The impact of the global pandemic has been significant for higher education providers and universities. While these institutions offer education as a service and may have unique events such as orientation week, it is important to note that they are also businesses that rely heavily on student fees, particularly from international students.

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This year, many EDU providers will be in reset mode after the sound of crickets replaced that of international student enrolling. So there’s never been a better time to revise and improve on SEO strategies and practices across the websites that are specific to this sector.

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Most EDU websites are URL-heavy. Between course descriptions, faculty details and campus, staff and requirements information, there’s plenty of ground to cover and some do it better than others.  

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SEO Right there on the page

On-page SEO is what could keep you ahead of the competition. Start with conversion-driving pages, typically ones that feature the course descriptions as they are often the first point of call for audiences. Home Pages (landing pages) are usually kept light in terms of copy and navigation as a way to ease us in, however course pages are where most punters land after performing a Google search with specific keywords.

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Keyword positioning

Nobody enjoys seeing keyword saturation littered across a page and a ‘course page’ is no exception. In fact Google hates keyword saturation enough to punish you with poor ranking for this SEO mortal sin. With that said, ensuring your keyword relating to the course – let’s say ‘Philosophy’ – features a few times in the copy and most certainly in your H2 is essential. As always, make sure your copy is based on helpful information that answers questions the reader may have – that’s just good SEO Practice 101 after all. 

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The breadcrumb trail

Showing the reader exactly where they are on their site journey via ‘breadcrumbs’ is helpful in terms of navigation and effective in creating better SEO. Breadcrumbs allow keywords to feature in the URL (in between all those backslashes) and once again creates something for Google to latch on to. Keep those breadcrumbs as destination-specific as possible rather than an ‘umbrella’ approach, which shouldn’t be difficult with page-heavy sites that EDU websites tend to be.

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