Challenge
As a college, with over 20 distinct categories of programs, Sault College’s needs for a successful SEO strategy are unique. The Sault College website contains a vast amount of content and categories of content to optimize on-page. The variance in content categories also equates to numerous audience cohorts and therefore an enormous amount of valuable keywords, phrases, and applicable backlink opportunities.
Approach
This project involved the researching of keywords and phrases to select relevant search terms for website copy, the optimization of on-page SEO, recommendations for additional web pages and content for the purpose of ‘catching’ high value keywords and search phrases, and providing traffic and ranking reports for Sault College’s website. dig categorized keywords and search phrases by program, developing a list to be used for each of the College’s programs sections on the website. We also completed a review of the College’s backlink profile, highlighting high value opportunities for repair and improvement. Finally, dig completed a review of technical issues impacting SEO scores, prioritizing these into quick fixes, high priority, and long-term goals.
Results
- Sault College has used the keyword document to guide optimization and copywriting during the redevelopment of their website and has seen increased levels of organic traffic as well as overall engagement on-site.
- While completing keyword research, we noticed a significant amount of highly searched, long-tailed phrases that were relevant to a user’s journey in choosing a job and/or training in a certain field, but were not necessarily relevant to the program-specific content on the website. dig has assisted the College in using these phrases to develop additional pages on the website to capture these related searches and traffic, providing further high-value interactions on the website and increasing relevance to search engines.
- One example is a page based on the phrase ‘what can you do with a business diploma’. A page supplementary to the business program page was created with relevant content using this and other related terms and phrases. This page has consistently seen 100 organic page views per month since, adding to the 120~ monthly organic page views on the primary business program page.
- As an added benefit, dig has also utilized the keyword document to guide paid search campaigns. Paid search campaigns have also seen improvement with more relevant landing pages for program-specific advertisements.
