Introduction

Student’s decision making process

Factors considered by students during decision-making process

Role of Internet during college selection process Communication approaches by HEIs

Role of Meta description in information search

Research Questions

Methodology

Findings

Discussion & Conclusion Suggestions & Managerial Implications

Suggestions for Future Research

References

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to investigate the use of meta-tags by the leading Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs). It explores the various kinds of messages conveyed by HEIs in the meta-description tags of their website homepage. It further examines that whether the messages conveyed by HEIs are following the prospective students’ perspective.

Introduction

The importance of digital communication channels has increased significantly for higher educational institutions (HEIs) as the present generation of students is accessible online (Jones & Healing, 2010). Technologically based interactive communication plays an ever-increasing role during undergraduate and postgraduate students’ decision-making process (Gomes & Murphy, 2003). The majority of the HEIs have designed their websites for providing the information to their target audience. Over a period, most of the HEIs have social media presence on the leading social networking sites. Students, whether national or international, are investing more and more time investigating appropriate facilities on the Internet (Gomes & Murphy, 2003; Thompson, 2007). The search to gather relevant information online is very challenging as targeted content based on the seemingly endless supply of the information can be difficult (Royo-vela and Hünermund, 2016). It is a huge challenge for web publishers to ensure that their websites appear at the top of a search engine result page (Zhang & Dimitroff, 2005). Search Engine Optimization (SEO) helps in improving the ranking and the visibility of organization’s website when online users enter specific keywords in any search engine (Brown, 2007; Davis, 2006; Ramos & Cota, 2008).