StudyWorld: our takeaways
By Eliza Kruczkowska on
It’s has been a week since StudyWorld, the leading international student recruitment fair which took place in London. This year the event gave us the opportunity to connect with more than 850 of the best industry contacts from over 60 different countries. Education providers, study abroad agents and related service providers met to talk about future business and cooperation. Representatives of Internet Advantage had their own stand, which hosted various meetings to talk about online marketing for the education sector. Why was discussing about the web presence so important?
Because there is no doubt that there is an increasing trend in the use of the internet by parents and students when searching for information on schools, colleges and other educational institutions. Web searching services such as Google and Yahoo are now tools that people use every day to find information. That makes the web a new sales channel for many educational institutions. Therefore it’s about time that schools, colleges and educational institutions take a step towards establishing strong online presence.
A website is only useful if people are able to find it easily. With about 80% of the traffic originating on search engines, it becomes absolutely important for schools to be found there. But remember, that visitors see your website through human eyes, and search engines see your website through algorithmic eyes. What should they do then? Our consultants would say: start with optimization of you site.
Although not visible to visitors of your page, there are certain elements on each page that you need to optimize in order to get attention from search engines. There are a few pillars of Search Engine Optimization (SEO):
- clean and crawlable structure of website
- relevant and optimized content
- inbound links to your website
- tracking and analyzing performance of your website
In other words, SEO is the process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” or “natural” listings on search engines. The higher your page is positioned, the more likely it is to be clicked on. Most people click on results that are on the first page so if your site is showing up on page 4 then it’s still very unlikely to get any visitors. So, imagine if you could increase your traffic by 10-20% by simply incorporating optimization around your website structure and optimizing your website content. Using an experienced consultant could make it easier for your potential clients on the web find your services when they are looking for it. If a 10% increase in traffic resulted in 10% more alumni or 10% more student applications, would you consider a technical audit of your site? You shouldbecause nowadays SEO is as essential as having a website.
If you would like to know more, please check out 10 online marketing tips for schools and educational institutions.