This is a sneak peek into the 2014 Spring EAIE Academy course 'SEO and online content: strategies for international student recruitment'. Are you an international higher education professional? Check out all the training events of the European Association for International Education (EAIE) here: www.eaie.org/training

1. 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

2. Search engine usage

3. 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

4. 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

5. Search engine relevance criteria
On-page ranking factors
Approx. 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 factors
Approx. 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

6. 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

7. 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?}

8. 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

9. 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 analysis
Expand & optimize content
/ optimize usability
Student life in Cologne
Get information about living costs,
accomodation options and more
www.uni-cologne.com/student-life-cologne
Check rankings,
optimize campaigns
Ad or search result Information on landing page