This document discusses Knewton's case study on using local SEO to drive more online course sales. It describes how they launched thousands of landing pages targeting specific cities and locations to rank for local searches containing terms like "GMAT prep course in gainesville fl". This allowed them to receive thousands of new organic visitors per month. Initially, last-click analytics showed these local visitors weren't converting, but further analysis found 20% of all GMAT customers had visited a local page at some point in their journey. Local SEO was successfully driving new customers to their online courses. The key lessons are to research local search queries, build targeted landing pages, leverage existing link equity, and use multi-attribution tracking.

1. 7.12.11 Scholastic Digital Marketing SummitA Local SEO Case Study Follow me on twitter @willfleiss

2. Why should Scholastic care about local SEO?… We don’t have brick-and-mortar stores! 2 The “Local 7-Pack” often pushes theregular organic results down the page

3. A year ago Knewton was making the same assumptions If people are searching for an in-person class they probably won’t purchase an online course It’s impossible to rank well for local searches because the “Local 7-Pack” of brick-and-mortar stores always comes up first 3

4. That’s when Super SEO Man arrived on the scene… 4 We can still get a lot of that local traffic and convince people to consider our online course!

5. Enter the SEO landing page 5 Keyword rich title tag Keywords in the URL Keywords in the H1

6. Local SEO landing page (cont.) 6 Don’t let anyone tell you that keywords and text on the page are not important We launched thousands of these pages targeting cities in the U.S., UK, Canada, and India

7. How you link to these pages internally is just as important as the content 7 U.S. States index page The homepage usually has the most link juice to pass to other pages We also link keyword anchor text to specific local pages in copy throughout the website and blog Massachusetts page

8. Results 8 Ranking 2nd and 3rd for “gmat prep course in gainesville fl”

9. Results (cont.) Before July of 2010 we received zero organic search traffic from locally modified GMAT keywords Now, we receive on average 2,000 unique visits per month from GMAT keywords with a local modifier These 2,000 visitors come to the site using an average of 1,500 DIFFERENT keywords, demonstrating just how big the long-tail of search queries really is. 9 That’s interesting Will, but do they buy your product?!?

10. Well… When we looked at last-click analytics, the answer was aresounding NO! But when we were able to implement multi-attributiontracking with the help of a third-party vendor(Performable)we learned that, 10 20% of all GMAT customers visit a local page at some point between the time they first land on our website and the time they buy! So now the answer is a resounding YES, people who search for an in-person course WILL buy Knewton’s online alternative!

11. 5 Major Takeaways – F.I.B.L.R. Find out what local searches your customers are doing Invest in researching long-tail keyword modifiers Build pages to target specific long-tail keywords Leverage your website’s existing link equity to send link juice to new pages Remember that multi-attribution tracking can tell an entirely different story than just last-click analytics 11

12. Thank You! @willfleiss 12 Knewton’s Adaptive Learning Platform™ transforms educational content into a uniquely personalize learning experience. www.knewton.com