What is a website?

When a school reports the need to update their website, I’m the smart ass that wants to ask which one?

The school is talking about the .edu, but another word for a Facebook Page is website.

YouTube offers a website with videos. On mobile, the app seamlessly picks up where someone was on the desktop.

Google Maps is a website. It is a huge part of Google My Business, which is a massive part of the Brand Search (when people search for a school by name.

Facebook groups are a website that offers a community for newly admitted students. One of our school partners has a Facebook group that has almost 700 newly admitted students and an average of 30 posts a day.

LinkedIn offers a website that functions as an about for the school. Here is the staff, and here are the alumni, sortewd by major, skills, where they work, where they live, and how they got to where they are. That website offers an incredible look into an alumni population and is massively better than any /alumni could do. LinkedIn also offers events.

I think we’re at an age when an update of a website should include an audit for the websites out there, with a plan for addressing how they will fit into the update.

Call it the Director of Digtial presence, and give that person the role of overseeing everything on the Brand Search, and everything one desires to see on the Brand Search.

At 3E, we offer a Digital Lab that structures an entire day on this very notion of websites and a digital presence. At the end of the day, you understand how the .edu, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and all your other websites fit into the enrollment cycle.

How will Google and other search engines treat each of those sites?

The thing is: there are many landing pages into a school’s digital presence. When thinking about “updating” or “refreshing” a .edu, it is worth thinking about how the other websites fit into it.

One final thing: the English department does not get their own .edu. It would be silly to do that. If we thought of Facebook Pages as websites, we would agree it is equally as silly to have their own website on the Facebook platform.

Thoughts?