Performed an audit of the Udacity DMND website, recommended actions to improve the website's ranking in search engine results, created a target keyword list, evaluated the design, content and the UX of the site, and recommended improvements.

1. Project 4: SEO Audit
KC Dochtermann
February 1, 2018

2. Keywords
Head Keywords Tail Keywords
1 Nanodgree Best digital marketing degrees
2 Udacity Digital Marketing What are the best digital marketing degree
programs
3 Digital Marketing Degree What are the best digital marketing degrees
4 Social Media Marketing Udacity digital marketing nanodegree
5 Digital Marketing Online digital marketing degree

3. Keyword with the Greatest Potential
Which Head Keyword has the greatest potential?
The head keywords with the greatest potential were ‘Nanodegree’ (priority score:25), and
‘Udacity’ (priority score: 55). They had a low difficulty ranking, with a high organic CTR.
Which Tail Keyword has the greatest potential?
The tail keywords with the greatest potential were ‘Best digital marketing degrees’ (priority score:
2)7, ‘What are the best digital marketing degree programs’ (priority score: 27) and ‘What are the
best digital marketing degrees’ (priority score: 21). Again, these keywords had low difficulty
rankings, with high organic CTR.

4. Technical Audit: Metadata
DMND URL: dmnd.udacity.com
Current Revision
Title Tag Udacity Digital Marketing Nano
Degree Program
Udacity Digital Marketing NanoDegree
Program | Become a Digital Marketer
Meta-Description No content Gain real work experience running live
campaigns. Learn from experts in the field.
Secure a 360-degree understanding of digital
marketing.

5. Technical Audit: Metadata
DMND URL: dmnd.udacity.com
Current Revision
Alt-Tag: //c.fastcdn.com/t/
beb60d38/d4lfl3af/
1496943484-13815763-9
60x480-medium.jpg
Empty UDACITY STUDENTS LEARNING
Alt-Tag: //c.fastcdn.co/t/
beb60d38/d41f13af//
1496943485-13718463-1
89x64-horizontal-primary-
b.png
Empty DMND PROGRAM LOGO
Atl-tag: //c.fastcdn.co/t/
beb60d38/d41f13af/
1496943491-13720038-8
92x44-logospartners.png
Empty UDACITY PARTNER LOGOS

6. Technical Audit: Metadata
DMND URL: dmnd.udacity.com
Current Revision
Alt-Tag: //c.fastcdnco/t/
beb60d38/d41f13af/
1496943483-13814963-8
62x403-image-digital-
market.png
Empty FLOATING LAPTOP
Alt-Tag: //c.fascdn.co/t/
beb60d38/d41f13af/
1496943501-13815588-4
15x345-features1.png
Empty UDACITY MARKETING INSTRUCTOR
Atl-tag: //cfastcdn.co/t/
beb60d38/d41f13af/
1496943512-1383478-38
3x305-features-02.png
Empty GRAPH BAR AND LAPTOP

7. Technical Audit: Metadata
DMND URL: dmnd.udacity.com
Current Revision
Alt-Tag: //c.fastcdnco/t/
beb60d38/d41f13af/
1496943509-13815378-2
03x169x285x204x6x11-7
0B-box.png
Empty $70B SPENT ON DIGITAL MARKEITNG

8. Suggested Blog Topics
Topic 1 – Why a NanoDegree? Write a blog that contains that incorporate the keywords ‘NanoDegree’
and ‘Udacity Digital Marketing’ – these are very unique words that would help boost ranking do to their low
difficulty and high organic CTR potential. The blog would talk about the unique benefits of the program.
Topic 2 – Importance of Social Media Marketing for Today’s Marketer Write a blog using the keyword
‘social media marketing’. While this keyword does not rank as high as other head keywords, it is a high
relation potential, as social media marketing has become so necessary today. The word has a fairly high
organic CTR, and draw attention to the social media element of the program.
Topic 3 – What are the Best Digital Marketing Degree Programs? Write a blog using the keywords,
‘What are the best digital marketing degree programs’ and ‘best digital marketing degrees’. These words
have a very low difficulty rating, and a very high organic CTR. As well, they are very relevant to potential
customers that might searching for good digital marketing degree programs, and would make for enticing
content to re-enforce the unique benefits and features of Udacity’s program.

9. Technical Audit: Backlink Audit
Backlink Domain Authority (DA)
1 http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-
schema-course-extend/2016Jan/0020.html
100
2 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/
technology/coursera-plans-to-announce-
university-partners-for-online-classes.html
100
3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=FWJ5JzU9tqU
100

10. Link-Building
Site Name Site URL Organic Search Traffic
1 Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ 645 MIllion
2 LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/feed/ 47.5 Million
3 YouTube https://www.youtube.com 1.4 Billion
Three high traffic websites for backlinks:

11. Page Index
The number of pages indexed is important is because search engine crawlers search via links between
pages – that more indexed pages pointing to a page/site, the easier to crawl, which results in a higher
page rank in search results.

12. Page Speed
The mobile ranking for the DMND site was 79/100 – a medium ranking. The site could use a slight
tune-up. Page speed is important mainly for two reasons:
1. Slow page speed results in search engines crawling fewer pages, which negatively impacts
indexation of pages, which in turn affects ranking.
2. Slow page speed provide a negative user experience, which increases bounce rates, as well as
reduces time spent on a page.

13. Mobile-Friendly Evaluation
The results for the DMND website were excellent - 4 seconds to load the page. Mobile-friendliness has
been growing in importance since the beginning of the smartphone era in 2007. According to comScore,
60% of digital time in the majority of global markets in now spent on mobile devices. More and more
people are accessing the web by mobile devices – acccording to GeoMarketing, US users are averaging
3.23 hours a day on mobile devices (compared to 2.08 hours a day on desktop).

14. Recommendations
1. Udacity could improve the use of keywords for the DMND website – especially including tailwords like “What are the best digital
marketing degree programs’ and ‘best digital marketing degrees’. These could be entered into the content on the site, as well as
used in blog articles that would direct traffic towards the site.
2. Udacity could improve the content in the title tag for the DMND website. A suggested addition to the title tag could read:
“Become a Digital Marketer”.
3. Udacity could insert content into the DMND website meta-description – currently there is no content. Suggested additions: ‘Gain
real world experience running live campaigns. Learn from top industry experts. Secure 360 degree understanding of digital
marketing.’
4. Udacity could insert content into the Insert Alt-Tag content for the DMND website. Currently the alt-tags for all these images are
empty. Currently image files have lengthy titles that are not descriptive of the images. Descriptive content/titles for each images
could be added in the alt-tag to identify the placeholder in the event that images are not loaded.
5. Udacity could improve the number of pages indexed for the DMND website. The Google Indexed Page Checker revealed ‘N/A’
for the DMND website. Udacity should be begin by indexing the site map with Google (if has not done so yet). Increasing the
number of pages indexed could help increase the page rank.
6. Udacity could increase the page speed of the DMND website . The ‘think with Google’ tool revealed that currently the DMND
website has a score of 79/100 for mobile, and a score of 70/100 for desktop – which is medium rating. By increasing the page
speed, it could result in improving page rank and user experience.