Higher Education Technical SEO to Solve Your Website Woes
March 16th, 2023 by
Higher Education Technical SEO to Solve Your Website Woes at #UPCEA2023
As higher education institutions continue to evolve, it’s more important than ever to ensure that their websites are up to date and optimized for organic traffic and search engine performance. To accomplish this, universities must be aware of best practices for higher education technical SEO, the implications of changes made to their websites, and the impact of subdomains and OPM microsites.
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At the 2023 UPCEA Annual Conference, Paula French of Search Influence and Alicia Jasmin of Tulane SoPA will share their hard-won knowledge to help you avoid the most costly mistakes.
What is Technical Search Engine Optimization?
Technical SEO is the process of optimizing a website’s structure and internal elements to improve its rank on search engines.
This starts with an SEO audit aimed at fixing technical issues that could be negative ranking factors that commonly hold education websites back from their full potential. Some of these technical SEO issues also make for a bad user experience, such as broken links, duplicate content, and lack of internal links.
What Are the Benefits of Technical SEO?
When implemented correctly, technical SEO can help universities maximize their organic search traffic and improve their visibility on search engines. This helps universities reach their target audiences, including prospective students, more effectively and efficiently.
You know how important it is that your digital strategy and your school website are supportive of student search intent. But all that hard work will be for naught if the search engine crawlers can’t find your great content.
You owe it to yourself to understand the common (technical) issues that many schools – and even some SEO agencies – miss when doing SEO for education websites.
If you are serious about reaching potential students with your education SEO strategies, technical SEO is as important as your content strategy.
What Will You Learn in “The Devil’s in the Details: Using Technical SEO to Solve Your Website Woes?”
Attendees will learn how technical SEO, when part of their digital marketing strategy, will help you:
- keep the search engine crawlers happy
- stay ahead of the constantly updating search algorithms
- most importantly: reach their intended audience: students
Gain insight into how website structure can affect search rankings, the impact of subdomains and microsites, and the steps needed for a successful website migration.
FAQs
Q: What is SEO?
A: SEO stands for search engine optimization, which is the process of optimizing a website’s structure and content to improve its ranking on search engines. As we learned in the Search Influence and UPCEA Higher Ed SEO Research Study it is not a given that your educational institution even has an SEO strategy.
Q: What is the difference between technical SEO and other forms of SEO for higher education?
A: Technical SEO focuses on the elements of a website’s infrastructure and coding that can affect its performance on search engine result pages (SERPs). This includes optimizing the website’s structure, fixing technical issues, and assuring the structure supports the keyword strategy.
Other forms of higher education SEO, such as on page SEO, content optimization and link building, focus on improving the quality and relevance of higher education websites’ content for users.
Q: How does technical SEO benefit universities and search engines?
A: Technical SEO is a critical piece of higher education digital marketing that can help universities maximize their organic search ranking and improve their visibility on search engines, including Google search. This helps universities reach their target audiences, including prospective students, more effectively and efficiently.
Also, technical SEO can help universities ensure their website content is of the highest quality and relevance to the user, making it more likely to be featured on the SERPs.
Q: What will I learn in Alicia and Paula’s technical SEO session?
A: You will gain insight into how website structure can affect search rankings, the impact of subdomains and microsites, and the steps needed for a successful website migration.
Case Study: Higher Ed Microsite Migration SEO
Additionally, you will learn about the latest tools available to gauge your search engine visibility, as well as tips and tricks to ensure your website is up to date and optimized.
Q: Who should attend this session at UPCEA?
A: This session is ideal for higher ed marketers and marketing teams who are looking to understand the technical SEO implications of recommendations for their websites from their education marketing agency.
It is also beneficial for those who wish to learn more about tools, processes, and strategies to make sure their SEO efforts truly optimize their online visibility for organic search traffic.
