business case british council

www.britishcouncil.org | [email protected] | Twitter: @davidcarralon 1

SEM at the British Council

The UK’s International network for cultural relations, education and arts

Cultural relations for the twenty-first century

■Cultural relations is the building of engagement and trust between people of different cultures through the exchange of knowledge and ideas

Cultural relations is about

engagement and trust between

people of different cultures

What does the British Council do?

■ We promote cultural relations in:

■ Arts

■ Education

■ Science

■ Governance

■ English

■ And in two businesses

■ Teaching and Exams

■ Managing contracts


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Challenges

■ Shrinking marketing budgets

■ Scarce staff resources

■ Increase pressure from government to raise income

■ Faster implementation

■ Technical constraints


The British Council Web Network

The Web network : 560 websites

www.britishcouncil.org

.org/greece

.org/portugal

Org/italy

.org/spain

.org/ireland

.org/india

.org/thailand

.org/japan

.org/burma

.org/hongkong

.org/singapore

.org/brasil

.org/france

.org/chile

.org/uruguay

.org/mexico

.org/venezuela

.org/argentina

.org/colombia

.org/jordan

.org/jordan

.org/jordan

.org/jordan

.org/jordan

.org/jordan

.org/czechrepublic

.org/poland

.org/slovakia

.org/hungary

.org/sweden

.org/russia

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project site

Project/Programme

web sites

Europe Asia LATAM MiddleEast East Europe & Russia

Project Websites

Technical SEO Issues

Domain name system

Top Level Domain (TLD) .org +

100 country websites Root level-based

Accessibility (Javascript-based navigation)

Technical problems


mailto:[email protected]

Duplicate content

Editorial Content turns into duplicate content

Content

Source

Oh la, lah, same content in

in 80 diff. pages under the

directory structure and

without geotargetting via

GWMTs

Indexation problems

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Rusty, old CMS Localisation via IP addresses not possible

■ Our servers are hosted in the UK

■ CDN Akamai uses US-based IP addresses,

Swedish and German ones

Website Speed Performance issues

Solutions : Low cost SEO that works

The Brand

Our brand is our strength

The Brand

The Brand brings SEO value

Alternative ways to distribute Pagerank

Ultimately you have to achieve the following

www.britishcouncil.org | [email protected] | Twitter: @davidcarralon

Link off the homepage


Try with low-hanging fruit link-building


You’ll soon be ranking better


Online PR = Effective & Inexpensive Link Building


http://www.prweb.com/releases/prwebbritishcouncil/learnenglish/prweb4652844.htm

Online PR = Effective & Inexpensive Link Building


British Council France case study

2005-06

Average monthly site

visits: 45,000

2004-05

Average monthly

site visits: 20,000

2006-07

Average monthly site visits:

60,000

2007-08


visits: 70,000

2008-09


visits: 95,000


Traffic growth matched by Exams registrations

1. website traffic for British

Council France

2. Exams registrations:

IELTS, Cambridge &

BULATS exams

No. Website visits per year

208621253056

285354

603150

785226

938316

0

100000

200000

300000

400000

500000

600000

700000

800000

900000

1000000

FY2003/04 FY2004/05 FY2005/06 FY2006/07 FY2007/08 FY2008/09

7415 7141 6891

10170

13891

17783

-4% -3% 47% 36% 28%

-2000

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

14000

16000

18000

20000

FY2003/04 FY2004/05 FY2005/06 FY2006/07 FY2007/08 FY2008/09

Registrations increases


Spread the word about SEO within the organisation


Deliver Low cost Training

■ British Council SEO Guide

■ Step by Step Guides

■ SEO Videos

■ Webinars

■ Templates


Identifying and educating champions

■ A personal approach with the champions

■ Get a tool like Basecamp to set up basic SEO Project templates


Give credit to your colleagues


Summary

■ Accessibility is a must: Easy spidering of content = more

indexation

■ Harness the potential of your Homepage (PageRank flow)

■ Identify other high link juice Internal pages and link to business–

critical pages on your site

■ Not enough to rank? Go and get easy links: eg: local directory

links

■ Consider Online PR to complement the above

■ Find allies within your .org that can help you build the case for

SEO and give credit!!


Cultural relations for the twenty-first century


business case british council

Business