A small case study about MSDN UK an possible strategies they could adopt to increase their traffic referral from search engines.

1. Microsoft Developer Network UK - 2010 Internet Digital Marketing Plan - Abstract

2. The Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) is the channel responsible for relationships with developers and system integrator, supporting them with the daily activity. MSDN has been started in 1992, initially through a CD-Rom service, later extended with a web presence with their corporate web site at http://msdn.microsoft.com In 2004 MSDN released the new web site, supporting alternative web browsers to Internet Explorer and specific geographic version – about 60. Originally MSDN was a one-way information service where Microsoft staff authored all the document and papers; today MSDN switched into a more collaborative mode, but the community require more consideration. Executive summary

3. Microsoft today has about 88% of market share; this means a wide range of developers which endorsed their programming languages to develop software. Microsoft developed a number of RAD (Rapid Application Development) tools, constantly updated, which requires periodic MSDN upgrade. Microsoft is a multinational corporation operating through regional subsidiaries in more than 60 countries, providing support through Internet via MSDN web site. Situational Analysis - Strengths

4. Windows Vista release signed the start of Microsoft decline; users and developers started to consider different OS and programming language. Microsoft doesn’t share the source code like the open source world does thus limiting the interest of specific niche and market sectors. Problems and bugs could be fixed rapidly through Internet, but a solid and prompt client service support that relies only on the network is unavailable. Microsoft technologies are designed for specific hardware limiting customers. Microsoft licensing model does not allow easy and cost effective upgrade for OS and Tools, inviting users and developers to different cheap solutions. Situational Analysis - Weaknesses

5. Increase Microsoft brand and MSDN platform awareness once again amongst users and developers. Despite the credit crunch, the demand for personal computers has substantially remained constant, refreshing constantly the audience interested in Microsoft OS, programming languages, and RAD. Situational Analysis - Opportunities

6. Microsoft has numerous court battles with other entities regarding antitrust and software developer lawsuits. Third parties hardware manufacturers which develop their OS as well, are issuing their pre-bundled tools and programming languages on their system. Microsoft’s success in RAD has encouraged other competitors to create programming IDE and languages that are able to deploy solutions both for Microsoft and third party OS. Situational Analysis - Threats

7. Duplicate title tags without keyword optimization. Pages have duplicate title and have not been themed around a specific set of keywords, reducing the performance and chance for a better optimization.Industry best practises indicate to insert at least the most important keyword (first) in the title tag. Canonicalization issue. Many pages of MSDN are duplicated amongst different geo-localized country versions preventing a proper indexing of pages.Industry best practises advise using the canonical tag to indicate the most important page amongst duplicates. An architectural solution won’t be the best solution because a permanent move is not what they need. Top 5 issue and industry best practice

8. Navigational issue. There are sections on the web site that don’t allow to return to home page (i.e. programming languages’ subpages, which operate as a sort of stand-alone web site) or are not easily reachable. Industry best practises indicates that issues like navigability could seriously compromise the user’s experience and sometimes force people to abandon the web site before they have found the information they were looking for. Inbound links. MSDN UK web site has few external links and consequent poor performance in the SERPs. Industry best practises report thematic links as the most valuable way to increase ranking and authority. This could be achieved engaging users with support channels. Link diversity should not underestimate as well. Top 5 issue and industry best practice

9. Non SEO Friendly URL. Insignificant page name are often used, preventing general topic reconnaissance for the searcher who approach to a specific entry into SE results. This creates confusion, especially when the page has similar or duplicate Title tag. Industry best practises indicates that short URLs containing keywords get clicked twice as often as long / insignificant ones. Sticking to short keyword related URLs, containing hyphen rather than underscore, MSDN will obtain a better ranking and click through. Top 5 issue and industry best practice

10. General on-page factor adjustment The web pages’ code presents: Syntax error(invalid tags, code after </body>, unescaped chars, inline CSS etc.) Important SEO rules ignored(duplicate page’s title tag, duplicate content, image alt attribute not properly used, URL not SE friendly, wrong header indentation, link to 301 redirected resources which new URL has been indexed) Page content, Keyword density and stemming (Pages haven’t enough content; keyword density and diversification concept ignored – Google recently updated it’s synonyms algorithm.) Crawling issues(Deeper pages not immediately reachable. Sub section HTML’ sitemaps should be developed to help SE crawling) Intra-site links(Breadcrumb navigation or top related arguments could improve the user experience, which can rely only on the internal search engine that offer too often returns plenty of unrelated results) - Issues 1, 2, 3, 5 This part represents the most challenging due to the size of the web site. It will require an intensive work, which could be simplified thanks to page templates. Recommendations and solutions

11. Technical events promotion. MSDN periodically organizes free events for developers, which often aren’t aware of them. Events should be promoted in advance also through social media, creating an extra buzz further acquiring new links without the risk to being spammy. After events material, once published, should be announced. MiMMicroformatshould be also used to stylish events for a better indexing. - Issue 4 Social media optimization. Facebook and Twitter are generally not optimized, and in most cases messages are left without a given answer, contributing for a worse perception of the brand. In a 4 level SM pillar, Microsoft sits on the “engaged” level; they have to initiate and follow conversation. Microsoft should allocate resources to proactively interact with the channels establishing brand awareness. Post a “Hot Topic” messages’ series to bring to followers’ attention a particular problem/resolution. - Issue 4 Recommendations and solutions