UX × SEO

UX × SEO

Thursday, September 27, 12 1
Multiplying effect you get when UX and SEO work together to develop and execute strategy from
the beginning of the process.

Each multiplies the impact of the other.

A couple of things before we start
Presentation will be on slideshare linked from EdUI site
David Poteet, President
@davidpoteet david@insidenewcity.com
Melissa Beaver, Director of UX
@misb melissa@insidenewcity.com
Jessica Behal, Director of Internet Marketing
@jes525 jessica@insidenewcity.com
Questions at the end


One of our favorite clients - Old Dominion University Distance Learning - demonstrates the
impact you can get when UX and SEO work together.

ODU DISTANCE LEARNING - RESULTS

Enquiry
Traffic to Enroll

Fall of 2011 140/day 3%
Fall of 2012 3,064/day 20%

Saw huge increase in traffic, but more importantly the rate at which students who ﬁlled out the
enquiry form then enrolled jumped signiﬁcantly.

SEO can drive traffic, but UX helps you convert.

We’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.

Deﬁnitions
User Experience
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or “Organic”
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or “Pay Per Click”
Analytics
Conversion
Funnel


Why This Matters


US ENROLLMENT TRENDS (MILLIONS)
15

9% 13.1
12.5 12.1

10
32%
8
7.5
5.5
5 4.6
4.1
3.4 3.5
2.8
2.5

0
1995 2009 2020 (projected)

18-24 25-34 35 and over

Source:
Na+onal
Center
for
Educa+on
Sta+s+cs
h5p://nces.ed.gov/pubs2011/2011026.pdf

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.

We’re moving into a period where that will not be the case.

HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES
3,500,000
-3%
3,000,000
32%

2,500,000

2,000,000

1,500,000

1,000,000

500,000

0
1995 2009 2020 (projected)

Source:
Na+onal
Center
for
Educa+on
Sta+s+cs
h5p://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/current_tables.asp

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%.

Note 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.

ATTENDING 2 OR 4 YEAR COLLEGE
3,500,000
-3%
3,000,000
32%

2,500,000
80%
2,000,000 70%

1,500,000
62%
1,000,000

500,000

0
1995 2009 2020 (projected)

Source:
Na+onal
Center
for
Educa+on
Sta+s+cs

So when you overlay the number of HS grads going on to college, you see that the percentage is
increasing.

12TH GRADE ACHIEVEMENT
LEVELS IN 2009

Reading Math
5% 3%
27% 24%
< Basic 37%
35% ≥ Basic
≥ Proficient
Advanced

33% 36%

Source:
Na+onal
Center
for
Educa+on
Sta+s+cs

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.

ACHIEVEMENT LEVELS
3,500,000
-3%
3,000,000
32%

2,500,000

2,000,000

1,500,000

1,000,000

500,000

0
1995 2009 2020 (projected)

Advanced Proficient Basic or below

Source:
Na+onal
Center
for
Educa+on
Sta+s+cs

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.

Your mileage will vary
CHANGES IN HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION LEVELS BY STATE


Source:
Na+onal
Center
for
Educa+on
Sta+s+cs
h5p://nces.ed.gov/pubs2011/2011026.pdf


2,000,000

1,750,000

1,500,000

1,250,000

1,000,000

750,000

500,000

250,000

0
1995 2009 2020 (projected)

White Black Hispanic Asian/Pacific Islander

Source:
Na+onal
Center
for
Educa+on
Sta+s+cs

So when you overlay the number of HS grads going on to college, you see that the percentage is
increasing.

REALITY CHECK
You will have to work harder to
reach the best students.


So Why SEO?


HOW STUDENTS BUILD THEIR
LIST OF POSSIBLE SCHOOLS

Source:
Noel
Levitz
2012
E-‐Expecta+ons
Report
h5ps://www.noellevitz.com/papers-‐research-‐higher-‐educa+on/2012/2012-‐e-‐expecta+ons-‐report


WHO’S DOING IT?

100

75

50

25

0
Organic PPC Using Analytics

4 Yr Private 4 Yr Public 2 Yr Public
Source:
Noel
Levitz
2012
E-‐Recrui+ng
Prac+ces
&
Trends
at
Four-‐Year
and
Two-‐Year
Ins+tu+ons
h5ps://www.noellevitz.com/papers-‐research-‐higher-‐educa+on/2012/2012-‐e-‐recrui+ng-‐prac+ces-‐and-‐trends-‐at-‐four-‐year-‐and-‐two-‐year-‐ins+tu+ons


Why they ﬁght


Why UX & SEO Fight
SEO expert usually brought in after the site has already been
built.
Seen by rest of the team as adding “keyword spam”
Often just focused on “traffic” without understanding of real
user goals.
UX plans sites without considering needs of SEO and analytics
Not enough content in the right places to optimize
Links and titles don’t match the way people search
Hard/impossible to track clickstream through to conversion


SEO Needs UX
Why high bounce rates?
Why dropoff in conversion
funnels?
Inbound keywords can indicate
user goals
When more traffic ≠ more
conversions
Wrong traffic?
UX problems?


UX Needs SEO
Prioritize based on
measurable demand
Use common language
keywords and phrases
Quantify $$ impact
Settles political debates
Reveals untapped market
demand


GOOGLEBOT EATS UX!!

Content strategy Brand strength
Navigation & overall Clear concise message
experience
http://www.seobook.com/learn-seo/infographics/brand-branding-brands.php

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.

PROCESS OVERVIEW
What are we trying Who are our users? Develop site
to make happen? What do they want? architecture & and
campaign strategy

What’s happening How do they search? How can we track goals
now? and patterns?

Create human & Design & test Launch
robot friendly content

Prototype & test Build & test Measure & improve


RESEARCH & STRATEGY
campaign strategy

now? and patterns?



- Find out user info goals, what motivates them to act
- How this affect search behaviors

What are we trying to make happen?
UNCOVERING BUSINESS GOALS THROUGH STAKEHOLDER INTERVIEWS


What are we trying to make happen?
What are the priorities for your institution?
What (3 things) should the website accomplish for your
institution?
How will you personally define success for this project?

Among other things, you are trying to get out some goals that you can then track and measure
and use SEO to support.

Some other great resources for example stakeholder interview questions: Kevin Hoffman A List
Apart article Aug. 2010 and Undercover User Experience Design

Identify Measurable Goals
Goal: Increase enrollment
- How can the website support yield?
- How much? By what date? From a particular region? In specific majors?
- Higher GPAs, better SATs
Goal: Promote new program
- Generate web traffic—how much? Increase inquiries? Track “buzz”?
Goal: Balance portrayal of fun with academic rigor
Goal: People in business know what we do

- Take feedback from and suss out goals that you can quantify for SEO. Follow-up with questions
if needed.
- Set arbitrary (but realistic) targets if you don’t have real numbers in mind.
- You might have more deﬁnite goals: like increase enrollment of students
- SEO can ﬁnd out how much traffic you get

What’s really happening right now?
DIGGING INTO ANALYTICS


Setup Google Analytics

-setting up at beginning
-If using Google Analytics, doesn’t apply to past data
-different types of proﬁles, traffic
-comparing the right time periods

How current insights help UX
Identifying Patterns


How current insights help UX
Top pages and paths
Sources & keywords give clues about goals


How UX research guides SEO strategy
INTERCEPT SURVEYS, KJ SESSIONS, USER INTERVIEWS


Intercept Survey
What did you come to
sitename.edu looking for today?
Are you a... [audience group]?
Optional
Top 3 Criteria
Name & E-mail

Using Ethnio.com

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

Example?

So, let’s ask them!

WHAT ARE YOUR TOP 3 CRITERIA?

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...

It also reveals a common search behavior pattern: searching on major, searching by “best program
in ____”

But 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.

We 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?...

KJ SESSION AT ST. VINCENT’S COLLEGE

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.

KJs
Focus Questions
- What do you come to the website to find or do? (Vote for your top 6)
- How do you know a college fits? What things do you look for? (Vote for your top 3)

One-on-one interviews
- Cover some of the same questions: what do you look for on the website, what are your top
criteria?

The UX research often takes this interview data and sums up the findings in personas and task
maps....

Take note of the language they use—this is a great place to start researching keywords and
looking at search behavior.

Personas, University of Portsmouth
Maria Daniel
• Works hard, has good college • Good student but has
scores struggled academically
• Wants to study International • Doesn’t test well due to
Relations & Spanish slight dyslexia
• Wants to work at an embassy • Not sure which course he’ll take,
• Considering going on to a maybe computing & technology
postgraduate degree • Can he get help & not be
stressed out?

Christian Sophie
• International student • In her early 30s, took time
finishing his IB out from school to start a
• UK degree is more respected family
by employers • Currently enrolled in college
• Wants to be able to work • Wants to become a teacher
outside his home country • Can only consider universities
• Getting recommendations nearby
from a local agency

Maria, a solid A/B student who is already thinking about career

Personas
Maria
• WHAT - international relations degree
international relations postgraduate courses
international relations uni
postgraduate spanish courses

• WHEN - 1 year before application
early fall of final year

• WHY - identify universities where I can study what I want to be
identify universities with helpful, knowledgable and good lecturers
identify universities with great potential for future careers
identify universities where she will be supported

• HOW - friends
search engines
family
teacher recommendations


• WHAT will they search? (right terms to attract qualified leads)
• WHEN will they search? (time)
• WHY will they search? (goals - bad goals)
• HOW will they search? (methods / mediums)

TOP USER TASKS

Took all the feedback from KJs and a collection of one-on-one interviews conducted over the
course of a very intense week.

This 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—

• what topics will be covered,

• what will my professors be like,

• will I learn what I want to learn

SEO can look at these information goals and see what areas are ideal for optimization

TOP USER TASKS

SEO can highlight the items Jessica: top things to optimize
Each of these could be an entry point where prospective students would begin their journey

KEYWORD RESEARCH


KEYWORDS TO CAREWORDS

Gerry McGovern, Customer Carewords: ask users which 10 keywords would they click on when
visiting your site.

We use the words from the KJs, user research, and keywords from early SEO research to survey
suers on what they would click

In 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

ARCHITECTURE
campaign strategy

now? and patterns?




KEYWORDS TO CAREWORDS TO SITE ARCHITECTURE


Sanity Check
How are we going to track everything that UX is planning?
What patterns would we like to be able to track?
Pitfalls
Offline
3rd party tools
Mobile
Forms
URL changes


campaign strategy

now? and patterns?



CONTENT & PROTOTYPE


EXAMPLE OF PAGE EDITING

Using the search phrase about 3-5 times for a 200 - 500 word page.

Use phrase in page title

Use 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.

ORGANIC AND PAID LINKS FOR CHATHAM HALL

-content
-title
-meta description
-links / anchor text
-alt tags

Data shows that appearing in both the organic results (center) and paid results (right column)
increases your likelihood of getting a click.

campaign strategy

now? and patterns?



AFTER LAUNCH


Ongoing Testing & Optimization
Usability testing
Mini-feedback surveys / intercept surveys
A/B testing
Tools
UserTesting.com
VisualWebsiteOptimizer.com
Optimizely.com
CrazyEgg.com
Usabilia.com


Putting it all together


ODU DISTANCE LEARNING - BEFORE
CURRENT DL.ODU.EDU SITE

ODU’s site before we started.

PERSONAS
Greg, manager
BS in Human Services
Considering MA

Tiffany, mom
Wants to finish degree Beth, engineer
in education Pursuing MS in
Engineering

Developed a series of personas based on user research.

ADDRESSING THE BIGGEST QUESTION

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.

“HOW IT WORKS” DESIGN

Designed version of this landing page

KEYWORDS

Google’s keyword research tool.

We 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

CAREWORDS

Carewords survey incorporates those keywords, helps us determine which links on the website
people are most likely to click on.

OPTIMIZING CONTENT

HOME PAGE
“distance learning degree va” #1

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.

ODU SEARCH RANKING


OPTIMIZING CONTENT

MODELING & SIMULATION DEGREE
“mod sim degree” #1

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.

Also, the content under each tab is actually part of this same page, so it makes it easier for us to
optimize.

OPTIMIZING CONTENT

CRIMINAL JUSTICE (BS/BA)
“virginia criminal justice distance learning” #2


OPTIMIZING CONTENT

ENGLISH (PhD)
“online PhD in english” #4


COMPREHENSIVE CAMPAIGN


ODU DISTANCE LEARNING - GROWTH IN VISITS

NewCity kicks off campaign in April 2011


ODU DISTANCE LEARNING - RESULTS

Enquiry
Traffic to Enroll

Fall of 2011 140/day 3%
Fall of 2012 3,064/day 20%

Fall 2012 enrollment +26%
Partner community colleges see enrollment
increases as high as 38%


Read more
Killer Web Content Search Analytics
by Gerry McGovern by Louis Rosenfeld
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/ http://www.rosenfeldmedia.com
Letting Go of the Words Web Analytics 2.0
by Ginny Redish by Avinash Kaushik
http://www.redish.net/ http://www.kaushik.net
Call to Action
by Bryan Eisenberg and Jeffery
Eisenberg
http://www.futurenowinc.com/


Questions?


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