URL: www.Cogswell.Edu

Product: Educational Establishment offering accredited degrees in various areas of computer engineering and fire sciences.

Campaign: Landing Page Development, Search Engine Optimization, PPC Campaign Creation & Management.

Time Frame: May 2009 to Present

Background:

Strategically located in Silicon Valley and with over one hundred years of academic history, Cogswell University provides accredited higher education that empowers students to innovate through the fusion of art and engineering. Cogswell found us through the recommendation of a personal friend who also serves on the board of directors.

Challenge:

Being that Cogswell is a university on the cutting edge of technology, computer and software engineering, as well as offering one of only seven accredited online fire science bachelors programs, it is fair to say that the majority of prospective students are found through online channels. Up until this point, Cogswell has had minimal online exposure and they found themselves hitting a wall; unable to grow their enrollments utilizing their existing recruitment methods. That is when they knew they needed the services of an SEO and Internet marketing expert, and in May of 2009 contracted with Nordyke Consulting Inc to manage their complete online advertising efforts.

When we came on board with Cogswell, we immediately recognized several issues causing them to fall behind their competitors and lose valuable search engine placements. Some of the main issues we found included:

  • Improper formatting of Meta Tagging, Titles, and lack of valuable content on important landing pages.
  • Low link popularity and search engine saturation, as well as lacking proper search engine indexing.
  • Lack of conversion tracking and proper analytics to track efforts.
  • Targeting wrong keywords which were not converting well or containing low quantities of searches by potential students.

The Nordyke Consulting Strategy:

Over a period of several months, we completed optimized the site including the proper research of highly trafficked and converting keywords, meta/title creation, relevant content creation, and proper conversion tracking and analytics. We also implemented an extremely aggressive link building and external SEO strategy to increase search engine popularity and improve ranking for our targeted keywords. Since our work in may of 2009, Cogswell experienced the following results:

  • 200% Increase in unique visitors to targeted landing pages.
  • 45% of these came from organic Search Results.
  • Enrollments increase for Fire Science program from 1000 enrollments to 1800 enrollments!
  • 25% more pages indexed by Google and Yahoo.

Cogswell currently enjoys top rankings for keywords such as:

  • Fire Science
  • Fire Science Colleges
  • Online Fire Science Degree
  • Digital Arts Engineering College
  • Digital Arts School
  • California Audio Technology College
  • California Animation College
  • Software Engineering College
  • Software Programming College
  • And many more!