Higher Education Marketing:

Higher education marketing specialists

As specialists in higher education marketing, we always welcome the challenges our long-standing higher education clients bring us. When one of those partners, let us know they needed support in boosting awareness and performance across its undergraduate course portfolio, we were ready to take on the challenge.

The goal was to ensure the university appeared in the right places, for the right queries, at the moments students make critical decisions, particularly during Clearing. The client wanted to increase the prominence of its core undergraduate courses, especially across priority subject areas.

The challenge: higher education marketing that stands out

In a competitive higher education market, our mission was to make this university stand out online. To do this, we had to improve keyword performance, both for key courses and for clearing.

The audience was also broad, diverse, and even international: A-Level students (and their parents), prospective undergraduates exploring courses, mature learners considering further study, and graduates exploring postgraduate options, many from overseas.

With shifting search behaviours, including the rise of AI-generated overviews, there was a risk of rising impressions not translating into clicks or meaningful engagement.

There’s also a lot of local competition from large institutions as well as other smaller universities which have a similar course offering and a vocational focus.

Building higher education SEO solutions

To address these challenges, the Arkenauts came together to deliver a comprehensive organic search strategy which relied on real audience insights and high-impact actions.

Organic search performance is driven by audience understanding. By analysing the motivations, values, and search behaviour of the prospective students for this university, we were able to shape an SEO approach built around relevance, intent, and long-term impact.

Understanding the competitive landscape was equally critical. With several well-established institutions in and around the region competing for the same audience, we analysed where this institution faced pressure, and more importantly, where its strengths truly stood out.

These insights allowed us to sharpen the positioning and build on the areas where it could differentiate and win.

Once we understood our audience and our competition, we were ready to get to work optimising pages for core courses for maximum organic search performance.

Our SEO strategy in action

Armed with a detailed understanding of the client’s audience, competitors and strengths, it was time to implement our strategic SEO campaign.

First was the website

We restructured the website page architecture, with a particular focus on high-traffic hero pages and core subject areas. All whilst maintaining a focus on the needs and expectations of the audience.

Next was optimisation

Our website restructure was supported with rigorous on-page optimisation aligning both user needs and SEO best practices.

Given our audience’s search habits, we adapted and developed content that answer the long-tail queries students have searched for.

This approach also perfectly aligns with how machine learning models train on data, and catering to their needs will deliver long-term benefits as AI-powered chats draw on easily digestible information from the university’s own site.

Content development played a key role, with new high-quality content created where gaps existed and existing pages optimised around priority courses and subject areas.

To ensure nothing was missed, our ongoing SEO consultancy and strategic support, ensured every optimisation aligned with organisational’s long-term recruitment and visibility goals.

As a fully integrated higher education agency with a wide range of skills in-house, we were also able to support this client on additional projects outside the scope of our initial SEO work, keeping their Google Analytics running smoothly, debugging Google Tag Manager issues, and conducting additional research where needed.

Leading up to the critical Clearing period, we prioritised technical stability, fresh content, and optimised course templates well in advance, ensuring prospective students found the relevant information quickly when searching during peak decision season.

Impactful SEO results

Undergraduate keyword growth

Our strategy delivered, significantly expanding the keyword footprint for undergraduate courses. Overall, we saw a +44.3% increase year-on-year for keywords in the top 10 positions, with 62 new keywords in the top 3 alone. This growth and visibility helped the client’s courses to be seen by the right audience at the optimal time, an outcome which helped the university expand its reach.

SEO copywriting: Supporting content that ranks & lifts

To support the content development strategy, we worked with the the university team to create and optimise articles to help capture upper-funnel interest for the university.

One article targeted high-value queries. Within a couple of weeks, it ranked in the Top 10 for all 14 tracked queries, with 7 of those in position one and 10 in the top 5. Another article took a slightly more niche angle and achieved Top 10 rankings for all 9 of its target queries.

Almost immediately, these articles began to appear in AI Overviews, signalling strong authority and trust and contributing to the upper-funnel visibility, which was a KPI of this project.

On a key page, we not only held but grew clicks, more than doubled impressions, and improved average rankings year-on-year. These outcomes boosted the university visibility precisely where and when prospective students were searching and increased the likelihood that users clicking through found content aligned with their intent.

The success of this strategy shows that careful collaboration between an expert SEO agency, like Arke, and an internal team that knows their product and offerings well, like the team a the university, can create content which will land on the first page of Google, and support the internal linking and visibility of the most important pages on the website.

This result was exactly what our client needed, and we wanted to make sure they would be able to replicate it in the future; thus, we held training sessions on page optimisation and implementing SEO best practices, making it possible for us to replicate this across many more pages – future proofing the organisation’s strategy.

Future-proofing university SEO in a competitive landscape

This campaign didn’t just deliver results: it built a future-ready foundation for sustained visibility and growth, giving our client a long-term advantage.

We consolidated their keyword presence, giving them greater visibility in front of prospective students. Leading to a +3.7% increase in engagement in undergraduate course content.

By aligning content with evolving search behaviours (e.g. AI Overviews), we ensured the university remains competitive as search continues to evolve.

The model, combining SEO, audience insight, content strategy, and technical optimisation, sets a replicable standard for future course launches or subject-area pushes.

Ready to achieve your goals?

As a brand and performance marketing agency, our Brighton-based team transforms your unique challenges into tailored strategic solutions that exceed expectations. We deliver award-winning results that help you scale your brand and deepen engagement with your audience. Read more about our higher education marketing services.

Are you looking to supercharge your university marketing strategy?
Let’s talk through it.