Case Study
An Online Higher Education Powerhouse
Grows Organic Traffic to Key Blog Posts
Scope
Overview
Our client, University of San Diego Professional and Continuing Education (USD PCE), was struggling with low rankings on Google’s search engine results page (SERP) and disappointing organic traffic to their website. Vital’s higher education marketing specialists determined that structural and technical issues with their website — which was built on the Destiny One (Modern Campus) CRM platform — were the culprit.
We worked with USD PCE to plan a website overhaul that would integrate their existing site with WordPress. We knew this would unlock the site’s SEO potential — and while our higher education website development team got to work, our digital marketing strategists and copywriters teamed up to create blog post content that would both provide value to prospective students and rank on the first page of the SERP for a wide variety of valuable keywords.
The plan was a smashing success, driving increases of up to 20,000% in organic traffic to the highest-performing blog posts.
Goals:
Interest in professional and continuing education courses and certificates (especially those that can be completed online) has exploded in recent years. USD PCE knew that to stay competitive, they needed to accomplish a few critical goals:
- Nurture leads to course purchases, registrations, and enrollments
- Increase overall organic traffic to their website
- Increase website conversions to generate leads
Challenges
- USD PCE’s existing website created dynamically-generated URLs for blog content. These were long and filled with random characters rather than SEO keywords, so Google didn’t know how to classify the pages for search.
- Increasing competition made ranking for bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) keywords — phrases like “online medical terminology course,” which indicate a high level of intent to take action and register for a course sometime soon — more difficult.
- Before we started creating SEO-friendly blog post content, USD PCE didn’t have much in the way of content that was designed to rank, drive traffic, or provide value for prospective students.
Our Solutions
In addition to the new website, content marketing was the cornerstone of our SEO strategy for USD PCE. At Vital, we don’t just pump out keyword-stuffed blog posts and hope for the best. Instead, we take a long-term strategic approach to SEO content marketing for higher education.
Here’s how we created content that drove massive traffic growth for USD PCE:
1. Audience research
We learned everything we could about USD PCE’s existing and prospective students, including demographic factors (age, employment status, location, etc.) and psychographic factors (goals, obstacles, self-perception, etc.). This enabled us to empathize with our audience — and create content that would be valuable enough to drive brand awareness, loyalty, and preference when it came time to choose a professional and continuing education provider.
2. Keyword research
We conducted extensive keyword research to identify opportunities to create content that would resonate with our audience and rank high on the SERP.
3. Competitive research
We researched the content currently ranking for keywords relevant to USD PCE’s offerings, looking for opportunities to outperform the competition.
4. Authority building
To give our content the best chance at ranking and driving organic traffic, we focused on building the site’s authoritativeness on the subjects we were writing about. This involved creating related content clusters around key search terms and topics, making sure our internal link structure was robust, inviting authoritative guests to contribute content, building off-site links, creating highly engaging video content, and more.
5. Calendar planning
We created monthly content calendars to ensure that our team would remain strategically focused and disciplined. We balanced short-tail and long-tail keywords for a well-rounded content strategy that had something to appeal to prospective students at all stages of the decision-making process.
6. Content creation
Following our calendars, we got to work on creating content. We interviewed subject-matter experts, followed on-page SEO best practices, and leveraged our talented pool of long-form SEO copywriters to produce valuable and engaging content.
7. Measurement, reporting, and continuous improvement
We met with the client weekly to share progress and dig into the numbers. Where posts were performing well, we doubled down and created related posts and enriched downloadable content for lead generation. Where results weren’t what we expected, we went back to look at competing content to see what we were missing.
Results
Overall Website Traffic
Since implementing our SEO content marketing strategy, USD PCE has seen an increase in organic traffic of 653% year-over-year. Total sessions are up 306% year-over-year.
Top 3 Keyword Growth
Site-wide, USD PCE has seen an explosion in keywords for which they rank in the top 3 positions on the SERP.
- Top 3 keywords pre-launch: 0
- Top 3 keywords year 2: 175
- Top 3 keywords year 3: 475
- Top 3 keywords year 4: 1,425
- Top 3 keywords year 5: 1,950
Top-Performing SEO Highlights
Medical Terminology
To attract prospective students and drive purchases for USD PCE’s Medical Terminology course, we took a two-pronged approach:
1. Drive traffic through related blog posts.
This post is one of the website’s biggest SEO success stories, growing from 0 to 87 keywords in the top 3 positions on the SERP in only two years.
- Top 3 keywords at launch: 0
- Top 3 keywords year 1: 25
- Top 3 keywords year 2: 87
2. Increase authority to help the course page rank organically.
Like all the course and certificate pages we helped create for USD PCE, the Medical Terminology Course page knocks it out of the park in terms of on-page SEO and conversion-rate optimization (CRO) best practices. It’s enriched with a sticky sidebar highlighting essential details and an “add to cart” call-to-action (CTA) button, and the main page provides prospective students with all the information they need to make their purchasing decision as easy as possible.
But, with heavy competition for high-intent keywords, we knew that even the most well-structured and well-written page would need help from internal and external links, guest blogs, blogs on related topics, and other off-page SEO factors to rank organically.
Spoiler alert: It worked!
Keyword Rankings
Green = SERP features, Blue = positions 4-10, Yellow = top 3
- Top 3 keywords at launch: 0
- Top 3 keywords year 1: 11
- Top 3 keywords year 2: 10
- Top 3 keywords year 3: 46
Organic Page Traffic
The increase in top-ranking keywords resulted in growth in organic traffic to the course page, with organic sessions increasing from below 100 to 1,695 per month in two years.
Course Enrollments and Revenue
The whole point of content marketing and SEO for higher education is to increase enrollment numbers and course revenue. Here’s how that’s working out for USD PCE:
+42%
Year over Year
Medical Terminology Course Revenue
3000
Students Enrolled
Medical Terminology Course Enrollment
Top 25 Healthcare Careers Blog Post
This healthcare-related post has seen impressive organic traffic growth driven by high-ranking keywords. Check out the post.
Organic Traffic Growth
- Traffic growth: <10 sessions month 1 to 66,924 in 12 months
Organic Keyword Rankings
- Top 3 keywords month 1: 1
- Top 3 keywords month 12: 291
Conclusion
To stand out and attract students for competitive online professional development and continuing education courses, step one is getting found in online searches. Our collaboration with USD PCE continues to drive traffic, conversions, course and certificate purchases, and ultimately revenue through our innovative approach to higher education SEO and content marketing.
Vital’s attention to detail and strategic approach to SEO has significantly improved our performance. Not only has our website traffic grown, but we’ve also seen an increase in quality leads and overall business growth. Their partnership with our team has been a game-changer.”
— Jessie Brummett
Marketing Manager, University of San Diego PCE
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