15 March 2017 at 9:00 am
Students flocking to Study in New Zealand website
The Study in New Zealand (SiNZ) website has increased in visibility, resulting in a record number of visitors.
SiNZ is now the top-ranking site in Google results for people in the UK, US, India, Thailand and Viet Nam when they search ‘studying in New Zealand’. It also ranks highly for ‘cost of living New Zealand’ and ‘universities in New Zealand’.
From December 2016 to January 2017, organic (unpaid) traffic to SiNZ increased by 24%, which means that the site is easier to find online. The SiNZ pages driving the most organic traffic include Scholarships, Study options and Work while you study.
Lucia Alarcon, ENZ’s International Digital Project Manager, said SEO (search engine optimisation) is a long-term strategy that helps make the site increasingly easy to find online.
"Having a SEO strategy helps to drive the right traffic to studyinnewzealand.govt.nz, growing value and conversion opportunities,” said Lucia.
As a result of this work, the bounce rate (the percentage of visitors who leave the site after seeing only one page) dropped from 15% to 13% between December 2016 and January this year.
Organic visits from mobile phones have increased 61% since July last year, corresponding with an impressive 70% increase in referral conversions from mobile phones. The site has also had a 44% increase in organic visits from tablet devices since last July.
These results demonstrate the importance of the site in raising awareness of the benefits of studying in New Zealand and in increasing referrals to institutions.
Other work contributing to these results includes better use of insights to create more engaging content, and tighter integration of social media channels with SEO, which ensures a more secure website that meets Google’s mobile-friendly criteria.
