a451 Search Engine Marketing

Chichester College - SEO

Chichester College in West Sussex currently has 15,000 full and part-time students enrolled. The college offers a range of A-levels, diplomas, NVQs, Apprenticeship courses and other professional qualifications to study. The college is open to all students, whether they are just leaving school, continuing to a higher level, returning to education or want to learn purely for fun. Chichester College also has an excellent international department attracting students worldwide. Within the campus there are a number of public facilities; quality restaurants, hair & beauty salons, a sports centre, childcare and conferencing facilities.

Chichester College -

Search Engine Optimisation Case Study

Project History

As part of the overall marketing strategy Chichester College had decided that a new website was needed with increased functionality, greater control in-house over content and to be highly visible to all service user groups including existing and potential students, local businesses and the academic community.

The historic performance of the previous site was available but  the new site was expected to achieve a great performance on a number of key perfromance indicators. The wide spectrum of the courses available, the additional services the College provided as well as the on-going recruitment function all had to be brought together in a single online marketing solution. 

a451’s role

a451 was selected in a competitve tender on the basis of an clear search engine marketing solution and by working with the College to clearly define the website's goals and targets.  The brief included advice on improvements to the architecture and content within the site, and work alongside the College’s marketing team in the online marketing efforts. Thanks to their experience the a451 team knew that research was crucial to understanding and therefore providing cost-effective marketing to Chichester College. Through their research they managed to determine these objectives:

Objectives

•    Target potential students from the age of 14.
•    Target international students.
•    Target mature students.
•    Target local employers who are interested in training opportunities.
•    Raise awareness of conference facilities.
•    Raise awareness of public facilities i.e. sports centre.
•    Increase awareness of College recruitment.
•    Increase their brand awareness.
•    Improve site accessibility.
 
The Strategy

Due to a451’s expertise and experience they were able to achieve every objective.

Working with the College’s IT team and Web developers the first task to address was the accessibility issues. The problem was pinpointed to a hardware issue and resolved.

a451 analysed data which, had been collected from the previous few years, they then added the new Google analytics code to the site with advanced filters to ensure the data collected was accurate. With the findings a451 advised the College on site architecture issues and on content performance.

Extensive keyword research was undertaken to target the wide range of service users who the college targets through the website.

Results

Chichester College achieved an exceptional level of growth in organic search engine traffic since a451 began their SEO work on the site.

Traffic for the website varies over the course of the academic year with some periods throughout the year more popular than others particularly leading up to September. However the year-on-year comparison showed a marked improvement with traffic increases ranged from 35-45% when compared with the equivalent month of the previous year.

a451 continues to manage and advise the college on their online marketing efforts.

"We retained a451 Search Engine Marketing when we launched the new Chichester College website to ensure we attracted traffic to the site from our target markets. We were impressed with the way a451 co-ordinated with our developers, in-house marketing and IT teams. a451 search engine optimisation process ensured our new website met and exceeded our original targets and they provided in-depth and detailed analytics information that is critical to the College marketing decision process. a451 have provided us with an excellent service and we have no hesitation in recommending them."

Sarah Stannard

Vice Principle, Chichester College