Project

Improving reputation and visibility in Estonia and internationally. Project 5 – Increasing the website traffic via Google

Goals

The goal is to double the number of external website users from 1 million in 2021 to 2 million in 2025 by using SEM (search engine marketing, Google paid traffic, Google text ads) and SEO (search engine optimization, Google organic traffic, editing texts to show up on search engines). To decide on the university’s top strategic keywords by areas and expectations and to rank the corresponding content higher in search results. To use strategic keywords in order to increase the number of website users. To improve the content’s search engine visibility through SEO, to train webmasters so that they would have the relevant competencies.

Project benefits

In practice, there is a strong correlation between website traffic and public attention. For example, strong media anomalies, where a topic published on the web attracts public interest, cause peaks, i.e. a sudden surge in web traffic. As regards the university, the seasonal peaks in traffic occur at the beginning of July and at the beginning of September. It can be said that web statistics clearly reflect the active interest of society. The first benefit of this project is the general increase in the number of active users, which is measured by the increase of the website traffic. With a larger number of interested people, the university will have more options for cooperation, student or employee recruitment. The coverage of topics will also be wider, since every added interested person will increase the probability that other interested persons will be involved – people will actively talk about topics that interest them, and in turn will arouse interest of other people.
Another benefit is the increase of the number of persons interested in top strategic keywords, which helps to meet the expectations regarding persons involved in specific topics (e.g. green transition, smart digital solutions, admission). A well-optimized website becomes much more visible to those interested. Users’ preferences (clicks) provide signals to Google to rank better in search results. Since the vast majority of users click on the first 3 search results, they are unlikely to click through to the university’s website if it ranks lower, the competitors will attract the traffic. We definitely want to rank among the top three results for the following keywords: university, admission and research cooperation.

Regulations

Results and deadlines

1. SEM activities: identify the critical keywords (20) for which the university wants to be ranked among the top three results.	2022 (completed)
2. SEM activities: to launch paid actions to integrate relevant keywords.	2022 (completed)
3. SEM activities: to start new targeting activities upon student recruitment in close cooperation with media agencies.	2022 (cooperation started)
4. SEO activities: to appoint an SEO project manager.	2022 (completed)
5. SEO activities: to find a partner and start a training program for webmasters.	2022 (completed)
6. SEO activities: to train at least 20 webmasters.	2022 (in progress)
7. SEO activities: to incorporate SEO in writing news texts.	2022 (in progress)
8. SEM activities: to record the results at the end of each year and specify the list of keywords as needed.	2023-2025
9. SEM activities: to change the target focus (the target group, country of origin, school of origin) as necessary.	2023-2025
10. SEM activities: to ensure a 20% annual growth of traffic gained via paid search, to optimize the budget on an ongoing basis to ensure the result.	2023-2025
11. SEO activities: to ensure the training of at least one webmaster from each unit, to increase annually the number of persons who have completed the training.	2023-2025
12. SEO activities: to consistently ensure the coverage of topics of interest to the public from the perspective of SEO, to ensure well-designed content pages.	2023-2025