Important Links for PDP: this is very important 'real estate' for search engine optimization

Questions

Any questions, feel free to e-mail me at alexbr.brown@gmail.com

Interesting Links

BusinessWeek
Businessweek forums are open to anyone considering business school. While some of the dialogue may not be totally focused on the application process it is important to keep up to speed with what is being discussed. The majority of MBA applicants are aware of these discussion boards. Manage your presence.
Bloglines
A web-based news aggregator.. This allows you to read blogs and other news sites that have an RSS feed, when you can see they have been updated. This saves you from the need to check a number of sites on an ongoing basis to see if there are any updates.
Alex's Bloglines subscriptions are at: http://www.bloglines.com/public/alexbrown
mbaleague
This blog is the blog that links to all the MBA-related blogs. It is useful to be able to follow applicant blogs, so as to understand the impact your admissions office is having on this community. You should also follow bloggers from your school (obviously). For many of you, there may not be any bloggers at this time. Perhaps you should actively encourage some of your students to start blogging ? The following is an interesting discussion about students blogging (diaries). Note, to keep up with the blogs you wish to follow, get an account on bloglines (see above).
technorati
This is a search engine (like feedster) that follows blogs and other sites with RSS feeds. You can set up a 'watch lists' of your school to see what the blogosphere is saying about your school (and do the same for your competitors' schools). Google is clearly a great search engine, but these more focused engines will get you to the 'conversation' much sooner.
wikipedia.
This is a wiki that may, or may not contain an entry for your school. Unlike regular online guides, which are updated by the schools' administrations, anyone can update in wikipedia. Check your entry, create your entry and make sure you are visible.
Wikipedia also has great definitions for:

School Sites Selected

The following sites were selected by at least three PDP participants. This may be a useful list to view as you prepare to rethink the design for your own web-site.

Maryland: streaming video and non linear landing page, eye catching colours, collapsable links.
Berkeley: easy layout, serious but not staid, stylish, strong impact and easy to use, dynamic and colourful photos.
Harvard: easy to navigate, big typeface, clean design and easy to use, thorough information, crisp clean and professional feel, persistent navigation.
Stern: clean, navigable, NY focus, very comprehensive, one marketing theme "The Downtown Advantage", NY front and center, news information on the front page, colourful imagery, student and faculty spotlight on the front page.
Emory: clean design and easy to use, well organized.
Stanford: easy to navigate, "Learning, Living, Leading" message in design, consistent navigation, well organized.
Wharton: colourful, creative, discussion link, simple yet comprehensive, strong impact and easy to use, discuss section, check your status.

Search Engine Optimization and Ads

This example illustrates how blogs can be useful to your search engine optimization program. The following are key things to know for SEO:

Identify your critical keywords
Title tag content is key (see title tag for this page)
Keyword integration in the body text
Sites with updated content get indexed more frequently
Network your site (the more links to your site the better)
All pages serve as an entry page

Aside from maximizing your site for search engines, you can also purchase advertisements that appear on the results pages (as well as on blogs and other resources that provide relevant context for your advertisement). You can use Google Adwords and / or Overture (Yahoo)