For details about OU website co-ordination (intranet and internet) please contact Ian Roddis of the Communications Group.

Online Services at the OU

Strategic search engine management

Search engine marketing (SEM) is the process and strategy of using search engines results to drive traffic to your website. This may include improving rank in organic listings, purchasing paid listings, or a combination of methods all designed to increase visibility. Within SEM, there are two main opportunities to gain visibility and direct visitors to your site.

Natural or organic listings (SEO) - the process of optimising our website(s) for 'findability'. This incorporates navigational structures, metadata strategy and body content. This activity is passive, longterm and enterprise wide (and linked to ECM). Natural (free) listings are very important for general visibility of the OU within search engines.

Paid or sponsored listings (PPC) - the buying of keywords (eg MBA) and paid for placements (eg sponsored links). This is active and a costed activity, and can be brand/product/sector specific.

The two most important factors which are essential for good ranking in SEO:

• On-page optimization. Matching between copy on the page and the search terms entered. Guidance notes relating to on-page optimisation are available for download below.
• Link-building. Creating links into a page from another page or another website. Futher information regarding our link building policies can be found on our Linking policy webpage.

Strategy

Our current strategy is based on 4 key objectives outlined below:

• Maximise visibility and awareness of the OU brand and offer relative to our competitors within key UK/international search engines
• Maximise the OU's share of search within the education category compared to competitors (institutions and other providers)
• Maximise quality of website visitors from search engines, attract those that convert to the outcomes the OU requires when they visit the website
• Maximise the lifetime value of visitors from search engines

SEO Strategy 2007/8

Guidlelines

SEO guidance notes1 - On page optimisation

Guidance notes relating to the use of Site Intelligence (SI)tracking for PPC cmapigns

Campaign tracking tools - Agency briefing 24/05/07

PPC Campaigns - Site Intelligence Tracking – guidance notes 1

Information Notes

“Teleporting” and Google search within a site

Methods

Spreadsheet to enable creation of <title>, <meta name="description"> and <meta name="keywords"> tags to recommended character limits.

Meta tags template

Spreadsheet to enable the creation of Site Intelligence parameterised landing page URLs for PPC campaigns

PPC campaign template

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