The JMH Consulting Blog

I thought I would explore Google Analytics a little today and post my thoughts.

Our firm helps manage and market several professional education programs at Emory University. The website for this department had just under 200,000 visitors during the six month period from January to June of 2008 (around 1,100 people each day). We also know that around 94,000 people (or 47.1% of the total) visited the website because of performing an online search. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not often anymore that I learn about a new, simple tool to use in search engine optimization. After 10 years of SEO experience, I tend to think that I know most of the tricks, but I’m always excited when some article or conversation brings to light a completely new technique or tool that I can use. Read the rest of this entry »

Great news!

Yesterday, we completed a project that has been “in the works” for a bit too long. This tool will make a great addition to our toolkit for analyzing data and trends in the continuing education industry. The tool plots data related to zip codes to a map of the Atlanta area. Our client, Emory University, can now get visual, geographic interpretations of all sorts of data! Read the rest of this entry »

Our president suggested studying a statistic related to a proposed marketing plan to improve the rate of return of your customers. The idea is to offer students who frequent your continuing education classes certain specials: early registration for popular classes, special events, or special discounts. Read the rest of this entry »

JMH Consulting helps Emory University manage and market its professional education programs, and our president has often share this statistic about the Emory programs: “70% of registrations come from the website.” Today, he approached me and admitted that his statistic was a few years old. So we reviewed our registration data to see what’s going on today. After a quick analysis, we found the results pretty interesting. Read the rest of this entry »

For those that don’t know, Google recently released a new beta tool called Google Trends(trends.google.com). Essentially, this tool allows anyone to gauge the relative popularity of various search terms. You can also filter your results by geography and chronology. We’ve begun using this tool as part of our keyword research for search engine optimization. Essentially, websites should be optimized around relevant terms that are used most often by searchers.

Today, I thought of another interesting use for this tool. Read the rest of this entry »

I recently set out to discover whether Emory’s Professional Learning Programs “early bird special” was an effective incentive for encouraging potential participants to register earlier than two weeks before the class start. As I analyzed the data, a lot of interesting statistics emerged, so I thought I’d share some of them. Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft adCenter Labs is an research group that researches and tests new digital advertising technologies. They are developing cutting-edge ways for consumers and advertisers to connect across a broad range of technology areas, including keyword research, audience intelligence, ad selection, social networking, and video ads. Learn more on their website.

Though created in 2006, this is one of the most comprehensive lists of link building techniques I’ve seen. Many of these techniques can be used by adult educators to improve their sites search engine rankings. The following items would seem especially valuable for adult educators:

• 2, 3, and 4
• 18 and 19
• 40 (cite books that relate to your course content),
• 45, 46, and 47 (you’re reading this aren’t you?)
• 55 (unless they are competitors, trade links with other universities’ departments)

Don’t forget to ask all of your instructors to link to their classes on your website (especially if they are adjunct or contract instructors with their own websites).

USA Today recently asked Matt Cutts, a google engineer, how to optimize your site for search engines. He came up with five easy tips that anyone can use:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/services/2008-06-22-google-search-engine-optimization_N.htm