8 expert tips for optimising your SEO: a guide for universities

At IDP our collection of websites aimed at prospective students around the world attract 100m visits every year. There are key factors that contribute to this success, including creating content that engages with our student audiences, helping universities connect to the right students for them, and continuously optimising SEO.

We caught up with Josh Charig, IDP Connect’s SEO Manger (Domestic) and James Smurthwaite, IDP Connect’s Content Director (International) to find out what their top tips are for optimising SEO, particularly for websites aimed at prospective-student audiences.

Josh advises to first understand what themes and topics your student audience is researching online. Once you’ve identified these topics, see if your competitors are writing about them and what information they have and have not included. Identify where the gaps are and write content that fills these gaps.

Research shows that prospective students want to be seeing more peer-generated content, so investigate how your competitors are facilitating this type of content and how you can adapt it.

Often you will be writing about a topic that has been covered online many times before, so always ensure that your coverage is unique and written with a fresh perspective.

To identify suitable themes, James suggests looking at the comments on your social media channels to gauge what is top-of-mind for your audience. Also look at the level of interaction for different social posts to see what is trending and then create a hierarchy of interest to guide your article topics. He also recommends looking back on your previously published articles to see what worked best and what didn’t.

When it comes to the length of an article, there is no longer a golden rule. Josh says that the most important consideration is that the content is well written and reads naturally. The length should be dictated by what works best for the content you are writing. Articles offering Clearing or visa guides may be better suited for lengthier articles for instance. Josh adds that a long-form article of about 1600 words naturally contains more detail and therefore tends to deliver better in search results. However, always stick to a word count that fits the content.

James recommends keeping paragraph length to a minimum for student audiences. Paragraphs comprised of a maximum of three sentences work well, particularly for researchers using mobile phones. He also recommends using bullet points, tables, images and videos to rank well.

Keyword research is an important part of optimising your SEO. Institutions can use platforms such as SEMRush to find the most effective keywords to fit an article.

Josh recommends that you add your keywords to your meta title and ideally to your H1 and H2 titles too. However, he says that adding your keyword to your H1 title is no longer such an important ranking factor and that you should always prioritise titles that read as naturally as possible.

Keyword stuffing where you add keywords for the sake of it is a big no-no. The ideal is to create headings that read naturally and include your keywords.

A big boost for SEO is interlinking within your site. If you’ve published a new article on your site, try to link to it from a more establish article or page on your website to help drive traffic and boost SEO for your new article. This helps Google to understand what your new article is about. It’s also beneficial to link to other pages on your website from your new article. Ensure that the anchor text you use for interlinking flows naturally within the article.

Josh also advises to add links to important conversion pages on your website to articles that are already established and doing well. If you have a blog post that is performing particularly well, be sure to add a relevant link to a page where students can apply for a course or sign up to an open day.

One of the very best things you can do to boost SEO is to have other authoritative websites link to your articles or webpages. Maximise opportunities for external linking by keeping a close eye on high-quality websites that may be referencing your institution. Whether its research, achievements or testimonials from your institution used on external websites, always ensure that it’s linked back to your website. It’s also beneficial to link to high-quality and relevant external webpages from your articles to help Google understand what your content is about.

Google likes it if you regularly update your content. Josh recommends setting a reminder to update your articles every 6-12 months. This is to ensure that content remains relevant. One of the best-performing articles on the Complete University Guide (CUG) was on how to write a personal statement.

After performing very well for a long time it suddenly started declining in popularity. It turned out that a competitor had written a similar article, but with up-to-date additions focused on the use of AI. To revive SEO to the article, the CUG team updated the article to make it more relevant for current researchers.

Copying and pasting content from another site or webpage can negatively impact your SEO. If you have an idea for a new article that is similar to an existing article on your site, rather opt to update your existing article. This ensures that you’re not taking the risk of duplicating content, while also optimising SEO on your existing article by updating it.  

All the SEO guidelines you’d use to optimise an article also apply for optimising your broader website. We can go into a lot more detail on broader website SEO optimisation, but Josh says that key considerations include interlinking between pages, ensuring that your most important pages are easily accessible on the menu tab, and standardising your menu throughout the site, so that it displays in the same way across your site.  

We work with universities across the UK to help them find the right international and domestic students for them. Get in touch with us to explore the wide range of options for institutions to engage with prospective students researching their higher education options.  

Enjoyed this article? For more insights, read our article on Artificial Intelligence and how it can benefit us.