Online university non-branded traffic up 22% by attracting the right prospective students
An online university had very little qualified non-branded traffic, and more of its visitors were the wrong audience than the right one. Briefs covered refined above-the-fold content, new FAQs, and leaner internal linking, and Core Web Vitals fixes were scoped for the dev team, so the site spoke directly to prospective students.
- Source
- Google Search Console, non-branded queries
- Comparison
- Last 6 months of 2022 vs the previous 6 months: consecutive periods, not year over year
- Source
- Google Search Console performance report, non-branded queries
- Comparison
- Last 6 months (solid lines) vs previous 6 months (dashed)
- Full size
- Select the image to view it full size
The challenge
More unqualified traffic than qualified
The university had very little qualified non-branded traffic. More of its organic visitors were the wrong audience than the right one: people unlikely to become students.
Two problems held the site back. Its resource sections couldn’t be indexed by search engines, and the pages that should have attracted prospective students had thin, low-quality content.
The approach
Making key pages speak to prospective students
-
1
Refined above-the-fold content
Briefed refined content above the fold on key pages so it spoke more directly to qualified prospective students.
-
2
Content expansion with FAQs
Briefed FAQs that answered the questions prospective students search for, giving thin pages real depth.
-
3
Core Web Vitals: faster above-the-fold loads
Scoped Jira tickets for the dev team to prioritize loading the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) image above the fold with
fetchpriority="high", so key pages rendered their main content faster. -
4
Tighter linking architecture
Briefed removing internal links from off-topic pages, so link equity concentrated on the pages that mattered instead of spreading too thin across the site.
The results
More of the right people finding the site through non-branded search
Over the last six months of 2022, non-branded clicks grew 22% and impressions grew 12% compared with the six months before, as average position for non-branded queries improved from 36.4 to 31.6.
| Metric | Previous 6 months | Last 6 months of 2022 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Non-branded clicks | 72K | 87.8K | +22% |
| Non-branded impressions | 12.4M | 13.9M | +12% |
| Click-through rate | 0.6% | 0.6% | Steady |
| Average position | 36.4 | 31.6 | 4.8 spots higher |
- Source
- Google Search Console, non-branded queries
The missed opportunity
Not everything made it onto the roadmap. Making the resource sections indexable wasn’t high on the development priority list, so it didn’t ship during the engagement. That was a missed chance to reinforce the site’s topical authority, and it would be the first priority next time.
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