When was the last time you went to find something at a store and either the product had moved aisles and/or was no longer in the same location? Better yet… when was the last time you went to a store and needed to ask if they sold a specific product? How did you handle the request, ask someone, get frustrated and walk around trying to find it, just buy something else instead?

We’ve all been there and done that in a store… but how many of us have done this online?

Daily I am frustrated whether trying to find a phone number, address, specific product/service. What is the answer to this problem and how can we address it?

Three little words… Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

SEO is the answer to aligning people’s searches with your offerings. A match made in heaven (if done right). But, what if you have not ever done any SEO work, don’t have a champion, hope that your web team is doing it along with the 1300 other things that they are responsible for? Answer: conduct an SEO Assessment to determine how your site is preforming.

As you think about an SEO Assessment and your college’s web site:

Programmatic offerings – How are you describing your programatic offerings and what keywords are you choosing to use? Do you know how many times those keywords are searched each month and how your competition is ranking? Are you pulling the researched and approved keywords into all other marketing materials, web copy, video and blogs. All of these venues matter when thinking about SEO.

Google Analytics – Are you using your Google Analytics SEO reports to determine how people are getting to your site and what words and phrases they are using to land at your institutions URL? Review these reports monthly and make sure that you are optimizing for these words. Use Google Analytics to understand user path into your site and how people are finding you.

Additional Indexed Pages – Each additional page that you publish that incorporates your chosen keywords via blog or other content page strengthens your SEO efforts. As you create additional pages and incorporate link building, video and social sharing you strengthen your SEO opportunities.

By utilizing SEO best practices, and focusing on SEO as a part of your marketing strategy you will be well on your way to helping people find the semi-skimmed milk that they are looking for.