...
- Key benefit, ideally as direct address/imperative the banner overview should be a good starting point)
- Programme name
- Any key words/synonyms that Synonyms/key words that are commonly used, e.g. 'MBA' for the 'Master of Business Administration'
- What kind of content users will find, the tasks they allow users to complete (if there’s optional of there's room)
Why use these elements?
Key benefit: For recruitment.
Programme name: Google wants to include the search term in the description so sometimes truncates the description to stuff the search term into the snippet. The most common search term that will bring people to a programme page is the programme, so to avoid having Google chop of important parts of our description we should include the programme name in the search term.
Key words: Findability as these synonyms will be common search terms
Kind of content: Give users a clear idea what the content covers making it more likely they click through. This is optional because postgraduate students should have a reasonable idea the kind of content a page about a PG programme would cover and they already know the subject of the page from the title.
See Notes on the "kind of content" element.
Elements I don't think the description needs
The description is for telling people what’s on the page, not general info about the university.
I reckon this means the descriptions don’t need:
- ‘Victoria University’ as it’s in the HTML title and ‘Victoria’ is in the URL
- ‘Vic Uni’ in every description, Google treats it as synonymous with Victoria University and 160 characters is short so we need every char we can get.
- ‘Wellington’ or ‘New Zealand’ in the description. Even if Wellington’s not going to be used in the HTML title, the URL shows it’s an NZ site. We’re not really competing with the other Vic Unis. For NZ students Google will give priority to us. For internationals it’s not like they’re going, “I want to go to a Victoria University, I don’t care which country”, they know which Vic they’re after. They’ll be able to find out soon enough which country it’s in and using scarce characters for disambiguation is a waste of characters. Most will probably add NZ or Wellington to their searches.
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Ideally we’d find a bunch of short formulae we can use, when we've room, to convey the kind of information the pages provide.
My thinking about these and some ropey examples are below.
What you’ll find on these pages are the reasons you should study the programmes and the basic information to help you make a decision and plan your study. We could tell users that by phrases like “Thinking of studying...”, “Find out how everything you need to know about studying...”, “Learn why and how you should study...” or “Decide if and plan how you...”, or “Get requirements, study planning, contact and application information...” etc, as in:
- Thinking of/Looking for/Planning on doing /Choosing a/Deciding on a [programme]? Get [key benefit] at Vic.
- Learn why and how you should [key benefit] by doing a [programme]
- Decide if and plan how you [key benefit] by enrolling in [programme]
- Plan your study in [programme] and get [key benefit]
- Find out how everything you need to know about how studying the [programme] gives you the [key benefit]
- Get requirements, subject, study planning, contact and application information about [programme] and [key benefit]
OK, these last two use a lot of chars. So maybe only use them when the [key benefit] and [programme] are very short.