Specifications include, but are not limited to: The University of North Dakota (UND) is seeking professional search engine optimization (SEO) services to advance our enrollment focused SEO efforts. The UND website has a Program Finder where prospective students go to “shop” for academic programs they might be interested in. In 2021, we noticed Program Finder organic traffic was declining. We invested in Siteimprove’s SEO tool and implemented keyword activity plans for most academic programs. This has resulted in a reverse of the downward trend and a 16.5% increase in organic traffic. Most organic traffic growth has come from programs with the keyword “online” in the targeted keyword phrase. However, we struggle to compete with online giants like Arizona State University and Southern New Hampshire University. This is of particular concern for our online programs where we recruit in the entire United States. Task 1. Discovery We seek to obtain a high-level understanding of our current SEO position – specifically among our prospective student audience visiting the Program Finder and Admissions pages. This task is expected to answer questions such as: What is working/not working with our current Program Finder SEO activity plans in Siteimprove? What traffic is driving conversions (RMI, visit, apply)? What opportunities are we missing? Are we satisfying our prospective student search intent? Task 2. Competitor Analysis Our search competitors are not always intuitions of higher education and vary greatly by program of study. Siteimprove shows what competitors are outperforming us per program, but we don’t know how to surpass our competition. What is realistic and what isn’t? What do we need to do to gain a competitive advantage? We’d also like to know how our overall SEO performance compares to our peer intuitions (pre and post project), specifically: North Dakota State University University of Minnesota – Twin Cities Task 3. Technical Fixes We need a healthier site that will drive lead generation. Siteimprove identified several technical fixes we need to do to improve SEO. Our internal technical team is working on these fixes but should be advised on best practices. We will also entertain a vendor performing the back-end work to expedite getting this work done. Mobile speed Redirect chains Pages with a navigation depth beyond 5 Desktop speed
