Laurentian University came to Mintent with the knowledge that SEO was important, but they did not know if they were using it properly. We sat down with JP Rains, Director of Digital Strategy, at Laurentian to discuss their experience

The Problem

He explained by using Google Analytics alone, Laurentian could see the bulk of their website’s traffic (67%) was coming from organic searches. However, 95% of the keywords used in that organic search traffic were unknown. He wanted to know which keywords his customers were using and how he could shape their content to align with their customer’s search terms . He understood that he needed to shape his content to fit the student’s journey, rather than trying to change the student to fit their process.

Laurentian is not alone in asking these questions. Marketers and communicators across many different higher education organizations aren’t leveraging data for content planning. As Laurentian University recently underwent a redesign of their website and had invested funds into rewriting many pages, they needed to really start tracking the impact of their content investment.

Laurentian’s Core SEO Problems:

Poor use of headings on program web pages
Lack of non-branded high search volume keyword
Very few images contributing to SEO
Limited ability to support decentralized content authors
No SEO tools to discover keyword or content opportunities

The Solution

They needed to find a tool which would tell them how their existing keywords/pages were ranking, which keywords they should be adding, which pieces of content they had some degree of authority for, and how they ranked versus their competitors. A major challenge was finding such a tool at a price point they could aord with a modest higher education budget. They chose Mintent because it was an aordable solution, which included all of the features they were looking for including.