Create State/System Landing Pages: SEO Optimization
States/systems can create a customized, branded Transferology® landing page to help promote colleges and universities to prospective students. When navigating to Transferology through the system's referral link or badge, students will see the customized page (assuming it is published) instead of the CollegeSource-branded homepage. This article within Create State/System Landing Pages: An Overview Guide provides further information about how states/systems can use the SEO Optimization fields within the State/System Template to help make the landing page more findable within search engines.
Articles in this series:
- Customize the Transferology Landing Page
- Create State/System Landing Pages: An Overview Guide
- Create Institution Landing Pages: Color Selection
- Create State/System Landing Pages: Information
- Create State/System Landing Pages: Links
- Create State/System Landing Pages: Landing Page Images
- Create State/System Landing Pages: SEO Optimization
- Create State/System Landing Pages: Sample Landing Page
- Edit State/System Landing Pages: An Overview Guide
States and systems must work with CollegeSource to collaboratively create the initial landing page. Once the landing page is in place, it will be maintained by users at the participating institutions with the State Coordinator role in the Lab and any other State Coordinators given access to edit the page.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a configuration process aimed at improving a website's presence within search engines. It is designed to help individuals find a website more efficiently by supplying search engines with words and phrases that people may use to locate the site.
The following information from the state/system landing page will become available to search engines upon publication:
- Designated Images 1-3, Logo Image, Header Image, and Cover Image Alternate Text.
- The Page Description.
- Keywords.
Transferology supplies search engines with default page descriptions and keywords to help direct users to state/system landing pages. State Coordinators can customize this information within the State/System Template to supply different or additional content by entering text into the blank fields.
SEO Page Description
A page description is a short piece of text explaining a website's content. It is designed to give search engine users an idea of the page's focus so a person can decide whether to visit it. The more users that visit the page after searching for particular phrases, the higher a search engine may prioritize the page in its results.
Below is the page description that appears when an individual searches for "Transferology" in Google:
By default, each state/system's landing page has a similar description:
Transferology shows how courses you have taken or plan to take transfer to (State/System Name) for credit. It's a free transfer tool for students!
SEO Page Keywords
Keywords are important terms and phrases within a website that help the search engine (and thus the search engine user) locate sites meeting the search criteria. The more users that visit the page after searching for particular keywords, the higher a search engine may prioritize the page in its results.
By default, each state/system's landing page has been set by CollegeSource with the following keywords:
courses, transfer, credits, transferology
CollegeSource recommends using the default keywords in addition to the state/system supplies. It may be helpful to use popular nicknames for the state/system colleges and universities or their abbreviations.
Once a landing page has been published, keywords will be available for search engines to gather. Search engine crawlers may take anywhere from several days to weeks to locate and index this information.