SEM strategies for a non for profit. British Council. David Carralon

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www.britishcouncil.org | [email protected] | Twitter: @davidcarralon 1 SEM at the British Council The UK’s International network for cultural relations, education and arts

description

British Council case study of Simple but effective SEO strategies that work on low cost. Highglights: the need for accessibility and the workarounds to this constraint, the focus on Pagerank distribution, identifying high value pages within a website and how niche directory link building and online PR can effectively leverage the value needed to achieve rankings on a high authority, trusted site.

Transcript of SEM strategies for a non for profit. British Council. David Carralon

Page 1: SEM strategies for a non for profit. British Council. David Carralon

www.britishcouncil.org | [email protected] | Twitter: @davidcarralon 1

SEM at the British Council

The UK’s International network for cultural relations, education and arts

Page 2: SEM strategies for a non for profit. British Council. David Carralon

Cultural relations for the twenty-first century

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■Cultural relations is the building of engagement and trust between people of different cultures through the exchange of knowledge and ideas

Cultural relations is about engagement and trust between people of different cultures

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What does the British Council do?■ We promote cultural relations in:

■ Arts

■ Education

■ Science

■ Governance

■ English

■ And in two businesses

■ Teaching and Exams

■ Managing contracts

www.britishcouncil.org | [email protected] | Twitter: @davidcarralon 5

Click to return to contents

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Challenges■ Shrinking marketing

budgets

■ Scarce staff resources

■ Increase pressure from government to raise income

■ Faster implementation

■ Technical constraints

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The British Council Web Network

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The Web network : 560 websites

www.britishcouncil.org

.org/greece

.org/portugal

Org/italy

.org/spain

.org/ireland

.org/india

.org/thailand

.org/japan

.org/burma

.org/hongkong

.org/singapore

.org/brasil

.org/france

.org/chile

.org/uruguay

.org/mexico

.org/venezuela

.org/argentina

.org/colombia

.org/jordan

.org/jordan

.org/jordan

.org/jordan

.org/jordan

.org/jordan

.org/czechrepublic

.org/poland

.org/slovakia

.org/hungary

.org/sweden

.org/russia

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project/Programme

web sites

Europe Asia LATAM MiddleEast East Europe & Russia

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Project Websites

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Technical SEO Issues

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Domain name system

Top Level Domain (TLD) .org +

100 country websites Root level-based

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Accessibility (Javascript-based navigation)

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Technical problems

www.britishcouncil.org | [email protected] | Twitter: @davidcarralon 13

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Duplicate content

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Editorial Content turns into duplicate content

ContentSource

ContentSource

Oh la, lah, same content in in 80 diff. pages under the

directory structure and without geotargetting via

GWMTs

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Indexation problems

Click to return to contents

Rusty, old CMSLocalisation via IP addresses not possible■ Our servers are hosted in the UK

■ CDN Akamai uses US-based IP addresses, Swedish and German ones

Website Speed Performance issues

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404s

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Solutions : Low cost SEO that works

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The Brand Our brand is our strength

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The Brand

The Brand brings SEO value

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Alternative ways to distribute Pagerank

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Ultimately you have to achieve the following

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Link off the homepage

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Try with low-hanging fruit link-building

www.britishcouncil.org | [email protected] | Twitter: @davidcarralon

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You’ll soon be ranking better

www.britishcouncil.org | [email protected] | Twitter: @davidcarralon

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Online PR = Effective & Inexpensive Link Building

www.britishcouncil.org | [email protected] | Twitter: @davidcarralon

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Online PR = Effective & Inexpensive Link Building

www.britishcouncil.org | [email protected] | Twitter: @davidcarralon

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British Council France case study

2005-06

Average monthly site

visits:

45,000

2004-05

Average monthly site

visits:

20,000

2006-07

Average monthly site visits:

60,0002007-08

Average monthly site

visits: 70,000

2008-09

Average monthly site

visits: 95,000www.britishcouncil.org | [email protected] | Twitter: @davidcarralon

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Traffic growth matched by Exams registrations

1. website traffic for British

Council France

2. Exams registrations: IELTS,

Cambridge & BULATS

exams

No. Website visits per year

208621253056 285354

603150

785226

938316

0

100000

200000

300000

400000

500000

600000

700000

800000

900000

1000000

FY2003/04 FY2004/05 FY2005/06 FY2006/07 FY2007/08 FY2008/09

7415 7141 6891

10170

13891

17783

-4% -3% 47% 36% 28%

-2000

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

14000

16000

18000

20000

FY2003/04 FY2004/05 FY2005/06 FY2006/07 FY2007/08 FY2008/09

Registrations increases

www.britishcouncil.org | [email protected] | Twitter: @davidcarralon

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Spread the word about SEO within the organisation

www.britishcouncil.org | [email protected] | Twitter: @davidcarralon

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Deliver Low cost Training

■British Council SEO Guide

■Step by Step Guides

■SEO Videos

■Webinars

■Templates

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Identifying and educating champions■ A personal approach with the champions

■ Get a tool like Basecamp to set up basic SEO Project templates

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Give credit to your colleagues

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Summary■ Accessibility is a must: Easy spidering of content = more

indexation

■ Harness the potential of your Homepage (PageRank flow)

■ Identify other high link juice Internal pages and link to business–critical pages on your site

■ Not enough to rank? Go and get easy links: eg: local directory links

■ Consider Online PR to complement the above

■ Find allies within your .org that can help you build the case for SEO and give credit!!

www.britishcouncil.org | [email protected] | Twitter: @davidcarralon

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Cultural relations for the twenty-first century

www.britishcouncil.org | [email protected] | Twitter: @davidcarralon