IDAs can really help your school's recruitment efforts! Read this slideshare to find out how you can maximize your chances of being published as an IDA.

1. Are In-Depth Articles in Your Higher Ed Content
Strategy?
Slide 1
Are In-Depth Articles in Your Higher Ed
Content Strategy?

2. Are In-Depth Articles in Your Higher Ed Content
Strategy?
Slide 2
1) In-Depth Articles
2) Why are In-Depth Articles Important to your Recruitment
Efforts?
3) So how does Google Select Posts for In-Depth Article Status?
4) An In-Depth Article Strategy for Higher Ed Marketers
Overview
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Are In-Depth Articles in Your Higher Ed Content Strategy?

3. Are In-Depth Articles in Your Higher Ed Content
Strategy?
Slide 3
 You’ve probably noticed In-Depth Articles coming up on your
Google search engine results pages.
 In-Depth Articles (IDAs) were introduced back in August
2013 to Google search engine results pages (SERPs), in an
effort to provide a new type of content for the approximately
10% of searchers who are known to be looking for detailed
content on broad topics.
1. In-Depth Articles
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Are In-Depth Articles in Your Higher Ed Content Strategy?

4. Are In-Depth Articles in Your Higher Ed Content
Strategy?
Slide 4
 IDAs are important to marketers for a number of reasons.
 The general type of search that Google is talking about here is the
broad research individuals conduct at the very top of your
recruitment funnel.
 If your in-depth article is seen and read by this type of searcher, you
get the opportunity to interact with them as they are shaping their
initial ideas around your topic.
 That is a good place to be from a search engine marketing
standpoint.
 Looking at SERPs from a very practical point of view, in-depth
articles are quite important because they take up 3 of the 10 search
engine results displayed on a page.
 Add in a map, an author photo and some ad extensions on that
same page and it could easily be reduced down to 7 results,
including the 3 IDAs.
2. Why are In-Depth Articles Important to your
Recruitment Efforts?
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Are In-Depth Articles in Your Higher Ed Content Strategy?

5. Are In-Depth Articles in Your Higher Ed Content
Strategy?
Slide 5
 As we've discussed in the past, 70% of searchers never go
beyond page 1 results so with the addition of in-depth article,
it is now even harder to get that precious page one real
estate.
 Getting an article or post listed as an IDA could be a very
good thing for your search traffic volume.
 But is it possible to actually make that happen?
 Well, the jury is still out on all of the criteria, and their relative
weighting, so let’s say maybe for now.
2. Why are In-Depth Articles Important to your
Recruitment Efforts?
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Are In-Depth Articles in Your Higher Ed Content Strategy?

6. Are In-Depth Articles in Your Higher Ed Content
Strategy?
Slide 6
 Here's what we’ve pieced together from Google’s guide and
research conducted by various SEOs on what the optimal
characteristics are of an IDA:
 They are typically 2000 – 5000 words long
 They discuss a very general, non-commercial topic that is typically
one or, at the most, two keywords i.e. “admissions”, “higher
education”. Long term keywords of 2 or three words typically do not
provide IDAs on their SERP pages
 Have received strong social endorsement on Google+, Facebook, or
Twitter
 60% of IDAs come from 10 major publishers including the New York
Times, Wall Street Journal, Wired, Forbes, etc.
3. So how does Google Select Posts for In-
Depth Article Status?
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Are In-Depth Articles in Your Higher Ed Content Strategy?

7. Are In-Depth Articles in Your Higher Ed Content
Strategy?
Slide 7
 Have publication dates of posts ranging from 2011- 2013 (but note
the example above dating back to 2005 from The New Yorker)
 Have a strong number of backlinks
 Include Authorship markup
 Include Shema.org article markup
 Include a primary image that is crawlable and indexable
 Use pagination
 Include a company logo
 One criterion that is reported above and generally perceived as quite
important is that IDAs generally come from major publishers.
 If you do some testing you will see that this is true for many,
if not most IDAs, but you will also see that some come from
much lower profile sources.
3. So how does Google Select Posts for In-
Depth Article Status?
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Are In-Depth Articles in Your Higher Ed Content Strategy?

8. Are In-Depth Articles in Your Higher Ed Content
Strategy?
Slide 8
 So really, there are two approaches you can take to
maximize your chances of being published as an IDA.
 Take an existing, long general post that has been popular and well
ranked and revise it up to meet the higher standards, (as seen
above), of an IDA. Remember, it has to be written to a general topic
(one-term keyword is best) to get IDA ranked, so select very
carefully.
 Start from scratch and create a post about a general topic that is
closely associated with your institution or your programs, for
example, nursing or accounting or social work. Develop the new post
to meet the specs, publish and roll the dice.
 Ultimately you can’t control if you get an IDA or not, pretty much like
everything with Google, but if you do manage to get listed as an IDA
you will reap the benefits.
4. An In-Depth Article Strategy for Higher Ed
Marketers
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Are In-Depth Articles in Your Higher Ed Content Strategy?

9. Are In-Depth Articles in Your Higher Ed Content
Strategy?
Slide 9
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