SEO has become a very important part of many school’s marketing strategies. However, there seems to be a lack of basic understanding of how search engines work. In this blog post, we hope to better explain SEO and search engines.

Interesting Facts

Top 5 Search Engines in United Kingdom (Jan 2013 to Jan 2014)

• Google – 90.25%
• Bing – 5.09%
• Yahoo! – 3.19%
• Ask Jeeves – 0.41%
• AOL – 0.33%
• Other - 0.74%

Click Through Rates for Rankings on Google

• #1 position on Google receives 32.5% of all click-through traffic.
• #2 – 17.6%
• #3 – 11.4%
• #4 – 8.1%
• #5 – 6.1%
• #6 – 4.4%
• #7 – 3.5%
• #8 – 3.1%
• #9 – 2.6%
• #10 – 2.4%

All other results receive fewer than 2% each.

What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?

SEO is the process of increasing relevant traffic from search engines. The key is that the search traffic must be relevant. It may look good to rank for ‘independent schools’ but a lot of the traffic will be irrelevant. There will be people looking for schools in Scotland, or for a definition of independent schools. It is much better to target niche, long-tail keywords that are relevant to your school - ‘independent prep school London’.

Why do I need SEO?

Although social media and other types of referrals can generate visits to your website, search engines drive the majority of traffic on the web. This is because they are the primary method of navigation for internet users.

Search engines are so popular because they provide users with exactly what they want to find. They are popular with marketers because they provide targeted traffic – they send people looking for what you offer. 

We typically find that over 70% of school website traffic comes from search engines. And with Google serving over 90% of search traffic, schools are heavily reliant on one company.

How do search engines work?

In order to understand SEO you must first understand the basics of how search engines operate.

Search engines have two primary functions:

Crawling and Indexing - to provide users with fresh, relevant results, search engines must crawl all pages, documents, images, videos, news etc. that the World Wide Web has to offer. They must then decipher and store this information within their huge datacenters ready to serve to searchers.

Answering Queries - inorder to retain users, search engines must provide people with the most relevant content. Through retrieval and ranking algorithms, search engines provide answers to user queries.

How Users Use Search Engines

Whenever we do SEO we always think about the end user and not the search engine. The reason for this is that the overall goal of the website is to convert real person, not a search engine. Also, search engine’s are always changing their algorithm and service to provide a better service to people. If your website is good for the user, then search engines will provide it with ‘brownie points’. 

There are three types of search queries that users usually perform:

Transactional Queries – queries that result in an action such as buying a train ticket or purchasing a song. For a school this could be requesting a prospectus, or arranging a visit.

Informational Queries – when a user is looking for information such as the latest hockey fixtures, or the next open day. 

Navigational Queries – when a user seeks a specific destination online, such as the school website, parent area, or Twitter account.

This should provide you with a good basic understanding of SEO. If you would like more help with your school’s SEO, just get in touch.

Video can be a great medium to learn more about social media. There are a ton of videos on YouTube that can be very useful for you. Here are 3 of our favourite videos that you can learn more from. Take a look at some of the related videos too.

Investing in Non Measurable Serendipitous Marketing

 

Why we love it: this video shows exactly how, although social media can sometimes be immeasurable, there is huge value in it. Making an investment (effort, or cost) in social media marketing can lead to random returns, you cannot predict what value will come out of it.

Alexis Ohanian: How to make a splash in social media

Why we love it: this is very much an oldie but goodie. It is almost 5 years old, but this video is still very relevant - it shows how far behind many businesses (especially schools) are. There are real people behind social media and sometimes we forget that. There are fun, interesting stories coming out of schools everyday that should be shared. Social media doesn’t have to be so serious. This is great story about communities, being human, and whales…

The Future of Social Media Marketing w/ Gary Vaynerchuk

Why we love it: Gary Vaynerchuk is a great speaker and advocate on social media. He gets it. There are a lot of lessons to be learnt from this video. A part of this video that we love is when Gary talks about the different types of content for each social channel. Pinterest is for pretty pictures. Tumblr is for more fun, light hearted GIFs. The demographics can be very different for social media channels and it is important that schools choose the right kind of content and voice for each channel.

2013 was a huge year for social media. Twitter went public, Yahoo bought Tumblr for $1.1 billion, Vine was launched and Snapchat’s 23 year old founder turned down $3 billion from Facebook (yep, we still don’t quite get that either).

So what can you learn about social media from the last 12 months? Well, social media is certainly making a lot of young people very rich! But 2013 is over. It is finished. Let us look forward to 2014 - the year of social media…again.

These 4 trends are predictions we are making. We’re not being too risky. The first 3 are safe assumptions that you can use to plan a great year for your school’s marketing. The 4th prediction is the wild card. 

1. Mobile usage will increase

Two of the biggest newcomers to the social media landscape are Vine and Snapchat, two mobile apps. You could argue that Twitter is primarily a mobile company too - after all it does claim to be born mobile.

The stats are staggering - 80% of UK users access Twitter on a mobile device.

Another aspect that makes mobile hugely important for social media is the geo-location opportunities. Content is becoming real-time and location focussed.

2. Social media will become more visual

Social media is going to become less about copy and more about visuals. Photography and video are going to continue to emerge in the social space. Higher internet speeds and the lower cost of data means that high definition uploads are becoming more and more cost effective.

A great example of how social media is becoming more mobile and visual is the Guardian’s live coverage of the UK floods in December. Notice how the majority of updates are tweets from regular people on Twitter, and how many of them have photos associated with them.

Sharing infographics, GIFs, images, video and other visual content will help drive more interactions on social media. Visual content is becoming increasing ‘easier’ to create. There are a huge number of apps that allow you to simply create great visuals through your smartphone camera.

New breakout social media channels, similar to Snapchat, Vine and Instagram, will pop up throughout 2014.

3. Automated messages won’t be frowned upon

It used to be that automating tweets was frowned upon. “You can’t automate tweets, that’s not authentic!” rang the cries. I must admit, we did agree. However, fast forward to a new and improved 2014 and marketing needs to be efficient. In order to do this you need to automate some messages. Tools like Hootsuite and Buffer, which allow you to automate tweets, have become mainstream and very popular.

A fun example of this is how we automated tweets for Christmas Day. We simply looked at the TV guide and knew that Toy Story 3, A Muppets Christmas Carol and Home Alone 3 were on throughout the day. So we scheduled relevant and interesting tweets for specific times. This is just a simple example of how, if you know what is coming up, you can easily schedule messages. This is particularly relevant for events, as you will know what will be happening and the time that they will occur.

Ooooh, the Claw! #ToyStory3 pic.twitter.com/S8pvWvXh95

— Interactive Schools (@intSchools)

December 25, 2013

4. The fall of Facebook?

The outlook doesn’t look great for Facebook. Daily usage, specifically among younger teens, has decreased. That means younger people are moving to other, more innovative, social media channels. And adults tend to follow, as the late adopters.

So over the course of 2014, users won’t necessarily decrease but usage will. Younger people will continue to flock to other, newer, cooler social channels.

There we go - our 4 predictions for social media in 2014. What predictions do you have? What are you most looking forward to?

Let us know on Twitter or in the comments!

Throughout the 25 days, we will be sharing our favourite tweets. This is a fantastic opportunity for school marketers to see how other schools tweet and communicate. It’s also a great bit of fun!

If you haven’t seen them already, take a look at the 25 tweets to share through December.

@SexeysSchool Kicks it off with this festive tweet!

On the first day of Christmas Sexey’s gave to me a church service down in St Mary’s… #sexeys #SocialAdvent

— Sexey’s School (@SexeysSchool)

December 1, 2013

Day 1

Best Video. We enjoyed @bablakeschool’s introductory video

#SocialAdvent: Day1- a video of Bablake: http://t.co/GWq3NBOgPy by former pupil, Ash Hawkins & we’ve a special video on the way. @intSchools

— Bablake (@bablakeschool)

December 1, 2013

Day 2

#Hashtag. Hashtags should spur a conversation. That’s why @KingsGroupSL’s is our favourite for the day.  

A hashtag for the #SocialAdvent Day 2. As a child what was your most #MemorableChristmasPresent ?

— King’s Group (@KingsGroupSL)

December 2, 2013

Day 3

Comedian. Wow, day 3 was full of hilarity. We particularly loved @AdcoteSchool’s joke. It was funny, festive and related to schools!

Joke: What do elves do after school Their gnome work! #socialadvent @intSchools #Christmas

— Adcote School (@AdcoteSchool)

December 3, 2013

Day 4

InstaHero. It is still early in the day but we really like this Instagram photo from @thedustonschool.

@intSchools #SocialAdvent Day4: An Instagram picture of your school.Welcome to The Duston School! http://t.co/qMSLwWcIT6

— The Duston School (@thedustonschool)

December 4, 2013

Day 5

The Foody. This day has been fabulous! There have been lots of tasty looking dishes on display and a range of schools participating. It’s been very difficult to choose our favourite but this tweet from @RGSHW was unique. It was good to see the pupils involved in cooking their meals. 

Day 5 of #SocialAdvent - boys at RGS making their own dinners! pic.twitter.com/GarmORRaQ0

— RGS High Wycombe (@rgshw)

December 5, 2013

Day 6

Snappy Happy. On day 6 schools shared a picture from a recent event. We particularly liked this one from @RP_Society.

Day 6 of #SocialAdvent - Reuniting with old friends at a recent school reunion. Tears all round! pic.twitter.com/fj0zou2DoC

— Sarah Ritchie (@RP_Society)

December 6, 2013

Day 7

Historian. Today schools shared a piece of history. There were lots of great facts coming out of the ‘On this day…’ tweets, and our favourite came from @GayhurstSchool.

@intSchools can you believe today in 1945 the microwave oven was patented by an 8th grade dropout - what would we do with it! #SocialAdvent

— Gayhurst School (@GayhurstSchool)

December 7, 2013

Day 8

Traveller. Schools shared a picture from a recent (or current) trip. Our favourite tweet was from @LordWandsworth. We love historical photos!

We travelled afar in the LWC school lorry (before we had a bus). #SocialAdvent Day 8 #schooltrips pic.twitter.com/EbPinhjymG

— Lord Wandsworth (@LordWandsworth)

December 8, 2013

Day 9

A Fine Vine. Sell your school in 6 seconds using Vine. There were lots of fun and creative videos coming through! The most creative came from @GayhurstSchool who made fun and playful use of stop motion.

@intSchools #SocialAdvent Day 9 Gayhurst in print! https://t.co/16RqKlSmjV

— Gayhurst School (@GayhurstSchool)

December 9, 2013

Day 10

Joker. Share a Christmas pun to make your followers chuckle! Schools shared some very funny puns - we laughed a lot! Our favourite came from @KingsGroupSL.

#SocialAdvent Day 10. Why did no-one bid for Rudolph and Blitzen on eBay? Because they were two deer. #ChristmasJokes

— King’s Group (@KingsGroupSL)

December 10, 2013

Day 11

Snowman. Share a snowman related tweet (preferably a photo!). It was good to see the variety of tweets - some shared photos of real snowmen, some of paintings. We loved the creativity! Our favourite came from @LordWandsworth, who shared this huge and historic snowman!

In the Deep Mid Winter of 1934 the Juniors built this #snowman #SocialAdvent Day11 @Sternians http://t.co/jY3jP1lryX pic.twitter.com/l9O4a6ShkV

— Lord Wandsworth (@LordWandsworth)

December 11, 2013

Day 12

Celeb. Get a retweet from a celebrity or famous alumni. This was always going to be tricky, and we wanted to see how creative you could be to get a retweet. For pure successfulness, we have to give best tweet of the day to @BromsSchool who receive two retweets from famous alumni.

We’re taking part in #SocialAdvent with @intschools - get a RT from famous Alumni @RitchieNeville @charlieclemmow @ben_foden @AndyGoode10

— Bromsgrove School (@BromsSchool)

December 12, 2013

Day 13

Carol Singers. Post an audio clip of your school singing a carol. We enjoyed seeing the tweets come through because it was interesting to see what channels schools would use to post audio clips - SoundCloud, YouTube etc. @TrentCollege posted theirs via SoundCloud, which we think is the best channel to use for audio.

Our school certainly knows how to sing Festive Carols! #socialadvent https://t.co/o6GTYrW7o3

— Trent College (@TrentCollege)

December 13, 2013

Day 14

Motivational Speaker. Tweet an inspiring quote. We love to inspire, so this day was a great one for us to watch. We particularly loved this quote from Walt Disney, tweeted by @TrentCollege.

You can design & create & build the most wonderful place in the world.But it takes people to make the dream a reality.WDisney #socialadvent

— Trent College (@TrentCollege)

December 14, 2013

Day 15

Tree Hugger. Post a picture of a Christmas tree. #SocialAdvent is a global hashtag and we enjoyed this tweet from Tokyo, courtesy of @BST_Principal.

@intSchools Merry Xmas from Tokyo. Just about to fly home for the holiday. #SocialAdvent pic.twitter.com/GUcjJcqgJ3

— Brian Christian (@BST_Principal)

December 15, 2013

Day 16

Poller. To begin the week, schools conducted a Favourite/Retweet poll. Pose a question to their community (Retweet for Yes / Favourite for No). Our favourite was from @PriorParkPrep.

Have our followers finished their Christmas shopping? Retweet for Yes, Favourite for No. #SocialAdvent

— Prior Park Prep (@PriorParkPrep)

December 16, 2013

Day 17

Congratulator. The aim was to share a congratulatory tweet to somebody. Our favourite was from @britishschoolro.

#SocialAdvent @intSchools Congrats to Y6 who used proceeds from the Artisan Fair to buy gifts for the local community pic.twitter.com/J9IHs363fU

— BritishSchoolRomania (@britishschoolro)

December 17, 2013

Day 18

Factoid. Schools shared interesting facts and this tweet from @royalhighbath certainly taught us a fact and made us laugh!

#socialadvent Fact. In 1898 the speed record for an automobile was set at 39mph. Fact. At 6.55am this morning that record was broken!

— Royal High School (@royalhighbath)

December 18, 2013

Day 19

Viral Sharer. Our favourite article was this 'feel good’ article tweeted by @KingsGroupSL.

@intSchools Faith in humanity had been restored with this amazing “feel good” Christmas article for the #SocialAdvent http://t.co/c6cYU64nR3

— King’s Group (@KingsGroupSL)

December 19, 2013

Day 20

Influencer. Schools are suggesting new accounts to follow. We thought Bablake’s tweet was a great example of sharing and influencing projects.

#SocialAdvent Day 20- Suggest s.o. to follow: Easy! Laura Bates & her @EverydaySexism project or Lucy Holmes & @NoMorePage3. @intSchools

— Bablake (@bablakeschool) December 20, 2013

Day 21

Statistician. Discover and share an interesting stat. We obviously love social media stats, so our favourite was from @TrentCollege. This a great little stat:

The latest numbers on Twitter indicate that it has over 288 million monthly active users #socialadvent

— Trent College (@TrentCollege) December 21, 2013

Day 22

Reporter. The idea behind this challenge was to share a tweet about your local community. Our favourite came from @BablakeSchool.

#SocialAdvent Day 22- share news about your city: @DeborahIsitt’s 'Nativity’ on BBC2 3.25pm today has so much of Cov & Bablake. @intSchools

— Bablake (@bablakeschool) December 22, 2013

Day 23

Record Player. To encourage conversation, the challenge for day 23 was for schools to either share their favourite Christmas song to pose the question to their followers.

Day 23 of #SocialAdvent with @intSchools - a question for our followers… What is your favourite festive song? #FestiveBromsgrove

— Bromsgrove School (@BromsSchool) December 23, 2013

Day 24

Messenger. For Christmas Eve, the challenge for schools was to share a festive message. Our favourite came from @TrentCollege.

May your Christmas be filled with joy and happiness. Best wishes for now and the coming year from all at Trent College. #socialadvent

— Trent College (@TrentCollege) December 24, 2013

Day 25

Santa. It’s Christmas Day!! The challenge was to share a Merry Christmas tweet (and you could schedule it!) our favourite came from @BromsSchool.

Merry Christmas to one and all & Happy Holidays from Bromsgrove School. #SocialAdvent #FestiveBromsgrove

— Bromsgrove School (@BromsSchool) December 25, 2013

School Marketer:We want to engage our younger audience. Should we be using Instagram?
Interactive Schools:Instagram is a great channel to engage with a younger audience. We are seeing a shift away from Facebook to more niche mobile platforms, such as Instagram, with the 13-18 demographic.
School Marketer:Could we be publishing notifications, posters and letters?
Interactive Schools:I think it would best to keep Instagram predominantly photo based. For Instagram, I would suggest posting great photography with beautiful backgrounds and texture. Then the occasional poster, or informational post, can go up - it is about balance. People need a reason to follow you.
School Marketer:Any schools using it well?
Interactive Schools:There’s a list of schools that use Instagram here - www.schneiderb.com/wiki/schools-using-social-media/schools-using-instagram/. It is all American schools but you can get a good idea of the types of photos that work well on Instagram. Take a look.

The dos and don’ts of social media. It’s a popular topic for blogs. We thought we could mix it up a little bit and see if it is possible to relate the 7 deadly sins to life on social media. The 7 deadly sins will be applied to the people behind business accounts, those who are the voices and personalities of brands.

Here we go, then. Do you fall foul of any of these? You probably know people whom are guilty!

Lust

We all have a list of people we would love to interact with; even if don’t admit to it. It is possible to focus on a ‘target’ too much. Is there a thought leader, a business executive, a celebrity that you want to engage with? Great. Go for it! But don’t focus on that person because an interaction with that person or company will make you ‘look good’. Do it, if the prospect is relevant, for the good of the business.

“Hey, look at me. I got a retweet off Richard Branson!” That may sound exciting to your peers, but if it doesn’t align with your businesses strategy, and you have been spamming (yes, constantly tweeting to a target is spamming) to get that interaction, then all it is is a bragging tool which will irritate your following. So, don’t allow your personal social capital to negatively affect the brand voice you are in control of.

Gluttony

An abundance of information and conversations on social media has led people to have a ‘fear of missing out’, otherwise known as FoMO. This form of social anxiety has led some people to over-consume social media. Losing self-control can have a hugely negative effect on your productivity but also on your marketing strategy.

People have become slaves to their notifications. It is important to be quick to respond on social media but if you are receiving a plethora of incoming messages, then turn off notifications and come back to them at a suitable time. Set aside certain times in the day to check your messages.

Be disciplined with your time.

Greed

Social media works when the brand is authentic and engaging - people see through cheap sales tactics. Interruption marketing is no longer affective but some businesses still go for the hard-sell approach on social media.

A balance of valuable content and the occasional ‘sales post’ about a promotion or a discount is fine. The problem occurs when a feed is driven by sales. Nobody, wants to the see that.

Signs of greed:

• Automatically sending a sales message to people who follow or like you
• Following anyone, and everyone
• Spamming a conversation
• Slating another product/service
• Valuing the number of followers or likes over engagement
• “We have over 100,000 followers on Twitter and half a million likes on Facebook, we’re doing pretty well.”

Sloth

How many times have you been on a social media account only to find it’s been updated once in 2011 and 2 years later, it’s a ghost town. It looks lazy.

A sloth’s channel doesn’t always mean that it is not populated. A sloth will automate tweets, take other people’s content etc.

The four rules for NOT being a sloth:

1. Be involved. If you have something delightful to say, then people want to hear it. If you have a remarkable piece content, get it out there!
2. Be frequent. Social media is fast. I mean, really fast. Your messages will quickly be lost and if you are not regularly updating your content, then you risk not being seen. Consistency is key.
3. Be responsive. Ensure you respond to messages. Engage with people. But don’t over consume on social media (see Gluttony).
4. Be human. Don’t be a robot, spend time engaging with people. Schedule posts that you have written but just don’t automate them.

Come on, don’t be a sloth.

Wrath

Somebody is irate. They tweet something horrible. They give you a bad time. It happens.

How you respond (if you even do!) can determine how your brand will be affected. The worse thing you can do is allow your feelings, at the time, to cloud your judgement.

Remember: you are the voice of a brand. Don’t let personal opinions damage your decision making.

A perfect example of how ‘not to handle humans’ on the internet was played out in an epic meltdown by Amy’s Baking Company.

It can go well though, just look at how O2 performed a Twitter masterclass in handling backlash to their service outage in 2011.

Envy

That feeling when your competitor comes out with something rather good. The jealousy that ensues - “Why didn’t we think that!?” It can cause some to ‘copy’ another account. Replicating another company’s tactics on social media may not work.

Do not focus on your competitors too much. Focus on what makes your brand different. If a competitor is doing something well, try a different angle. Get creative.

Another problem is that people focus on basic metrics - followers, likes etc. This is almost worthless. A business may have more likes on Facebook but this is just a number. If you are suffering from this worry, don’t start trying to get more followers or likes using cheap and easy tactics. What’s more important is how well you engage with people and how people will advocate your business. If you’re creating great stuff, the followers and likes will follow.

Pride

Social media is fun, engaging and authentic. Don’t be overly serious and feel more important than others. Complement people and be natural.

People feel obliged to retweet anything that is complimentary of themselves, or a brand. Yes, you can retweet compliments but there is a limit. Don’t fill your feed with a bunch of people praising you. That interests nobody.

Your posts should be engaging and inclusive - not just all about you.

But, lets finish on a positive. If you do great things on social media, then be proud of that. Share content that is useful, unique, emotionally engaging and inspirational. Delight people on social media.

Schools are joining the Twitter party at a rapid rate. Our research has shown that 73% of independent schools have at least signed up to Twitter. However, many schools struggle to be successful on the platform. There is a lack of knowledge and strategy.

These 5 tips can significantly improve your school’s Twitter performance.

[1] Have a Plan

It is essential to have a plan on Twitter. What are you going to tweet about, when are you going to tweet, who is going to tweet? These are simple questions that you need to answer. There is nothing worse than seeing a deserted brand on a social platform. By deserted we mean an account that has not been updated in a long time. You know the kind. The ones who set up and account in excitement but don’t deliver. 

[2] Keep to the Plan

Sounds simple, but its important and people often don’t stick to plans. Make sure your plan is realistic. Don’t over commit yourself. Don’t say “I’m going to tweet 50 times a week” if you can’t achieve that. Have realistic expectations. 

[3] Be Authentic

Social media works for brands because can be personal on a human level. Schools should be no different. Showcase what makes your school different. Tell the stories that happen every day.

[4] Engage

Don’t be afraid to communicate with others. Without two-way communication, you lose the social element of social media. Marketing is much more successful when there is not just one-way communication - that’s just advertising.

[5] Measure

Always measure your social activity. How many retweets do you receive per tweet? How many tweets are self promotional? These are simple metrics to use to measure your Twitter performance. 

Make sure you perform branded searches on Twitter on regular basis. You have to understand the sentiment around your school’s brand. 

Do positive things come up when you type your school into Twitter? Are there any negative news articles that appear?

Try out these 5 tips and let us know how you get on in the comments or on Twitter.

Tweet us (@intSchools) with #SocialScore to find out your score on Twitter. This can be used to benchmark your performance.

Audience behaviour is often the first thing people will look at in their web analytics package. How many people visited your website? How long did they stay for? Did they like the content? These insights provide a basic understanding of the website performance (and your marketing performance!), particularly when measured over time. Are the trends consistent or are they changing over time?

When you log into Google Analytics, the first round of data you receive is the ‘Audience Overview’. This data provides you with a very basic overview of your site, but that is exactly what it is: an overview. An overview is only useful when the limitations are understood - these limitations, without understanding will only lead to misinformed decision-making.

What do these things mean!?

The true meaning of some terms are often confused, which can cause some data-driven decisions to be based on misunderstood information. Let’s look at each term and what you can dig out from the data:

Visits

The number of times that the website has been visited in the month. Opened up the website, closed it, then reopened it? That’ll be 2 visits. The more technical definition is the number of sessions that have taken place on your website.

Visits will always be higher than unique visitors because some people will visit the website more than once in a month.

Unique Visitors

Okay, so if visits are the number of times a website is opened, then unique visitors is how many ‘people’ have been on your website. If only one person has visited your website in the month but has done so 15 times, then your visits will equal 15 and unique visitors 1.

This starts to get more complicated when we look at the diversity in devices that we use today. Some may have a PC, tablet and mobile. If you visit the same website on all 3 devices then that will be 3 unique visitors. So although is it simpler to say unique visitors is the number of people who visit the website, it doesn’t always hold true. This is the complex world of web analytics.

% New Visits

You can imagine this as the percentage of visitors that have never experienced your school before. Often, returning visitors will be parents or internal staff members - these are people with an experience of your school. New visitors have never visited your website before, which means they need to be ‘sold’ into your school. You need to delight the visitor by matching the experience with their expectation.

Do new visitors spend a lot of time on the website? Where do they go? You can start to segment your audience into returning visitors and new visitors. This is important as they both have completely different intents and behave very differently.

Pages / Visits

Generally speaking, you want this to be as high as possible. Why? Because you want people to have an engaging experience with your website. You want them to explore as many pages as possible and consume really good content. But do not let it mislead you; a high number of pages could mean that the visitor cannot find what they are looking for.

This is where the overview can begin to give misleading information. This metric is an average of all pages, all visitors, all keywords, all referrers etc. A good web analyst will delve deeper into specific pages and types of visitors.

Avg. Visit Duration

Similar to pages per visit, this should be as high as possible - but not too high. You can be mistaking an engaging journey for a confused and lost one. This is a very good ‘overview’ but it doesn’t beat looking at individual pages and segmented visitors (new visitors, referrals from Twitter, people coming from search engines).

If a page only has one line of content but yet users are spending 2 minutes on it, there is something wrong. Alternatively, if a page has a video on but people are only spending 10 seconds on it, you can assume they are not watching the video.

Bounce Rate

This is our favourite metric. The reason being that it provides an insight into a user’s behaviour and reaction to your website. A user ‘bounces’ when they land on a page and then leave instantly without visiting another page. This informs us that a visitor didn’t receive the experience they expected - which can be a variety of reasons.

Web analytics is hugely complex but when you get it right, it is invaluable. Don’t get put off by the complexity though; even a little knowledge can be hugely beneficial.

What is important is that you understand what the data means:

• People are bouncing on the fees page because they have to download a PDF
• Nobody is going to the contact page because the links to the page are not visible
• You have a low avg. time on site because you rank well for the term 'RGS’, and there are a lot of schools (and organisations) with the same initials. Make it clear to users which RGS you are in the page title - this appears in the search engine results page

These are just a few examples of actionable insights that web analytics can provide you. How do you use web analytics? Do you have reports and dashboards set up? Let us know in the comments.

Want to discuss marketing? Tweet us @intSchools or email social@tiarc.co.uk for more help and information about our social and SEO services.

[June 2013] After months in the making, several re-edits, 60 skinny cappuccinos, 25 Belgian buns, late nights, and some serious data crunching - we are pleased to announce our inaugural “Social Media Influence League Table” for UK Independent Schools.

We have tried to compare the top performing schools against familiar benchmarks, including: A Level Results, Gender & Location - as well as more ‘geeky’ Twitter specific vocab. Wow we have such fun!

We plan on publishing the 'League Table’ every month (starting in September) - covering every school on Twitter. The Top 10 will then be idolised in our infographic ladder.

If you would like to know your school’s Social Influence Score, tweet us @intSchools #socialscore - and join the community of school marketers.

• Download PDF version of Social Authority Infographic (6Mb)

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