Attracting and enrolling students in the modern era is challenging if you’re using
outdated tactics.

Every year, fewer traditional students progress from high school to college. So the
market for prospective learners gets more competitive annually. What’s more, today’s
students behave like customers and conduct research online before making an enrollment
decision.

Now more than ever, it’s imperative that your college or university invests in its
digital presence. One of the most effective ways to do this is to create and implement
an SEO strategy for your website.

In this post, we’ll answer the most pressing questions about SEO:

And to give you even more helpful information, we suggest downloading our white paper
Increase Enrollment with SEO: An Action Guide for Higher Ed.

Let’s get started by taking a look at SEO and its importance to higher ed.

What is SEO, and why is it important for higher education?

Want to attract more organic traffic to your website? It’s time to get serious about
a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. SEO is a way to optimize your website
so that when search engines crawl your website pages, they can identify the purpose
of specific pages and catalog them so that they show up on the search engine results
page (SERP).

The true measure of your higher ed SEO strategy is whether your website appears on
page one in search results. Think about it: How many times do you actually visit page
two to get info? Page three? Page ten?

According to a recent survey, the first five organic results on a SERP account for 67.60 percent of all clicks. Another data point to consider is that according to the recent E-Expectations®
Trend Report, prospective high school students rank a college’s website as the most
influential information resource they consult when researching a college or university.
Stats like these show how important it is for you to get your website ranked on page
one.

How do I measure the effectiveness of my college or university website SEO strategy?

It’s one thing to implement an SEO plan, but it’s another to know whether you’re doing
it right. This is where digital tools can help you measure the effectiveness of your
SEO for higher education campaigns.

Google Analytics is a free measurement tool to help you analyze data so that you can see a complete
picture of your website’s health and performance. Start by integrating Google Analytics
with your website—preferably before you being any major redesign. This will give you
baseline information on your site performance before and after a significant change.
Google Analytics can be downloaded into reports so that you can dig deep into your
website’s performance.

Google Search Console is another tool that can help you measure your site’s search traffic and performance.
You can see which questions prospective students use to find your website, and you
can submit sitemaps and individual website addresses for crawling. Google Search Console
also has an inspection tool that provides detailed reports about crawl and index information
for your pages.

Where does content fit in my SEO strategy?

Creating great content is the single best way to boost your SEO. It’s no coincidence
that it’s also the best way to satisfy prospective students, because you’re giving
them the information they want.

To do this, you need to regularly update your website with strong content. Text, images,
and videos tend to earn higher search rankings, in part because they keep users engaged.
Make your content as compelling as you can, and refresh it regularly.

Pay special attention to academic program pages where basic info stays relatively
static. Add new photos, faculty snapshots, student success stories, or other features
to keep these pages fresh.

Does site structure affect SEO?

Navigation is crucial to your website’s SEO. You want prospective students to be able
to find the information they want fast and you want search engine crawlers to also
find and catalog your website pages.

To boost SEO for your college or university website:

If you’d like to delve deeper into the impact of navigation on your website, download
College and University Website Redesign: The Ultimate Guide.

Is SEO a one-and-done activity?

SEO is definitely not something you implement and forget. College and university website
SEO must be an ongoing process if you expect to see results. Build time into your
editorial and development calendar to ensure that SEO is a central part of your strategy.
If you’re unsure about your website’s current health, get a checkup. OU Campus’ OU Insights module monitors your website’s health in key areas including SEO, accessibility, spelling,
and links. With OU Insights, your CMS administrators and marketing team can easily
identify and improve areas of concern that have a critical impact on your site visitors’
user experience and on getting your website actually seen.

Curious about the health of your website? Request a free OU Insights scan now.

Small Changes Make Big Impacts

There’s no getting around the constant maintenance required to keep your website current
and optimized. However, when you build SEO process into your routine, you’ll begin
to notice how the small subtleties you address will have big implications for your
college or university’s digital presence.

There’s so much more you can learn about SEO. For more info and tips, download our
white paper Increase Enrollment with SEO: An Action Guide for Higher Ed.