Web Strategy Meeting 05.03.12

Blue Titlecard has Changed!

We’ll never have to look at green on blue text again! Please double check your sections over the next couple of weeks, adding photos to the top right corner if they’re currently missing.

Web & Video Request Forms

Web Request Queue – From Rebecca

  1. Admissions buttons for the MIIS homepage (May)
  2. Updates to our Video Overlay (May)
  3. Upgrades to the Frontier Market Scouts template (May/June)
  4. Background image for the Center for the Blue Economy homepage (???)
  5. New header images for the Academics section (June/July)
  6. Customized Story Maps (by various tags) (August)
  7. “MIIS Tales” Story Template (Fall)

New Videos from Eric

MIIS Follies Documented for the First Time

Named Scholars Video

NET Impact Sustainable Fashion

MIIS Student Ambassador Update

from Danielle Johnson

Next Meeting: May 17th Focus Group

We’ll be hosting a focus group on the following areas of the MIIS website:

Please invite other staff and faculty members who you think might be interested to join us.

Summer Projects

SEO Project

Eric, Shanna, and I will be spearheading a project to review our implementation of on-page SEO tactics. We’ll primarily focus on the graduate programs, but any other programs are welcome to join our conversations and processes as well.

Program Assignments

Rebecca – IEM, MPA, TILM(?)
Eric – NPTS, TESOL, TFL
Shanna – IPS, IEP, MBA

To get started, here are some on-page SEO tips:

Naming URLs

To name URLs, please use lowercase letters and dashes (-) to separate words. This helps humans and search engine robots more easily read our URLs.

Naming Images

Before you upload an image to the website, please make sure the file name is readable. (Ex. william_arrocha.jpg NOT IMG30001.jpg). This also helps humans and search engines read the content of the file.

“Alt” tags for Images

If your embedding images within the text, please set the “alt” tags with meaningful text. (Ex. alt=”Lindsey Bowman, TESOL Student Ambassador” )

Hierarchy of Text

Breaking up your text with headings helps search engines understand which information on the page is most important – not to mention that it helps humans scan the content for the information they’re looking for.

Choosing Anchor Text

Anchor text is the text you use to link to other webpages or content. You should use your keywords within this text. (Ex. a link named “study abroad” should lead to our page about our immersive learning programs).

Continued Mobile Site Improvements

Up next: Ability to add custom links and feeds when you’re logged into the mobile site

Events Calendar: New Look

We’ll *finally* be implementing Middlebury’s events calendar on our site

Sites DOT MIISThe Middlebury Institute site network.