Enhancing the Digital Presence: a Study on Best Practices in Search Engine Optimization for Vaasa University of Applied Sciences

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to study the visibility of Vaasa University of Applied science in search engines and provide a guide on how to improve their practices. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a technique used to enhance digital presence, particularly by achieving higher rankings on search engines and acquiring more traffic to the website. The technique is usually divided into on-page and off-page optimization and involves hundreds of influencing factors. The study has answered the research questions through a literature review and a quantitative and qualitative research. The review included sixteen scientific articles with the limitations that they were written in the English language, not older than ten years and that they would have full text access. The review provided data to support the research question on the best practices of SEO. Furthermore, research was conducted on VAMK’s visibility, keyword research, link research, performance test, and investigation of the site structure using tools provided by SEMrush, Moz, Google, and PageSpeed Insight. The interpretation of the results showed that the most essential factors affecting SEO are keywords, content, backlinks, and social sharing. VAMK’s visibility in search engines needs be enhanced and there are various areas for improvement, mainly with keywords, meta and title tags, backlinks, loading speed of webpage, and social sharing. There are constantly changes within SEO, and VAMK should therefore continue working on their improvements.