Continuing and Distance Education Website Readiness

Over the last few weeks, I launched a new white paper on website readiness at a number of UPCEA regional meetings. Today, I am in lovely Seattle enjoying my share of seafood, microbrews and coffee (of course). The white paper is a summary of a few months of research I started in March. In March, I was hospitalized with not a lot to do but sleep and take my meds. Well, for those that know me, turning off the work thing is a difficult thing to do. In the months that followed, I examined 105 continuing and distance education websites on search engine optimization, adult friendly keywords, backlinks (number of external links coming into a site), meta-language and some elements of look and field. I didn't go deep into navigation, but did explore whether the basics were in place.

You can get the white paper by clicking on the title or on link to the right of this page. The top continuing education websites are listed, while the rest are blurred out (I didn't want to throw people under the bus.). As expected, so of the top sites were the University of Phoenix, Drexel, Penn State and DeVry. However, there were a few surprises, such as little Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts. They did a lot of the basics right such as meta-language and links, but still have room for improvement (copy and design).

Seattle was great! Led a session on marketing on Wednesday morning and then co-presented with Janet Gifford, Director of Marketing at Linfield College on the use of digital press releases and link building and how important it is for search engine optimization. Janet is a rock star! You can find our presentation to the right as a download as well.

Enjoy the white paper. It was good therapy for me ... hope it can help you, as much as it helped me.