UX × SEO

Editor's Notes

• #2: Multiplying effect you get when UX and SEO work together to develop and execute strategy from the beginning of the process.\n\nEach multiplies the impact of the other.\n
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• #4: One of our favorite clients - Old Dominion University Distance Learning - demonstrates the impact you can get when UX and SEO work together.\n
• #5: Saw huge increase in traffic, but more importantly the rate at which students who filled out the enquiry form then enrolled jumped significantly.\n\nSEO can drive traffic, but UX helps you convert.\n\nWe’ll show you the process we followed to get these sort of results, and then we’ll give you more details of the ODU case study.\n
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• #8: Most of us have spent the majority of our working career in higher ed during a period when enrollment was growing fast enough nationwide that you could screw up a lot of things and still grow enrollment.\n\nWe’re moving into a period where that will not be the case.\n
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• #10: Over the next decade, although higher ed enrollment among traditional age students is projected to increase approx. 9%, the actual number of high school graduates in the US is projected to decrease by approx. 3%.\n\nNote that this varies a lot depending on where you live. In some states graduates will increase, in some they will decrease. More on that in a minute.\n\n\n
• #11: So when you overlay the number of HS grads going on to college, you see that the percentage is increasing.\n\n\n
• #12: So when you overlay the number of HS grads going on to college, you see that the percentage is increasing.\n\n\n
• #13: But let’s look at the achievement levels of high school graduates. These percentages haven’t changed much in the last 15 years, so we shouldn’t expect them to change much in the next 10.\n\n
• #14: We’re making an assumption here that most students who are Advanced or Proficient are already going to college. So if the percentage of high school graduates who go on to college is going to increase, then it is more likely to come from the students who are on the lower end of the achievement scale.\n\n\n
• #15: We’re making an assumption here that most students who are Advanced or Proficient are already going to college. So if the percentage of high school graduates who go on to college is going to increase, then it is more likely to come from the students who are on the lower end of the achievement scale.\n\n\n
• #16: We’re making an assumption here that most students who are Advanced or Proficient are already going to college. So if the percentage of high school graduates who go on to college is going to increase, then it is more likely to come from the students who are on the lower end of the achievement scale.\n\n\n
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• #19: So when you overlay the number of HS grads going on to college, you see that the percentage is increasing.\n\n\n
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• #29: Over the last year Google has incorporated more and more UX factors into how it ranks websites. So UX is becoming critical for good SEO.\n\n\n
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• #33: - Find out user info goals, what motivates them to act\n- How this affect search behaviors\n
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• #35: Among other things, you are trying to get out some goals that you can then track and measure and use SEO to support. \n\nSome other great resources for example stakeholder interview questions: Kevin Hoffman A List Apart article Aug. 2010 and Undercover User Experience Design\n\n
• #36: - Take feedback from and suss out goals that you can quantify for SEO. Follow-up with questions if needed.\n- Set arbitrary (but realistic) targets if you don’t have real numbers in mind.\n- You might have more definite goals: like increase enrollment of students- SEO can find out how much traffic you get \n\n\n
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• #38: -setting up at beginning\n-If using Google Analytics, doesn’t apply to past data\n-different types of profiles, traffic\n-comparing the right time periods\n
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• #44: Digging into your analytics can tell us what keywords users are using to get to your site, but it doesn’t always tell us what they were really looking for or what’s important to them\n\nExample?\n\nSo, let’s ask them!\n
• #45: Example of results we got in a recent survey. You see lots of overlap in the words survey takers used; e.g., reputation, ranking, prestige, quality...\n\nIt also reveals a common search behavior pattern: searching on major, searching by “best program in ____”\n\nBut we like to dig in on these keywords; SEO can send traffic to our site by optimizing on those search terms, but can we “convert” those users by making sure we answer the content questions they have.\n\nWe primarily do this by talking to users. The intercept survey I just showed you is a great way to contact students for follow-up on responses to their answers. Follow-up with you said reputation, atmosphere, and academics were the 3 most important items to you. Ask them what do those things mean to you? Size can mean many things for example—class size, student-to-teacher ratios, can I walk to classes? will I feel overwhelmed? are you big enough for me to feel energized?...\n
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• #47: You don’t need to do academic research here. You are just trying to get a better idea of what students are looking for and how they talk about it. \n\nKJs\nFocus Questions\n- What do you come to the website to find or do? (Vote for your top 6)\n- How do you know a college fits? What things do you look for? (Vote for your top 3)\n\nOne-on-one interviews\n- Cover some of the same questions: what do you look for on the website, what are your top criteria?\n\nThe UX research often takes this interview data and sums up the findings in personas and task maps....\n\nTake note of the language they use—this is a great place to start researching keywords and looking at search behavior.\n\n\n\n
• #48: Maria, a solid A/B student who is already thinking about career\n
• #49: WHAT will they search? (right terms to attract qualified leads)\nWHEN will they search? (time)\nWHY will they search? (goals - bad goals)\nHOW will they search? (methods / mediums)\n
• #50: Took all the feedback from KJs and a collection of one-on-one interviews conducted over the course of a very intense week. \n\nThis is showing a sample of top information goals around courses (majors). Prospective students were really concerned about digging into the core of what the major entailed—\n• what topics will be covered, \n• what will my professors be like, \n• will I learn what I want to learn\n\nSEO can look at these information goals and see what areas are ideal for optimization\n
• #51: SEO can highlight the items Jessica: top things to optimize\nEach of these could be an entry point where prospective students would begin their journey\n
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• #53: We ask current students, among many other things, what have been the best parts of their program?\nUse this to identify potential content for top optimization\n
• #54: These can inform users’ search terms\n
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• #56: Gerry McGovern, Customer Carewords: ask users which 10 keywords would they click on when visiting your site.\n\nWe use the words from the KJs, user research, and keywords from early SEO research to survey suers on what they would click \n\nIn this example for University of Portsmouth, we see the prevalence of course related content—which we also found in the KJ session. In the KJ session, we found top information goals around courses \n
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• #63: Using the search phrase about 3-5 times for a 200 - 500 word page.\n\nUse phrase in page title\n\nUse it in the meta description tag because this is what Google shows as the page description in your search results. Even though this doesn’t help your ranking per se, it can help your click throughs.\n\n\n
• #64: -content\n-title\n-meta description\n-links / anchor text\n-alt tags\n\nData shows that appearing in both the organic results (center) and paid results (right column) increases your likelihood of getting a click.\n
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• #68: ODU’s site before we started.\n\n\n
• #69: Developed a series of personas based on user research.\n\n\n
• #70: One of the questions that all personas had was how distance or online learning really works. We knew we had to overcome this obstacle before anyone would convert, so we planned the content that would help make our case.\n\n\n
• #71: Designed version of this landing page\n
• #72: Google’s keyword research tool.\n\nWe use this and other keyword tools to identify keywords and phrases that a) real people are actually searching for, and b) match up with the programs ODU wants to promote\n
• #73: Carewords survey incorporates those keywords, helps us determine which links on the website people are most likely to click on.\n
• #74: Harder to optimize a home page since there is typically much less text. We created a home page where much of the interaction actually happens while still on the page. So from Google’s standpoint, there is more content on this page than you see when you first open it.\n
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• #76: More people search on “mod sim degree” which is an abbreviation of “modeling and simulation.” Notice how we worked “Mod Sim” into the body copy as an abbreviation.\n\nAlso, the content under each tab is actually part of this same page, so it makes it easier for us to optimize.\n
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