In this month’s issue, I have taken this topic of online marketing and advertising of distance-education programs another step further, explaining some of the things higher education marketing professionals should be aware of concerning search engines, with a primary focus on two leading search-engine companies, Google and Overture.

To perhaps state the obvious, the importance of getting any distance- education program listed on the first few pages of a Google or Overture search cannot be understated. The vast majority of Web surfers use one or both of these two search-engine companies to find information about distance education. Plus, Web-search-savvy computer users are often considered to be the primary prospective audience for ultimately becoming matriculated distance learners.

Google, as most search-engine analysts will tell you, is known as the leading search engine in the world. Overture has become widely recognized as Google’s main competitor, especially recently. Overture was officially purchased by Yahoo on October 7, 2003. Previous to this purchase Overture had bought search engine companies FAST and Alta Vista in February 2003. FAST is the company that provides search engine technology to AllTheWeb and Lycos. Overture also has partnerships with a number of major companies, including CNN; InfoSpace; and MSN, which has a great search engine that is popular in the corporate sector and known to attract numerous working professionals.

So, how does one get listed high up within Google or Overture? There are basically two ways:

1. You can guarantee placement on the first few pages of a search-engine result as a sponsored advertisement by paying for it through a search engine marketing (SEM) plan offered by these two highly successful Internet search companies.

2. You can get high up in the results for free as a non-sponsored link through search engine optimization (SEO), which is often a confusing process where there are no guarantees that you will make it to any page of any search-engine result.

Both SEM and SEO require dedicated vigilance to the search-engine world on the part of distance-education providers; in other words, you will need someone on your staff to pay close attention to all the SEM and SEO vagaries that are associated with search engines.

For instance, SEM plans are based on your ability to choose the right key words or search terms that you think your target market(s) will type into a search-engine field in order to find information about your distance-education program.

The way it works is that Google, through its AdWordsTM program, and Overture, through its Content MatchTM program, offer SEM programs where potential advertisers take part in an online auction system in which they bid for the top "sponsored" listings of the search results when people type in, for example, "online degrees." All this is done inside a very sophisticated online interface where potential advertisers pay for this service through pre-authorized credit-card processing at a total dollar amount they set in advance. Bidding wars are based on click rates established in 10-cent increments. The highest bids get the prime, most visible result spots. Google’s AdWords also has a ranking system that determines, based on a relevance equation of your sponsored ad, exactly where your ad gets placed inside the results pages of a search. Overture also has an evaluation system for determining where ads get placed. Each time someone clicks on an advertiser’s link, the advertiser pays the amount that they bid.

Both Google and Overture have online tools that prospective advertisers can use to see how bids are moving at any particular day/time. At Overture, for example, on October 13, 2003 during mid afternoon, the search term "online degrees" was garnering $4.74 per click, with Jones International holding the leading spot. Next in line was Westwood College Online at a cost of $4.42, with Regis University on its heels at $3.89. On Google, at approximately the same time, "online degrees" was going for $4.19 for the top spot, with search results showing Capella University holding the number one sponsored position. ClassesUSA.com, a company featured in the September issue, was listed second. Just below them was UniversityAlliance.com. Please note that these results were for a particular moment in time. It’s not unusual to see search results change within minutes of a new search under the same term.

The bidding system "changes every minute and every day as to whether a word is popping up where and how and when," says Steve Shapiro, vice president of marketing and communications for Jones International. "It is all done for some people automatically, which you can do with Google. If you go into the [bidding] interface and say I want to be in the first, second or third position and I don’t care what it costs, it will automatically put you there. Someone who is paying attention could bid me up to $15 [per click] if they wanted to. Those who are savvy manage their bidding system daily, looking at not only what key words are performing, but what position is performing and at what price."

Savvy marketers will also want to know how bad clicks are prevented from occurring. For instance, what if your competitor repeatedly clicks away on your sponsored ad knowing that it’s costing you more money by the second? Both Google and Overture claim that they have sophisticated software that checks whether or not a click is coming in from the same IP address too frequently and will credit an advertiser’s account for what can be considered as bogus clicks.

As mentioned earlier, SEO is another option that marketers of distance-education programs must pay close attention to. However, like the always changing world of keywords and search terms, SEO is not an exact science. "There is an art to search engine optimization," says Jeff Harmon, marketing director of the University of Illinois Online, "and you have to have a little bit of luck." Much of SEO starts with having the right tags inside your Web site - which is the HTML code located in the top area of Web pages unseen by the site visitor - in particular the title tag, the meta-description tag, and meta-keyword tag on any given Web page. These tags are what search engines look for when identifying and ranking Web sites as they sift through the millions upon millions of Web pages in Cyberspace.

In addition to proper tagging, what’s known as "keyword weighting" can come into play. Keyword weighting entails duplicating the words used in your tags inside the text of your Web pages. So, if you have "online degrees" in your tags, you should have "online degrees" sprinkled within the text of your Web page. Typically four to five percent of the text on your Web page should match your tags, says Mark Hall, CEO and founder of Ed-X.com, the Distance Learning Channel (see "Sound Advice About SEO" on page 4).

Both SEM and SEO were summed up rather nicely by Andrew Goodman, founder of Toronto-based Page Zero Media and an internationally recognized expert on pay-per-click keyword advertising and author of "21 Techniques to Maximize your ROI on Google AdWords" (cost $49): "Distance education is typical of a highly competitive industry whose individual participants are likely to benefit disproportionately from search engine marketing, if they know what they’re doing. This is a highly specialized market whose customers have specific needs and who may be searching online using unique sets of keywords. Targeting those needs with tightly-organized Google AdWords campaigns (and similar keyword advertising) allows for a direct-response dynamic that is typically less expensive per lead than other direct marketing methods. The feedback cycle on search marketing is typically quicker, at least in the pay-per-click area. By contrast, optimizing one’s Web site for the regular search index — also a must — has a longer time frame and should be geared towards meeting the user’s informational needs and generating credibility and trust."