Comments on: Best college Web sites named

By: Margert Coverstone

Margert Coverstone — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 18:49:37 +0000

lolol where is a light beer when you want one

By: Karen

Karen — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:52:05 +0000

OK, people. The title and whether or not the schools only offer online courses are not tied together. The title is referring to how many hits a school gets from ADVERTISING and word-of-mouth traffic plus any keywords the home site uses that a search engine picks up. Having online courses will naturally make a school show up more because people are SEARCHING for them and they gain in popularity. As school names show up and get more hits, they move up the rank. If a schoold does not offer online courses, there are keywords they can add to their home info pages that can increase their hit count. Make sense? The author said “search engine optimization” — that’s all it is — how well a site is “loaded” with searched words/phrases that captures them for results of a search.

By: Sheryl

Sheryl — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 13:40:13 +0000

I ran a Google Search on Universities and negating the paid sites UT, and MIT are in the top ten, also a list of colleges in my area which our site is listed fifth down the page. I do believe your data is skewed. I realize Google is not the only search engine, but it is widly used. We offer on-line classes, but they are minimal. Our main campus offers many on-line classes. I would be the first to say that our web site needs some work, but so does your article.

By: Liz

Liz — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 03:20:14 +0000

I didn’t know the Grand Canyon had a university. I was there not too long ago, but I don’t remember it. Where do they hide it?

By: ken lyons

ken lyons — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:37:45 +0000

@bob

i’m the author of the original post and conducted the study. in the spirit of fairness, i intentionally used the modifier “online” for only half the search queries for testing, so that colleges without distance learning programs would have an equal chance of ranking. regardless, online universities or schools with a strong online program still dominated the results.

thanks,
ken

By: bob

bob — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 18:51:42 +0000

Would be interesting to rerun your study dropping the use of “online” as a modifier. As Sheila points out, you might generate a different list of best SEO college websites for traditional degree programs.

By: Sheila

Sheila — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 14:13:18 +0000

The title of this article is FAR from accurate. Just because a college offers degrees online does not mean it has the best website. You elminated all colleges that do not have online degrees that probably have way better websites than most of the “colleges” on your list. The title should be Best College Websites that Offer Online Degrees named.

Editor’s response: As explained in the article, the term “best” in this case refers to search engine optimization, a function that is becoming increasingly relevant for all colleges.