseus Project?

Have a great computer science program? Why couldn’t you show off your legendary professors like Stanford is doing?

7. Engage Me, Don’t Bore Me

Don’t just put up news, descriptions and links just to add stuff. Engage your audience where they are.To be honest, most university websites are boring, staid talk in words about subjects that people don’t care about. They are not the type of sites that make users come back for more.

I am sure you have faculty members who create communities of students who are rabid about them regardless of the class they teach. Why not harness this power to communicate and connect with the students after they graduated, or before they even enroll through email newsletters or blogs?

Why couldn’t alumni who opted in get a weekly email or special access blog from your basketball coach about the team and the games ahead?

Why couldn’t you have video testimonials from alumni or current students about your university and how it helps them. And I don’t mean the staged, cookie cutter videos that appear in university commercials. I mean real and personal.

What about a blog talking about your universities upcoming financial needs, the goals you are achieving and calling donors to give?

What about a section of your site with professor testimonials, info about university life, and new and upcoming projects that would win potential new profs?

What would the results be?

If you followed these 7 steps you would have a vibrant, community-based, and authoritative platform which win prospective students hearts, professors passions and donors allegiance.

And that would lead to full enrollments, high achieving students, legendary professors and faithful donors.
Bob Harper Photo Attribute: Lit and More