9 SEO Best Practices for Universities for Better Enrollment in 2024

The latest study by Verified Market Research indicates a steady uptick in enrollment in higher education. Yet, it also notes that persistent budget constraints hinder institutional growth despite the rise in enrollment numbers.

In the intricate and multifaceted landscape of higher education, institutions need to take the lead in ensuring wide-ranging visibility for their brands at the most economical cost. With the shift of business marketing to digital platforms, including websites and social media, it’s essential for schools to leverage the potential of top higher education SEO strategies. Indeed, SEO currently holds a prime spot in the trends for higher education marketing.

So, what does SEO for higher education entail?

SEO, or search engine optimization, fine-tunes various on-page, off-page, and technical elements of a website to achieve higher rankings in search engine results. This enables universities to draw in more potential students and organically boost enrollments.

Our guide today will delve into some of the most pivotal higher education SEO practices for educational institutions seeking to amplify online inquiries and enrollments:

Understanding Your Perfect Student Profile
Keyword Investigation for Higher Ed SEO
In-house SEO and Competitor Analysis

Niche-Specific Keyword Research
Have SEO Friendly URL Structures
Optimize Your Website to Engage Prospects

Develop a Content Strategy and Revitalize Your Previous Articles
Dominate Google Search Results
Share Students’ Testimonials and Reviews

We will touch upon crucial elements such as the construction of user-friendly URL structures, mobile-optimized websites, topical relevance, high-authority backlinks, among other factors, all aimed at enhancing the online visibility of your university brand.

1. Understanding Your Perfect Student Profile

Your institution is special, with its own distinct student body. To get the most out of your SEO plan, you need to fine-tune your pages using keywords and phrases that correspond with the students who are most likely to apply and eventually register in your institution. A sizable public university with affordable in-state fees and a prominent vocational inclination will appeal to a different type of student than a small, exclusive liberal arts college. Without tailoring your keywords to your audience, you might see a surge in traffic, but this won’t significantly elevate your registration figures.

Start with the development of student profiles that reflect your current and ideal students. Search for patterns in demographics, hobbies, and decision influencers. You don’t need to get overly specific; these profiles are intended to portray archetypes, not individuals.

Some examples of student archetype profiles are:

Budget-aware high school students

Prestige-focused high-achievers
Adult learners
Etc

If your institution excels in certain academic fields or programs, your profiles should incorporate students specifically interested in those areas. Developing archetypes enables you to delve deeper into your perfect students’ motivations, allowing you to target searches based on intent.

What Is Searcher Intent?

It’s a method of predicting how searchers will behave based on what they’re looking for. For instance, a person searching for “top jobs for English majors” might be considering a college with a renowned English department.

After identifying your target student profiles, you can start crafting keyword-based content catered to those profiles. Consider creating collections of content instead of isolated pieces. A series of blog posts on subjects of interest to your potential students will keep them engaged with your institution and aid in their decision-making process.

💡 Enhance your higher education SEO results with video and social media.

In your content schedule, ensure to incorporate higher education social media and video content. Today’s college searchers are active on YouTube and TikTok, so connect with them on their preferred platforms.

Student profiles will assist you in pinpointing keywords and phrases for your content — but how do you ensure your content ranks high on the SERP for your keywords? To start tackling that question, you’ll need to review your college website’s SEO and contrast it with competitors currently ranking for your desired keywords.

2. Keyword Investigation for Higher Ed SEO

How do you discover keywords to propel your SEO content? By thinking from your target audience’s perspective. Think about words and topics prospective students would search; these are your “keywords.” Maintain an ongoing list in a spreadsheet. Involve admissions advisors and other administrators who frequently interact with students. You might even find data from previous Q&A sessions useful.

After compiling your list, you’ll need a keyword tool like Google’s Keyword Planner to establish the popularity of each keyword and assess the organic ranking competition.

In this video, Simon from Metrics Media shows you how he uses the Google Keyword Planner.

However, comprehensive keyword research demands much more. Diving deeper (and using even more sophisticated tools), you can reveal related long-tail phrases (more than one or two-word inquiries). For instance, if students are searching for the short-tail phrase “criminology programs,” are others looking for “criminology programs with internships?”

These longer queries offer chances to strategically build your content and highlight your program’s unique benefits. By deciphering your audience’s search requests, you can develop top-tier content, blog posts, and virtual events to answer their most pressing questions. Then, you can start driving traffic to your site.

💡 Ensure a balanced mixture of short-tail and long-tail keywords.

What sets apart short-tail and long-tail keywords? Short-tail keywords are broader and contain one or two keywords. They generally have higher search volumes but result in lower conversion rates as it’s harder to ascertain searcher intent. Long-tail keywords are highly specific queries, often formatted as a question, and contain three or more words. They might generate less volume but perform well over time, as content ranking for long-tail keywords is likely to align closely with searcher intent.

You should also consider both branded and non-branded keywords. Branded keywords incorporate your college or university’s name, attracting searchers specifically looking for you. It’s vital to organically rank for your branded search terms — but focusing on non-branded terms might be even more crucial, as it’s the best method to reach a new demographic of prospective students.

3. In-house SEO and Competitor Analysis

The importance of SEO analysis cannot be overstated, as it allows you to pinpoint areas of your website that may hinder its proper crawling or indexing, subsequently negatively affecting your ranking. Identifying these problems is the first step, followed by prompt resolution.

So, How Does One Go About an SEO Analysis?

Considering the multitude of factors that influence SEO, it is crucial to adopt a comprehensive perspective for an effective strategy. Apart from technical roadblocks, those conducting an analysis without a solid SEO foundation may miss out on significant structural details. A well-written blog post, for instance, may still be detrimental due to technical shortcomings like slow page load times or non-crawlable pagination.

I advice you dividing the process into four distinct sections and meticulously review each ranking factor to detect technical anomalies. Categorize every SEO factor and rank them based on priority.

Upon completing the analysis, you may identify 30 or more different factors, logically sequenced. Then proceed to resolve each problem systematically.

What About Analyzing Competitors?

Your in-house analysis is just one side of the coin, with competitor analyses forming the flip side.

During competitor research, we examine three areas:

Their SEO strategies

Their paid advertising approach
Their conversion and messaging tactics

Under these digital marketing categories, it’s essential to consider the following:

Which competitors offer valuable lessons?
What strategies are our competitors employing exceptionally well to outrank us?
What pages are ranking highest for our competitors?

Which other websites are linking to them?
Which keywords are they investing in for their paid search?
What advertisements are they running?

What are their conversion strategies?
Are they offering premium content downloads, virtual campus tours or events, or utilizing chatbots?

This knowledge offers valuable insights into areas that need reinforcement. By comparing our in-house analysis with each competitor, we obtain solid data showcasing their keyword usage, the kind of content they create, and how we fare in comparison.

4. Niche-Specific Keyword Research

Without an effective keyword research strategy, optimizing your niche-specific keywords (specifically related to higher education) will be a challenging task. Failing to rank for the right keywords can lead to less conversion in your traffic, resulting in fewer enrollments.

Undertaking thorough keyword research enables you to discover the specific keywords and phrases that prospective students utilize when looking for higher education programs. You can then tailor your website and content to include these keywords, enhancing your search engine visibility and drawing in more potential leads to your enrollment process.

Keyword research is a fundamental SEO practice for educational institutions. Here’s a comprehensive checklist of tasks to guarantee the success of your optimization efforts:

Utilize Google Search Suggestions to Discover Trending Keywords

Google’s search suggestions for higher education reflect the actual queries students use on the search engine. By addressing these higher education queries on your website, you can improve your ranking on Google by meeting the students’ search intent.

For example, when we searched for “South University”, Google search suggestions highlighted student queries about this university.

Leverage Google Trends to Understand Search Patterns Based on Your Preferred Location

Google Trends offers an almost unfiltered glimpse of actual Google search requests, enabling a display of interest in a particular subject from a global or local perspective.

This free tool can aid in assessing how other higher education websites perform in terms of organic traffic and enrollment.

It can assist you in identifying not only the trending keywords but also in filtering these keywords based on your specific location.

Employ Keyword Research Tools for Thorough Insights

Keyword research tools, including both free and paid options like Moz, Ahref, Wordstream, can help identify keywords that draw in students. You can choose keywords that pertain to the higher education niche and filter them according to your content’s theme.

Filter Your Targeted Keywords Based on Intent, Volume & Difficulty

For newer websites, ranking for competitive keywords can be difficult until they establish authority. Therefore, assessing the complexity of the keywords you plan to target is crucial. Starting your higher education SEO strategy can help you manage your expectations.

The volume and intent of keywords play a crucial role in ranking for niche-specific keywords as they can increase enrollment. Meanwhile, matching the intent can maintain this traffic by addressing student queries.

Do Not Overlook LSI Keywords

LSI keywords, which are search phrases related to your primary keyword, enhance your content and provide additional context, making it easier for both users and search engines to understand your content.

For instance, if you aim to rank for the keyword “higher education”, incorporating LSIs like “advanced learning”, “university degree”, and “college degree” can help you engage users searching for higher education alternatives. You can find LSIs related to your main keyword using Google or keyword research tools like Ahref.

From this example, it is evident that these auxiliary keywords or LSIs are vital SEO ranking factors that can enhance your search engine ranking.

5. Have SEO Friendly URL Structures

When your webpage URLs consist of random characters and numbers, it’s difficult for search engines to interpret them, often leading to lower or non-existent rankings.

Your URLs should accurately represent the content of the pages. For instance, a page about financial aid would logically have a URL like “www.yourcollege.edu/financial-aid.” This approach also has the advantage of being more memorable for your visitors, encouraging them to return.

Where feasible, incorporate relevant keywords into your URLs. If the URL reflects the terms users are looking for, search engines are more likely to see it as pertinent. However, beware of “keyword stuffing,” which is the excessive use of keywords in a bid to gain higher rankings. Google perceives this as spamming, and your pages could be penalized as a consequence.

Again, be cautious of incorporating too many keywords, as it may lead to “keyword stuffing”. Overstuffing a URL with as many keywords as possible with the intent of ranking well is seen as spam by Google and can result in penalization for your pages.

In the next video, you’re going to learn the fundamentals of creating the perfect URL structure for your website by the FatJoe company.

6. Optimize Your Website to Engage Prospects

The initial destination for potential students after selecting a search result is typically your school’s website. In today’s competitive digital environment, creating a memorable first impression is critical. An appealing web design could persuade potential students to revisit your website and interact with its content.

Improving the user experience is not the only advantage of a well-designed website; it also improves your website’s architecture, something Google values highly. Factors that contribute to a better search engine ranking for your website include straightforward navigation, absence of broken pages, clean URLs, and swift loading speeds. A sluggish, cumbersome website with complex navigation will generally rank lower than a fast, streamlined, and optimised one.

Encourage Potential Students to Take Action

The main aim of your school’s website is to transform visitors into leads. The website experience serves several crucial roles in achieving this. To start with, your site should provide effortless navigation with its content neatly structured using different page tabs. To quote Alexander, “it would be pointless to put in all this effort to attract people to your site only for them to become disoriented and leave out of frustration.”

For instance, the Bishop Strachan School’s website offers drop-down menus at the top of its homepage, accompanied by a search bar, making it easy for visitors to locate the information they need. These tabs guide potential students to delve deeper into “Admissions,” “Academics,” “Student Life,” and other areas of the institution. The school’s logo and colours are incorporated into the web design, fostering a consistent brand image.

Develop a Design Compatible with Mobile Devices

With mobile platforms responsible for nearly half of the global internet traffic, a mobile-centric design strategy is essential for your school’s website to effectively reach prospective students. Establishing a website compatible with mobile devices guarantees that you can attract visitors from any location. It’s a common occurrence for potential students to access your site via different gadgets. Thus, it’s your school’s responsibility to ensure a consistent, user-friendly experience irrespective of the device employed.

The design framework of your website is particularly significant for mobile interfaces, given the necessity to condense and arrange the content for a significantly smaller display. Consequently, many educational institutions prefer to consolidate their webpages into a hamburger menu to maintain a neat appearance and facilitate ease of navigation.

7. Develop a Content Strategy and Revitalize Your Previous Articles

The most effective method to elevate your SEO is by producing high-quality content. It’s not by chance that this strategy is also the most beneficial for potential students, as you are providing them with the information they seek.

💡 It’s essential to frequently update your website with potent content.

Written text, visual imagery, and videos often yield higher search rankings, primarily because they retain user interest. Strive to make your content as engaging as possible, and renew it regularly.

Take particular note of your academic program pages, where basic information tends not to change much. Enrich these pages by introducing new photographs, faculty profiles, success stories of students, or other captivating features to maintain their freshness.

8. Dominate Google Search Results

Securing a prominent position on the dynamic Google search engine results pages (SERPs) has become increasingly vital. About 65% of all searches on Google end without a click. Given the proliferation of featured snippets, there is an escalating significance for a technically robust website, organized data, and superior content.

Here are the steps to dominate in Google search results:

Audit Your Current Content: The first step is to perform a comprehensive review of all the content on your site. Look at your blog posts, product descriptions, static page text, and any other written material. Identify content that is outdated, off-brand, poorly optimized, or low performing. SEO Site Checkup and SEMrush Content Audit help you evaluate and improve the performance, quality, and effectiveness of your existing content.
Update Content: Refresh outdated content with current information. This could include updating statistics, adding recent developments, or including new insights. Grammarly and Hemingway Editor enhance the readability, clarity, and conciseness of your content by checking grammar, spelling, and style.

Optimize Titles and Descriptions: Ensure that your title tags and meta descriptions are compelling and include your target keywords. These elements not only help with SEO but also improve click-through rates from search engine results pages (SERPs). The Moz Title Tag Preview Tool provides real-time suggestions and recommendations for optimizing title tags and meta descriptions, improving SEO and click-through rates.
Optimize Headers: Headers (H1, H2, etc.) should also include your keywords and should accurately describe the content of the section that follows. Use Google Search Console and SEO Minion to identify and rectify issues with header tags, ensuring proper structure and alignment with SEO goals.
Add Alt Text to Images: Image alt text is a small piece of text that helps search engines understand what an image is about. Make sure all images have alt text and that the alt text includes the image’s relevant keywords. Such tools as Yoast SEO and Image SEO Optimizer enable you to add descriptive alt text to images, improving accessibility and search engine understanding.

Internal Linking: Ensure that each piece of content links to other relevant content on your site. This helps search engines understand the relationship between different pages on your site, and can improve rankings for those pages. I advise you to use Google Analytics and Rank Math SEO to get insights and suggestions for strategically adding internal links.
Measure Your Success: For monitoring, you don’t necessarily need to invest in a paid tool, especially if you’re not going to use it daily. There are several free and freemium keyword position checkers available online. These tools may not offer as many features as their paid counterparts, but they can certainly do the job effectively, helping you keep an eye on your site’s performance in the SERPs.

Once you’ve achieved top positions in Google search results, it’s crucial to monitor them regularly. Search rankings can fluctuate due to algorithm updates, new competitors, or changes in search behavior.

In the video below, Brett In Tech’ll show you the search queries, symbols and operators that will get you better results.

9. Share Students’ Testimonials and Reviews

The principle that individuals tend to rely more on the opinions of their peers than a business’s assertions is equally applicable to students. Student feedback serves as social validation, making it an indispensable element on your website.

Gathering and methodically categorizing student reviews, and featuring them on your website, helps you effectively connect with the intended demographic. One key aspect to enhancing the performance of your feedback page is optimizing it for SEO.

How to Evaluate the Success of Your SEO Approach

The execution of an SEO strategy is one thing, but understanding its efficacy is another. This is when digital instruments can assist in assessing the success of your higher education SEO initiatives.

Google Analytics is a complimentary tool that enables you to assess data, providing a comprehensive view of your website’s performance and health. Begin by integrating Google Analytics with your website, ideally prior to any significant redesign. This will provide preliminary data on your site’s performance before and after a major modification. Google Analytics can be converted into reports for an in-depth exploration of your website’s functioning.
Google Search Console is another resource to gauge your site’s performance and search traffic. It reveals the queries used by potential students to locate your website and allows you to submit sitemaps and individual URLs for crawling. Google Search Console also features an inspection tool that delivers detailed reports on the crawling and indexing data for your pages.
Other SEO tools like Semrush and Ahrefs are also useful in not only preparing your content marketing approach, resolving technical problems, and securing backlinks, but also in analyzing the SEO strategies of your competitors in higher education.

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Conclusion

SEO isn’t merely about elevating your university’s website ranking for certain keywords. The true worth lies in steering the upcoming generation of students towards your institution – students who may have otherwise missed out, students who hold the potential to make a profound difference in the world with your university’s guidance. In today’s era, this holds paramount significance.