B.S. PACKAGING SUB-SITE
SEO REPORT
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - STOUT
Inspiring Innovation. Learn more at www.uwstout.edu
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
OVERVIEW
ABOUT
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Sub-site of the larger UW-Stout’s website
Landing page for perspective students and their parents
Current students also use the site for program plans and resources
One of 47 program sub-sites
Has not been actively updated since 2011
Current site:
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High search engine traffic
High bounce rate
Fails basic SEO practices
Low domain authority
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
OVERVIEW
GOAL
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Search engine traffic will have improved site expectations and feel
the content is valuable
– Decrease the bounce rate
– Increase user engagement and time on site.
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Improve direct traffic numbers with increase awareness through
social media presence
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
OVERVIEW
TIMEFRAME
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Changes suggested will take one to two months to initiate with
quantitative results in one year.
– Due to the significant traffic increases and decrease throughout the
year due to recruitment cycles a month-to-month analysis would not be
sufficient to judge success
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This is not just a one-time fix.
– Commitment to maintain good content and SEO practices
– Engage in social media at least once a week
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
CURRENT DATA
TRAFFIC
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Overall Traffic – Past 90 days
– Page views: 2,438
– Unique Page views: 1,934
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
CURRENT DATA
TRAFFIC
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Traffic Breakdown
332
12
Search Engine - Google,
bing, etc. search
Referral - Link from another
website
465
Direct - entered web
address
Email - link from an email
1628
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
CURRENT DATA
TRAFFIC
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Overall Traffic – Year Over Year (YOY)
20,000
18,000
16,000
Pageviews
14,000
7797
12,000
6,437
7728
6380
10,000
8,000
Unique Pageviews
3,905
Pageviews
6,000
4,000
2,000
8,713
8187
2010-2011
2011-2012
9983
9903
2012-2013
2013-2014
5,772
0
2009-2010
Year
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
CURRENT DATA
TRAFFIC
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Traffic Type -Year over Year (YOY) (Other includes email & banner traffic)
12000
174
1010
Pageviews
10000
8000
6000
0
4000
2898
307
0
1747
35
992
917
1559
2578
331
1656
1686
Referral
Direct
5939
5600
2010-2011
2011-2012
6620
5901
2000
2576
0
2009-2010
Other
Year
2012-2013
2013-2014
Search Engine
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
CURRENT DATA
TRAFFIC CONCLUSIONS
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Search engine traffic is higher than “normal”
Referral traffic is higher than direct traffic
The site is relying too heavily on search engine matches and
should work on overall branding to increase direct traffic numbers
Search: 67%
Direct: 14%
Referral w/ social: 19%
Email: 14%
Other: 0%
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
CURRENT DATA
TRAFFIC CONCLUSIONS
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Overall traffic compared for the last five years
– The new site that went live in 2010 did significantly improve page views
– Slight decrease in traffic in 2011-2012, and 2013-2014
– Breakdown of traffic is inline with the 90-day review
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2009-2010 and into 2010-2011 referral traffic was larger than normal
– New site launch in 2010 improved search engine traffic and reduced the
cultivation of referral sources in future years
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Other traffic source (email and banner traffic) did increase this past
year from 2012-2013 to 2013-2014 by 54%
– Either more time was put into email and banner marketing or said
marketing was more effective then in previous years
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
CURRENT DATA
USER BEHAVIOR
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Average Time on page: 1:15 (Site average is 1:52 / -33.54%)
– When there are multiple pageviews during a visit the time is calculated
based on the start time between the current page and the start time of the
next page hit. This number is an average of all pageviews. Note that the
last page of a visit and a single-page visit will not be calculated.
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Bounce Rate: 61.11% (Site average is 35.97% / +69.88%)
– This number is calculated as a percentage of single-page visits over the
total number of visits. A high bounce rate can either mean that the user
was dissatisfied with the page and thus didn’t want to engage further or it
can mean that the page gave the user all the information that they needed
and didn’t need to engage further.
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
CURRENT DATA
USER BEHAVIOR CONCLUSIONS
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Reduced time on page number could mean:
– Page is meant to be a landing page that is meant to lead the user to other
pages as quickly as possible
– People are not engaged or interested in the pages content
– Since the page has very few links, I would conclude that it is the later
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Higher than average bounce rate
– The user is not finding what they want, so they exit the site without clicking
any other links.
– There are very little visuals and a lot of heavy copy that forces the user to
scroll to view it all
– Recommend incorporating imagery and editing copy so it can be easily
scanned and doesn’t’ force the user to scroll
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
ON-SITE EVALUATION
OVERVIEW
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The B.S. Degree in
packaging is a relatively
small sub site. Multiple
pages are just link lists
intending the user to go
elsewhere. It is also good
to note that because this
is a sub-site the external
link analysis is skewed
due to the required
navigation banner.
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
ON-SITE EVALUATION
GENERAL CONCLUSIONS
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Title Tags
– Title tags use the abbreviation B.S. instead of Bachelor of Science
which would be a better search terms
– Title tags in general are not unique and should use more keywords
– Title tag length are approx. 40-50 characters under the 70 character
limit
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Current Meta Description
– Currently they are undefined or only a few words and Google is
crawling to populate
– Google crawling content is good and should be used to define the
description tags under the recommended 160 characters
– Compared to competitions pages the content is unique and includes
selling points
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
ON-SITE EVALUATION
GENERAL CONCLUSIONS
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Headers
– There are currently no H1 headers
• The CMS system only allows H3 headers which is a larger institutional
problem
– Current H3 header content is good but should be put on the top of
the page
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Internal Linking
– Every page registers at over 100 link due to the required header
navigation
– Number of links in the sub-site are appropriate
– Visual indication of internal links versus external links
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
ON-SITE EVALUATION
GENERAL CONCLUSIONS
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Content
– The amount of content is inconsistent between the pages ranging
from too much to too little
– On large content pages copy should be cut down and organized
using bullets
– Adding visuals will increase visual appeal
• Add keywords to alt tags
– Content should incorporate keywords but not to much
• Landing page failed Moz Pro page grader for too many references to
“packaging”; should not be used more then 15 times
– Headers in general should be used to more often
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URL’S
– Keywords are not present in URL’s the abbreviation “bsp” has no
meaning to the audience or the Google bots.
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
LOCAL EVALUATION
OVERVIEW
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No physical location to promote UW-Stout’s packaging program,
but it can only help if UW-Stout’s local page is claimed.
Helpful if a perspective packaging student wants to know where
UW-Stout is located and/or if they want information to plan a
campus visit
Other UW schools are leveraging Google local
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
LOCAL EVALUATION
Google Places/+Local Page Result
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
LOCAL EVALUATION
Google Places/+Local page
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UW-Stout’s local page is not claimed
Information verification:
Name: University of Wisconsin-Stout / UW-Stout
Address: 712 Broadway St S, Menomonie, WI 54751
Phone: (715) 232-1122
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Google search; the address and phone numbers match
Bing search; the address displays as 712 WI-29, Menomonie, WI 54751
– While WI-29 and Broadway St S are the same this could be confusing
– Potential solution would be to use schema to identify the address value
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
LOCAL EVALUATION
Google Places/+Local Page Recommendations
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Claim Google Places/+Local page
– By not claiming the page, we cannot control what the public will see.
– Who should be in charge
• Communications: do not currently use Google+
• Marketing: ties directly with the SEO of the website
• Admissions: include hours and for campus visits
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Update content
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Current content seems to be pulling from Wikipedia and talks about history
and not our selling points.
Ability to add current/relevant photos
Add hours of operation for campus visits
Mange reviews, insights and analytics from Google business
dashboard
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
OFF-SITE EVALUATION
LINK PROFILE
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
OFF-SITE EVALUATION
LINK PROFILE
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19 inbound links to http://www.uwstout.edu/programs/bsp/
Link anchor text is natural except for two.
– #2 “Source” and #7 “ corso di laurea”
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Sources appear to be relevant with only a few directory listings.
– A resource to possible leverage would be the company Packaging
Matters that have an active blog and employees UW-Stout grads.
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
OFF-SITE EVALUATION
AUTHORITY
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Site domain authority is 72
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
OFF-SITE EVALUATION
Social Media
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Does not currently utilize social media
– While I would recommend that they could benefit from social media
use, it would only be effective if it was maintained and monitored
– others are mentioning their website online and that activity should
be encouraged
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Minimum commitment would be approximately 3 hours a week
– One hour to reply/comment/like related posts, monitored through
Hootsuite
– Two hours to research and/or connect with other professional to
post original, engaging content.
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
OFF-SITE EVALUATION
Sample of results for “uwstout” & “packaging”
UWStoutNews@UWStoutNews
The Institute of Packaging Professionals has recognized a UW-Stout professor and two students.
Read more at the link. fb.me/1pzRzy4aH
UWStoutNews@UWStoutNews
How do you get a free summer trip to Europe? Just ask packaging student James Engel.
fb.me/2XkL1Miqe
Devin Berg@devinberg
Congrats Bob! MT @UWStoutNews UW-Stout's Bob Meisner, packaging, quoted in NY Times
story about the packaging peanut fb.me/1jZtwr8gq
cal @calliegat0r
It's official, I will be attending UW-Stout next year for packaging design #collegebound #uwstout
#classof2018
UW Powers Wisconsin@UWpowersWI
Did you know? @UWStout game design & packaging programs have received national
recognition! uwpowerswi.com/uw-stout-earns…
JoAnn Hines@packagingdiva
RT @UWStoutNews: UW-Stout's #packaging program included on Daily Beast national news
listing of overlooked colleges fb.me/28SVxAnPj
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
OFF-SITE EVALUATION
Sample of results for “program” &“packaging”
& “degree”
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
OFF-SITE EVALUATION
INSTAGRAM - Sample of results for “packaging”:
#packagingdesign #packagingiseverything
#packagingaddict #packagingnerd
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
OFF-SITE EVALUATION
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
USER EXPERIENCE
Sub-site homepage in-page analytics
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
USER EXPERIENCE
Sub-site homepage in-page analytics
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
USER EXPERIENCE
Navigation
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The navigation of this sub-site is somewhat confusing. The main
navigation is on the left but there are also links to the right
Some of the left navigation links contain dropdowns and some lead off
the sub-site.
Efforts should be made in incorporate links into the content to give
easier access to subpages and overall site structure should be analysis.
It should be noted that one of the tops links is located “below the fold” at
the bottom of a ton of content and not in the main navigation.
Contact Information
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The Contact information has it’s own page and is fairly easy to find.
It could be argued to add that content to the right column of the landing
page as it is short and is the third highest clicked link.
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
USER EXPERIENCE
Visual Appeal
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Overall the site lacks imagery and is heavy on text.
Incorporating imagery will make the site more appealing to the user.
Simplifying the content with bullets and lists will make things easier
to find and help the page not look as busy.
Device Usability
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Site appears identical between browsers and platforms
It does not display correctly on a tablet or mobile.
UW-Stout’s site is currently working on a adaptive design solution.
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
PAID SEARCH
Overview
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UW-Stout’s packaging program does not currently run any paid
search and I don’t see this being a valuable tool at this time due to
arguments below. If the site is reevaluated and optimized I would
suggest another look at this possibility.
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
PAID SEARCH
Arguments for Paid Search
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The competition is doing it
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
PAID SEARCH
Arguments Against Paid Search
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No current budget for paid search
The keyword difficulty is high for all keywords
Efforts should be made to optimize site before investing in paid
search
There is no way to track conversions.
– A Hobson’s (CRM) form would have to be added to the landing page
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
PAID SEARCH
Potential Keywords
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packaging program, packaging degree, bachelors packaging,
packaging design (most searched term), package design program,
package design degree, food packaging degree
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
1. Michigan State University –Packaging
(www.packaging.msu.edu)
2. Rochester Institute of Technology – Packaging
Science (www.rit.edu/programs/packaging-science)
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
3. Clemson University – Packaging Science
(www.clemson.edu/majors/packaging-science)
4. Virginia Tech – Packaging Systems and Design
(www.packaging.sbio.vt.edu/education/undergraduate)
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Conclusions
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UW-Stouts domain authority of 72; compared next to it’s
competitors (85-88) needs to increase to be competitive.
The packaging program does not currently utilize social media, but
the metrics make it equal to Clemson and better then Virginia Tech
and RIT
– This could be an opportunity to take advantage of
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
STRATEGIES & TACTICS
Issue/Strategy #1: Improve site content for
optimized SEO or increase usability
1. Tactic: Content needs to reevaluated keeping in mind basic SEO
principles, including meta descriptions, keywords, H1 and alt tags
2. Tactic: Site content needs to be improved by increased visuals and
simplifying the content so it’s easy to scan and navigate
Rationale: The on-site evaluations were very poor as well as the
overall user experience. If this is improved organic site rankings
should improve and bounce rates should drop to a more average
number
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
STRATEGIES & TACTICS
Issue/Strategy #2: Utilize social media to increase
site traffic and rankings
1. Tactic: I would recommend setting up either a Twitter or Facebook
account to engage the users that are already mentioning UW-Stout
packaging.
2. Tactic: Reach out to alumni and their companies to engage in UWStout activities, social presence, and knowledge.
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT
STRATEGIES & TACTICS
Issue/Strategy #2: Utilize social media to increase
site traffic and rankings
Rationale:
– There is an opportunity to leverage social media that is already
present.
– Focusing on one social media platform makes this an easier
– The top three in-bound links are from a blog created by UWStout alumni to promote their company
– This would be easy to replicate in social media
– If this is improved site ranking will improve with the increase in
in-bound links and social presence.
– Could also help improve direct traffic numbers