Content must not only pique the interest and meet the needs of a site’s human visitors, but it must be equally nutritious to the Pac Man appetites of the search engines of Google, Yahoo, and others. Every search engine has an application — crawler, spider, or bot — that finds and follows the links of your site, sending back a list to a database, which is then analyzed by the search engine’s proprietary algorithm to rank your pages and serve up a search engine results page (or SERP, in the lingo). Optimizing your site for search requires having content, structure, and technology that help both the crawler move over the site and the search engine rank the results.

Search optimization is a mix of science and magic and a continually moving target. Even the search engine optimization (SEO) experts don’t agree on all techniques. And an .edu site is going to have different priorities for SEO than a business site that exists for e-commerce. But since many SEO techniques are easy and actually encourage good organization and content practices, adopting them as part of your site development and maintenance guidelines is not a waste of time, particularly in an era of belt-tightening for traditional marketing budgets. Here are seven tips gleaned from the realm of SEO to get you started:

1. Use descriptive page titles — We’re talking the TITLE tag here, and it’s one of the first things that both humans and robots encounter. Make sure your pages have descriptive titles with keywords. Simply repeating the name of your institution on every page is not sufficient. Each page should have a unique page title, with keywords (but not stuffed with keywords) relevant to the page content, front loaded with the words that matter most. Aim for no more than 66 characters and use title case.

2. Put effort into the most valuable meta tags — The meta description tag deserves your attention, not necessarily for its influence over rankings, but because its content can be what search engines display on SERPs. You want to control that display, not leave it up to the crawler’s best guess. It should be around 160 characters and be unique to each page. The meta keyword tag has been so abused with spamming that it has low to zero influence on search engines. If you use it, it should be different on every page. Simply repeating the same words in the keywords tag on every page of your site may look more spammy than legitimate to a search engine.

3. Use heading tags – Headlines are looked at with more importance by crawlers than body text. The H1, H2, and so on tags are a way to indicate headlines and their relative importance to search engines. In the dark ages before CSS, we were saddled with fixed heading sizes that were often too big or too small or otherwise ugly in the layout, so we sometimes used other tags (or even images, gasp) to style headlines. Now with CSS we can visually style H tags any way we like, and they can be used to add robot-readable structure to a web page. Heads should be both descriptive and have relevant keywords when possible.

4. Write one topic per page – This is a tip followed by most pro content developers. Not only does it help your human readers, but the algorithms that search engine crawlers use work best on one topic at at time. Keeping focused in your writing also makes it easier to come up with keywords and meta descriptions for a page. Since you’re sticking to one topic per page, you can also keep it short and get to to the point quickly, right? Headlines, subheads, and concise paragraphs are good SEO writing, and consistency among those helps search engine crawlers (and humans) understand your content.

5. Don’t be lazy with your links — The anchor text of a link gives descriptive information about the content of the link’s destination page and can influence search engine rankings. Lazily written “click here” links, for example, tell nothing about the destination page, but may get you a top ranking for “click here.” (Search “click here” in Google. Hello, Adobe.) Use keywords in the link text that are relevant to the destination page. And while you’re at it, pay attention to linking to the PDFs, videos, images, and similar assets that are all part of today’s sites. For example, a search engine cannot tell that’s the spring commencement video unless the link to it says “spring commencement video,” and it is placed next to text in the page about spring commencement. And, by the way, for similar reasons make sure all your images (including logos and images used as buttons) have appropriate text in their ALT tags.

6. Understand the search implications of technologies – This is a whole topic unto itself, but be aware of search implications of your technical choices. Flash for example, has improved in its ability to be indexed and to allow search engines to find the content and links embedded within Flash objects. But it’s unlikely that search engines will open themselves up to full compatibility with Flash, because that would also open the door to being gamed by an unethical optimizer. Current search engines don’t generally index Flash content on par with HTML. HTML pages will get ranked higher.

There are similar challenges with AJAX and JavaScript. Search engines can’t deal very well with the dynamic and “pageless” content that can be enabled by these technologies. The functional and stylish enhancements that JavaScript can bring to a site’s navigation can also block a search engine’s ability to build a model of the site’s link structure. Search engines can only see the initial page load. If AJAX is used to later alter that content, the new content won’t be seen by a search engine. There are techniques to deal with these issues that you may want to consider.

And finally, with the growing popularity of content management systems (CMS) in education, institutions are faced with a whole slew of additional considerations that affect search. For example, it’s not uncommon to “restart” a site within a CMS, generating a new URL structure for all the content. Search engines, however, have indexed your site using the previous URLs. You are effectively starting over at ground zero with search engines when you flip the CMS switch. Content management systems can also generate problematic URLs along with cloned and duplicated content, which also don’t make search engines happy. If you’re considering a CMS, questions to the vendor about how it supports search are in order.

7. Bring back the site map — And finally, have a good old site map page, a hierarchical list of all the links of the site. The popularity of providing site maps has waned, but they are good for SEO. For one thing, such an alternative link structure can help make up for issues being caused by JavaScript, AJAX, and other crawler blockers. Also including the site map’s links at /sitemap.xml and /sitemap.txt can help search engines understand your site’s structure.

Like all things web, developing for search optimization is a balance between human needs and the needs of technology. It can be challenging, but in many cases what works well for one — structure, conciseness, explanation, consistency — also benefits the other. Search optimized content can be a win win for human and robot.

[U]nlike viral, community requires a different set of objectives, strategy and tactics around measurement. Yet, intuitively, brands realize there is value to them. That’s because if we take our bright and shiny marketing hats off for a moment, we realize that it’s likely we are part of them. … People who use social networks also feel like they’re part of a larger community of people they relate to.

Regardless of whether you’re considering starting an online community, Armano provides a concise framework for any online presence—and for any brand initiative for that matter:

Content
When considering community initiatives, there are three questions to ask: Where will the content come from? Does it provide indisputable value? Can a regular flow of quality content be maintained?

Context
Context means understanding how to meet people where they are and serving them the right experience at the right time. Well-designed applications and functionality have great opportunities to deliver on context.

Connectivity
… It’s not about mass communications but more about the micro-interactions …. Designing experiences that support thousands of micro-interactions means you are making a commitment vs. trying to produce a one-hit wonder. …

Continuity
Communities … need to be flexible to evolve while still providing a valuable and consistent user experience which can be sustained.

Read the full article here.

Contributed by: Terry Hamrick
Director of Interactive Services, Stein Communications

Let me state what you and I already know: The web has become the first choice for researching a wide range of topics, from the best microwave to the best college or university. Word of mouth on the Internet and web users seeking reassurance about their choices and decisions — in social media such as blogs and online communities, among others — are powerful new trends that are reshaping marketing, public relations, and the way institutions, both private and public, interact with their audiences and constituents.

From the growing pile of studies showing the importance of the web in the college search process, let’s take a quick review of results from a recent study released by The Princeton Review.

First choice for researching colleges
The 2006 National Survey of Website Usage in Undergraduate and Graduate School Search (.doc) (6,885 undergraduate surveys; 2,184 graduate) shows that undergraduate school-bound students spend 80.5 percent of their total school search and research time using the web. Graduate school-bound students spend 81.7 percent of their total search and research time on the web.

Furthermore, according to the study, school-bound students rate as their five most valuable search aids/tools (in terms of percentage reporting valuable and very valuable):

Undergraduate school-bound

• Institutional web sites, 82 percent
• Print materials, 77 percent
• The school visit, 66 percent
• Higher education research websites, 65 percent
• Guide books, 60 percent

Graduate school-bound

• Institutional web sites, 76 percent
• Graduate school admissions staff, 57 percent
• Higher education research web sites, 55 percent
• Print materials, 52 percent
• Graduate school rankings, 51 percent

With these kinds of numbers and trends in mind, the issue is no longer if the web should be considered a critical facet of institutional communications and marketing, but when, and by how much, it should be funded and staffed as an essential communications and outreach function of the college or university.

We are beyond the question of traditional channels (viewbooks, ads, PR, news releases, etc.) versus the Internet channel (and all its facets). Today, it has to be both.

Your brand face to the world
Your web site is your brand face to the world. Its visibility can be tens to hundreds of thousands of views a month, available 24/7, and its reach is potentially every computer user on the globe.

Now, you’re not going to be visited by every computer user on the globe, but the actual and potential visibility of your institution’s web site underscores the need for it to be top-of-mind in any strategy planning involving the institution’s branding, messaging, communications, and — not to be overlooked — improved customer service initiatives. Nothing has the potential to telegraph an institution’s organizational discord, inefficient processes, and lack of mission focus more quickly than its web site.

And while the web makes it easy to publish lots of content — and academic institutions certainly have no lack of content — the uncoordinated publishing of that content can be highly counterproductive. It’s important to move beyond the “because we can, we should” publish-it-on-the-web thinking of the last century. We all know how busy and information-overloaded everybody is in this century. Your site visitors are no exception. They are looking to use their time efficiently on your site. After all, they also have to check their MySpace page, answer waiting IMs, and text the gang.

You need to provide key site visitors with content and web services better focused on their specific needs and the tasks they want to accomplish online. This may entail difficult, but necessary, decisions on site audiences, approach, and focus. And it will require dedicated and continuing attention to the details.

Dedicated staff and funding
With that in mind, oversight of this critical communications channel should have dedicated staff and funding. This seems obvious, but I still encounter a surprising number of institutions where site management is unfocused and scattered, with those trying to do the job working in a vacuum of limited support from the top.

As a beginning, an institution should look at adding, or identifying from current staff, at least one full-time staff member whose duties are solely based on the communications, messaging, and content aspects of the web site. I’ll call this person the Web Content Manager — but it could be Web Editor, Web Communications Director, pick your title — with the intention that this position is oriented towards content, user experience, and site management; and is not a webmaster, developer, or other technical position. (You need the techies too.)

I see the Web Content Manager (WCM) as a bridge person who works with both the campus community and the IT side to ensure that an institution’s web experience is of the highest possible quality and on target. For example, the WCM:

• Makes sure marketing, branding, and style standards are applied site-wide.
• Ensures consistency of content and message and cheerleads content contributors across campus.
• Champions the user experience of site visitors and works with IT and administration to ensure that technical decisions and site features are always pro-site visitor.
• Works as an evangelist for web communications and technologies in institutional funding and policy decisions.

Needless to say, depending on the size of your institution and site, the WCM may be just the starting point for a more expansive and dedicated web management staff, perhaps with a mix of additional full-time, part-time/student intern, and external contract/as-needed staffing.

What happens after launch?
When an institution undergoes a web redesign project, an important (and unfortunately often inadequately addressed) question for the college or university becomes: What happens after launch?

It should be remembered that your new, attractively designed and appropriately branded pages are meant first and foremost to be found and read. The launch of a new site without an ongoing maintenance plan or staffing and budgeting in place to manage the content, navigation continuity, and design of the new site going forward will only result, in fairly short order, in a new site with the same old familiar problems.

Lack of post-launch attention is not the way to ensure the best return on your institution’s considerable investment of the time and money involved in a site redesign. Furthermore, for those thinking along the lines of a content management system “magic bullet,” the installation of a CMS will not solve issues of content relevance and maintenance. While the CMS can provide a consistently structured and accessible presentation of your site; there is, as far as I know, no CMS to date that can write, edit copy, recruit content contributors, or take attractive photos.

Plan for your web site to succeed. Dedicate the resources — both staffing and funding — to allow your web site to flourish and serve as a beneficial resource to your key constituents, particularly prospective students. They’ll appreciate your effort, and you’re sure to see positive results.