100 Universities Dominating Organic Search in 2024
October 9, 2024

Sarah Gilbert
A lot of things can increase traffic to your institution’s website – events, sports, things you do in the community.
But the question is – who is getting found for keywords NOT related to brand – who is doing a really great job with organic search and what are they doing? Where is the majority of their traffic coming from?
We take a look at the top schools for organic traffic and find out who is ranking for what – who has the ‘money’ keywords, I.e. the keywords you pay Google ads for and who is growing the most. We break down the value of the traffic they are getting monthly based on what they would have to pay in Google Ads spend for the keywords they have in the top positions.
Don’t see your school and think you should be on here? Drop us a line and we will do an analysis.
Top 100 Schools by Organic Traffic
This is a list of the top 100 colleges and universities ordered by estimated monthly non-branded traffic as of September 2024. We looked at 2019 traffic, percent change, and tuition/fees (latest data available was 2022) to assist in our analysis of these schools and their organic traffic performance.
Traffic data is from Ahrefs as of September 2024, Tuition/Fees data is from IPEDS. We removed revenue from athletics and other sources to create a more even playing field.
School | Traffic 2019 | Traffic 2024 | Change | Tuition/Fees |
---|---|---|---|---|
Harvard University | 6,400,000 | 13,000,000 | 103% | $1,023,592,000.00 |
Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 6,800,000 | 9,700,000 | 43% | $415,252,000.00 |
Purdue University | 4,800,000 | 6,000,000 | 25% | $886,666,832.00 |
Cornell University | 2,700,000 | 5,600,000 | 107% | $845,024,725.00 |
Stanford University | 1,700,000 | 3,300,000 | 94% | $526,152,000.00 |
University of Florida | 1,300,000 | 2,500,000 | 92% | $477,795,000.00 |
University of Rochester | 1,300,000 | 2,400,000 | 85% | $318,113,000.00 |
University of Minnesota | 1,700,000 | 2,200,000 | 29% | $840,185,066.00 |
University of Michigan | 1,100,000 | 2,100,000 | 91% | $1,437,777,000.00 |
Pennsylvania State University | 2,300,000 | 2,100,000 | -9% | - |
University of California-Davis | 519,200 | 2,000,000 | 285% | $767,795,000.00 |
University of Wisconsin-Madison | 979,200 | 2,000,000 | 104% | $770,345,367.00 |
University of California-Berkeley | 1,200,000 | 2,000,000 | 67% | $1,003,668,000.00 |
North Carolina State University | 480,700 | 1,900,000 | 295% | $352,522,696.00 |
Columbia University | 721,000 | 1,900,000 | 164% | $1,469,287,000.00 |
University of Central Arkansas | 16,300 | 1,500,000 | 9102% | $52,716,751.00 |
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | 822,800 | 1,500,000 | 82% | $901,220,941.00 |
Ohio State University | 458,900 | 1,400,000 | 205% | $1,003,059,837.00 |
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | 824,000 | 1,400,000 | 70% | $464,123,452.00 |
Yale University | 524,300 | 1,300,000 | 148% | $354,023,874.00 |
University of Utah | 531,000 | 1,300,000 | 145% | $405,767,000.00 |
University of Pennsylvania | 643,000 | 1,300,000 | 102% | $1,207,715,000.00 |
Southern New Hampshire University | 338,000 | 1,200,000 | 255% | $1,091,554,127.00 |
Walden University | 209,800 | 1,100,000 | 424% | - |
University of Chicago | 414,200 | 1,100,000 | 166% | $597,744,851.00 |
Oregon State University | 541,400 | 1,100,000 | 103% | $354,632,685.00 |
University of Arizona | 366,000 | 1,100,000 | 290% | $677,550,000.00 |
University of Colorado Boulder | 720,800 | 1,100,000 | 53% | $764,454,321.00 |
Texas A&M University | 807,000 | 1,100,000 | 36% | - |
University of California-Los Angeles | 855,300 | 1,100,000 | 29% | $974,963,000.00 |
University of Washington | 962,000 | 1,100,000 | 14% | $1,125,268,926.00 |
Michigan State University | 969,300 | 1,100,000 | 13% | $846,098,928.00 |
University of Nebraska-Lincoln | 374,500 | 1,000,000 | 167% | $220,924,166.00 |
Arizona State University | 381,000 | 1,000,000 | 162% | $1,689,832,000.00 |
University of Texas-Austin | 851,200 | 1,000,000 | 17% | $556,307,181.00 |
California Institute of Technology | 447,800 | 966,200 | 116% | $50,996,000.00 |
New York University | 424,600 | 937,100 | 121% | $2,452,219,000.00 |
Boston University | 549,200 | 907,400 | 65% | $1,297,659,000.00 |
Johns Hopkins University | 221,700 | 895,700 | 304% | $828,497,000.00 |
University of Southern California | 605,000 | 865,900 | 43% | $1,743,066,000.00 |
Northeastern University | 151,400 | 822,700 | 443% | $1,288,927,000.00 |
Washington State University | 509,800 | 729,600 | 43% | $296,411,533.00 |
University of Maryland | 484,500 | 727,800 | 50% | $542,634,869.00 |
University of Hawaii | 336,500 | 718,200 | 113% | $228,904,178.00 |
University of Kentucky | 694,500 | 711,600 | 2% | $380,022,896.00 |
Western Governors University | 51,800 | 694,400 | 1241% | $1,007,623,833.00 |
Iowa State University | 406,900 | 681,800 | 68% | $351,118,368.00 |
University of Central Florida | 73,800 | 674,000 | 813% | $267,189,719.00 |
National University | 14,200 | 662,200 | 4563% | $190,347,794.00 |
Rutgers University-New Brunswick | 271,800 | 652,400 | 140% | $751,253,000.00 |
Princeton University | 426,300 | 643,500 | 51% | $144,961,000.00 |
Washington University in St. Louis | 287,300 | 634,800 | 121% | $513,132,000.00 |
University of Virginia | 355,100 | 614,200 | 73% | $659,509,830.00 |
University of Georgia | 415,900 | 606,300 | 46% | $485,432,526.00 |
University of California-Santa Barbara | 361,300 | 599,400 | 66% | $467,608,000.00 |
University of Iowa | 388,000 | 595,300 | 53% | $433,246,000.00 |
Duke University | 335,600 | 584,300 | 74% | $579,739,000.00 |
Florida State University | 286,400 | 572,000 | 100% | $314,239,649.00 |
University of Connecticut | 173,600 | 570,400 | 229% | $451,777,683.00 |
Lamar University | 588,700 | 561,400 | -5% | $112,648,180.00 |
University of Kansas | 251,900 | 555,200 | 120% | $323,821,470.00 |
University of Houston | 287,000 | 553,800 | 93% | $410,655,083.00 |
Northwestern University | 411,000 | 527,700 | 28% | $740,877,000.00 |
University of South Florida | 303,400 | 522,500 | 72% | $280,970,034.00 |
Carnegie Mellon University | 536,900 | 518,500 | -3% | $661,253,635.00 |
Vanderbilt University | 314,100 | 517,400 | 65% | $387,874,259.00 |
University of Pittsburgh | 261,400 | 511,800 | 96% | - |
Georgia Institute of Technology | 205,000 | 490,400 | 139% | $487,330,902 |
Georgetown University | 220,600 | 488,800 | 122% | $736,041,000.00 |
Indiana University Bloomington | 263,100 | 488,300 | 86% | $1,287,133,716.00 |
Virginia Tech | 275,400 | 485,300 | 76% | - |
Oklahoma State University | 150,700 | 479,100 | 218% | $304,365,674.00 |
University of Nevada-Reno | 79,500 | 471,400 | 493% | $154,479,071.00 |
Brigham Young University-Provo | 159,400 | 468,100 | 194% | $201,210,943.00 |
Clemson | 141,100 | 467,100 | 231% | $511,455,039 |
Stony Brook University | 96,400 | 429,900 | 346% | $269,899,598.00 |
University of Massachusetts-Amherst | 187,600 | 412,300 | 120% | $437,970,420.00 |
San Jose State University | 107,500 | 412,000 | 283% | $220,728,360.00 |
University of Illinois Chicago | 145,300 | 352,000 | 142% | $419,181,968.00 |
Utah State University | 51,300 | 342,500 | 568% | $155,069,600.00 |
University of Missouri | 146,900 | 325,900 | 122% | $310,706,655.00 |
University of Cincinnati | 61,600 | 321,400 | 422% | $485,415,886.00 |
University at Buffalo | 79,400 | 308,200 | 288% | $314,568,610.00 |
University of South Carolina | 302,400 | 308,200 | 2% | $491,519,959.00 |
Georgia State University | 760,700 | 307,600 | -60% | $284,133,842.00 |
University of California-Irvine | 194,200 | 291,100 | 50% | $636,366,000.00 |
Brandeis University | 38,200 | 284,700 | 645% | $170,620,871.00 |
University of Notre Dame | 199,600 | 277,100 | 39% | $369,306,000.00 |
Emory University | 152,800 | 273,000 | 79% | $450,778,000.00 |
Tufts University | 187,000 | 271,000 | 45% | $546,472,723.00 |
George Washington University | 141,600 | 261,200 | 84% | $770,217,000.00 |
University of California-Riverside | 142,200 | 257,100 | 81% | $323,110,000.00 |
Brown University | 151,400 | 256,800 | 70% | $435,861,000.00 |
University of New Mexico | 144,400 | 252,000 | 75% | $125,958,824.00 |
Case Western Reserve University | 91,000 | 232,400 | 155% | $329,362,382.00 |
Louisiana State University | 68,400 | 226,400 | 231% | $402,898,338.00 |
University of Miami | 112,000 | 215,600 | 93% | $650,368,423.00 |
University of Tennessee-Knoxville | 148,100 | 209,400 | 41% | $394,285,168.00 |
Florida International University | 42,500 | 198,100 | 366% | $270,215,035.00 |
University of Alabama | 68,600 | 159,500 | 133% | $485,015,783.00 |
Top 5 Schools (Total Traffic)
For each of the top 5 schools by total traffic, we ran a quick analysis using Ahrefs Site Explorer, looking at things like change in Organic traffic, how many pages they have, how many keywords they rank for and how many keywords are in the top three positions. From there, we dug in a bit more to see what exactly it is they rank for. Is it degree terms? Or something else?
1. Harvard University
Topping the list for total organic non-branded keywords is Harvard, with an estimated total of 14,100,000 monthly organic visitors in September 2024, and bringing in $1,023,592,000.00 annually in tuition and fees alone.
Harvard University | 2019 | 2024 | Absolute change | Percent change |
---|---|---|---|---|
Organic traffic | 14,700,000 | 14,100,000 | -600,000 | -4.08% |
Organic pages | 1,034,846 | 920,655 | -114,191 | -11.03% |
Organic keywords | 5,878,544 | 7,565,177 | 1,686,633 | 28.69% |
Keywords in top 3 | 191,110 | 267,808 | 76,698 | 40.13% |
Harvard’s traffic story is interesting in that the vast majority of it goes to a few non-education-related subdomains:
- health.harvard.edu – 8.6 million monthly visitors
- nutritionsource.hsph.edu – 820,000 monthly visitors
They also have a news section ranking for mostly health terms with 500,000 visitors per month, as well as a ‘free courses’ hub with 126,000 monthly visitors.
As you can see from their top traffic-driving keywords, none of these are school related. While there is a chance that ranking for health terms could eventually motivate someone to apply to medical school, this is not a direct path to enrollment.
For “degree” or “program” terms, they rank for 19,582 keywords, with 1,296 in the top 3 positions.
2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Next up is another Boston gem, MIT, with 9,400,000 monthly organic non-branded site visitors, a 40.3% change over five years ago. MIT’s annual tuition and fees bring in $415,252,000.00 in revenue.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 2019 | 2024 | Absolute change | Percent change |
---|---|---|---|---|
Organic traffic | 6,700,000 | 9,400,000 | 2,700,000 | 40.30% |
Organic pages | 839,909 | 359,349 | -480,560 | -57.22% |
Organic keywords | 3,847,186 | 2,180,520 | -1,666,666 | -43.32% |
Keywords in top 3 | 60,825 | 33,084 | -27,741 | -45.61% |
While our analysis looks at unbranded traffic, that is, traffic without the school name or abbreviation in it, tools the school makes or initiatives run by the school can still bring in a lot of traffic if they are very popular.
This is the case for MIT with Scratch, which is bringing in 7 million of the 9.4 million visitors mentioned earlier. The subdomain scratch.mit.edu gets all of this traffic for MIT’s role in developing the world’s largest coding community for children and it shows in their keyword data.
As you can see, MIT’s top keywords and main traffic drivers are all related to Scratch. While this is great for the brand of MIT, this doesn’t directly impact enrollments with bottom-of-the-funnel conversion keywords.
To add to our analysis, we looked at how many “degree” or “program” keywords they rank for and that number is 9,000. with just 227 in the top 3.
So, while high traffic is a good thing, it doesn’t always tell the whole story, and the data needs to be dug into a bit more to see what’s really going on.
3. Purdue University
Purdue University saw a 25 percent positive change in organic traffic in the five years since 2019, bringing their monthly total to approximately 6,000,000 monthly non-branded visitors. Their 2022 annual revenue from tuition and fees alone is $886,666,832.00.
Purdue University | 2019 | 2024 | Absolute change | Percent change |
---|---|---|---|---|
Organic traffic | 4,800,000 | 6,000,000 | 1,200,000 | 25.00% |
Organic pages | 204,045 | 170,485 | -33,560 | -16.45% |
Organic keywords | 1,837,639 | 1,373,371 | -464,268 | -25.26% |
Keywords in top 3 | 51,798 | 53,622 | 1,824 | 3.52% |
Purdue’s story can again be attributed to a university creating it’s own product within the brand, with their Purdue Owl, which appears to be…free. While this is a great service to high school and college students alike, the main drivers of their organic traffic appear to be non-revenue-generating keywords.
You can see the keyword data for Purdue shows the power of their owl.purdue.edu subdomain, driving 5.2 million monthly visitors to their online writing lab.
They rank for 15,000 “degree” or “program” terms, with 422 in the top 3 positions.
4. Cornell University
Cornell University has seen 107.41% growth in organic, non-branded traffic since 2019, and has annual revenue from tuition and fees of $845,024,725.00.
Let’s take a look at the data and see where this growth has come from.
Cornell University | 2019 | 2024 | Absolute change | Percent change |
---|---|---|---|---|
Organic traffic | 2,700,000 | 5,600,000 | 2,900,000 | 107.41% |
Organic pages | 519,617 | 523,483 | 3,866 | 0.74% |
Organic keywords | 3,434,395 | 3,077,766 | -356,629 | -10.38% |
Keywords in top 3 | 85,684 | 107,450 | 21,766 | 25.40% |
Over half of Cornell’s non-branded organic traffic is going to their law.cornell.edu subdomain with 3.3m visitors per month as of September 2024. 2.3 million of this traffic is specifically driven by the /wex/ section, which is described as the free legal dictionary of the Legal Information Institute (LLI), whose mission is to provide readable explanations for the laws governing the people.
While Cornell does have a famous and highly-ranked law school, legal rankings are not the same as conversion rankings, so let’s dig in a bit more to see exactly what is driving the traffic to the Cornell website.
As suspected, Cornell ranks for a lot of legal jargon, so we looked at their top traffic-driving page to see if they at least had a call-to-action or a path to enrollment. What we found was shocking. They do have an ad, but it’s from the Google Display Network – on their own page. So, they are paying the Google Display Network to advertise their M.S. in Legal Studies, but getting paid for each click. Just an interesting note and way to monetize the page.
They also have other “sponsored listings” which lead to local attorney listings, through what appears to be a partnership with Justia.
We are advocates for monetizing the traffic you do have, but a greater emphasis on degree-seeking keywords, with an average degree cost of over $69,000, it would pay off to focus on these SERP rankings as well.
Cornell does rank for 15,000 “degree” or “program” terms, with 627 in the top 3 spots.
5. Stanford University
Stanford University is the only West Coast school in the top 5, and has seen 94.12% growth in their organic traffic since 2019. Annual revenue from tuition and fees alone is $526,152,000.00.
Stanford University | 2019 | 2024 | Absolute change | Percent change |
---|---|---|---|---|
Organic traffic | 1,700,000 | 3,300,000 | 1,600,000 | 94.12% |
Organic pages | 636,902 | 350,683 | -286,219 | -44.94% |
Organic keywords | 3,906,118 | 2,348,738 | -1,557,380 | -24.86% |
Keywords in top 3 | 62,011 | 46,593 | -15,418 | -39.87% |
Stanford gets the majority of it’s traffic to their subdomains, with the top two being: plato.stanford.edu with 880,000 monthly visitors, and med.stanford.edu getting 545,000 monthly visitors.
Plato is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which organizes world scholars in philosophy to create a repository of work.
You can see these pages reflected in their keywords, as they are some of the main traffic drivers to the website.
You can see that Stanford’s overall number of keywords has actually gone down by almost 25 percent, and they have also lost almost 40 percent of their total keywords in the top three positions. Stanford has 14,576 “degree” or “program” terms in the top 100 search results, and 438 in the top 3 places.
Top 5 Schools (Percentage Traffic Growth)
Now let’s take a look at the top schools for percentage of traffic growth from 2019 to 2024. These schools may or may not have traffic numbers comparable to our previous examples, but they are growing.
Let’s dig in to they “why” behind their growth.
1. University of Central Arkansas
The University of Central Arkansas has an interesting story in how they got a whopping 9102.45% positive growth in the last five years.
Coming in at 16th in overall monthly organic traffic, with $52,717,751.00 in revenue from tuition and fees, UCA has one page that is driving most of this traffic, and it’s a new product, which explains the overall rise.
University of Central Arkansas | 2019 | 2024 | Absolute change | Percent change |
---|---|---|---|---|
Organic traffic | 16,300 | 1,500,000 | 1,483,700 | 9102.45% |
Organic pages | 13,788 | 9,489 | -4,299 | -31.18% |
Organic keywords | 126,467 | 92,305 | -34,162 | -27.01% |
Keywords in top 3 | 894 | 996 | 102 | 11.41% |
Now, UCA gets 1.5 million monthly organic non-branded visitors, with 810,000 for the topic of ChatGPT. They look like they are “accidentally ranking” and don’t necessarily have a comprehensive SEO strategy as evidenced by their keyword set.
You can see they are actually losing keywords in the top 100, down 27 percent, but slightly growing with keywords in the top 3 spots.
However, where it really counts is in the “degree” and “program” terms, of which they have 2090 in the top 100, and only 10 in the top 3 spots.
Since they are such an outlier, a more sophisticated study may have left them out altogether, but since we are not academics ourselves and don’t need a peer review, we left them in. Don’t come for us, academia!
2. National University
National University has a really good SEO story. With a 4563.38% change since 2019, their all-up organic non-branded traffic number is not as impressive, but their growth rate and the keywords they rank for are.
National University | 2019 | 2024 | Absolute change | Percent change |
---|---|---|---|---|
Organic traffic | 14,200 | 662,200 | 648,000 | 4563.38% |
Organic pages | 4,307 | 2,167 | -2,140 | -49.69% |
Organic keywords | 79,786 | 148,924 | 69,138 | 86.65% |
Keywords in top 3 | 541 | 8,370 | 7,829 | 1447.13% |
With 662,220 monthly organic non-branded visitors, they come in 49th on our list of total traffic, but as you can see from their keywords, what they are getting from organic are real “money” keywords.
The NU blog alone gets most of this traffic, getting 550,000 monthly organic visits.
These are just some of their top keywords, but you can already see they have some top-of-funnel keywords such as ‘how to become a psychiatrist,’ which they rank number one for.
Here are some of their other top keywords and their associated traffic:
- types-of-engineering, 43,000 monthly visits
- what-is-a-cna, 31,000 monthly visits
- types-of-nurses, 26,000 monthly visits
National University ranks for 20,000 “degree” or “program” terms, and has 1,000 in the top 3 spots.
3. Western Governors University
Western Governors University | 2019 | 2024 | Absolute change | Percent change |
---|---|---|---|---|
Organic traffic | 51,800 | 694,400 | 642,600 | 1240.54% |
Organic pages | 5,230 | 4,576 | -654 | -12.50% |
Organic keywords | 113,724 | 218,636 | 104,912 | 92.25% |
Keywords in top 3 | 1,325 | 12,361 | 11,036 | 832.91% |
A lot of the growth from WGU can be attributed to the type of traffic they are getting. It makes no difference to the internet what their admissions criteria are – for many, many degree and program searches, they are getting the traffic.
Here is just a small sampling of the “degree” keywords that WGU ranks in the top 3 spots for. These keywords cost $$$ per click with Google Ads, but by ranking their site, WGU can still use PPC and show up 2x, or they can save and lower their cost per enrollment.
In total, they rank for 2273 “degree” or “program” terms, with 2305 in the top 3 spots.
Most of the traffic goes to the following sections:
- /blog/ – 240,000 monthly visitors
- /career-guides/ – 220,000 monthly visitors
- /online-it-degrees/ – 75,000 monthly visitors
- /online-business-degrees/ – 65,000 monthly visitors
- /online-nursing-health-degrees/ – 52,000 monthly visitors
- /online-teaching-degrees/ – 25,000 monthly visitors
4. University of Cental Florida
University of Central Florida is another winning SEO story where they have experienced 813.28% growth in 5 years, going from 73,800 to 674,000 monthly visits.
They also have an impressive amount of keywords in the top 3 driving a lot of this traffic.
University of Central Florida | 2019 | 2024 | Absolute change | Percent change |
---|---|---|---|---|
Organic traffic | 73,800 | 674,000 | 600,200 | 813.28% |
Organic pages | 83,300 | 67,958 | -15,342 | -18.42% |
Organic keywords | 553,816 | 630,574 | 76,758 | 13.86% |
Keywords in top 3 | 5,744 | 7,461 | 1,717 | 29.89% |
Although they are just 48th on the overall traffic ranking, they do have some great degree-seeking, bottom-of-funnel keywords that are surely driving some of their $267,189,794.00 annual revenue from tuition and fees.
UCF ranks for 21,834 “degree” or “program” terms and has 396 in the top 3 positions.
5. Brandeis University
Brandeis University is number 87 on the list of total traffic, but 5th on our list of highest percentage traffic growth at 645% in five years. With revenue from tuition and fees alone at $170,620,871.00, they are not as tuition-dependent as some other schools, but with their organic growth, they can use this to grow.
Brandeis University | 2019 | 2024 | Absolute change | Percent change |
---|---|---|---|---|
Organic traffic | 38,200 | 284,700 | 246,500 | 645.29% |
Organic pages | 36,275 | 24,786 | -11,489 | -31.67% |
Organic keywords | 232,988 | 198,101 | -34,887 | -14.97% |
Keywords in top 3 | 3,011 | 4,117 | 1,106 | 36.73% |
Brandeis has seen significant organic traffic growth in the last five years. They should capitalize on this and implement a strategy to rank for degree-related terms.
As you can see from their keyword set, they don’t seem to be intentionally ranking for any keywords, and they don’t have any “degree” or “program” keywords in the top 10.
Best Colleges
Everyone in the .edu space has seen Best Colleges, Niche, U.S. News and similar sites ranking for keywords they themselves are paying a lot of money for in Google Ads.
To break down BestColleges.com. they rank for 47,000 “degree” or “program” terms and currently have 2638 of these terms in the top three.
Top Schools by Traffic Value
What is a keyword ranking worth? Well, if you’ve ever worked in Google Ads, you know that cost-per-click for higher ed terms is high…and climbing.
When your institution ranks for “money” keywords (in layperson’s terms, keywords that otherwise cost money), your traffic has a value assigned to it by various tools.
We continue to use Ahrefs model which states, “Organic traffic value is the equivalent monthly cost of traffic from all keywords that the target website/URL ranks for organically, if that traffic was paid via PPC instead.”
The table below shows the schools with the highest traffic value from non-branded traffic each month. This shows essentially that Arizona State University ranks for $4,739,562.00 worth of keywords, a ‘value per visitor’ of $4.30, they have 2,920 degree terms in the top 3 positions, and they have a 92.15% growth potential – these are keywords they rank for that are not in the top 3 spots, so these are considered ‘easy’ or ‘quick’ wins.
Schools | Non-Branded Traffic/Mo | Value Per Vistor | Top 3 Degree Terms | Growth (% Non-Top 3 Terms) |
---|---|---|---|---|
asu.edu | $4,739,562.0 | $4.3 | 2,920 | 92.15% |
snhu.edu | $2,866,188.0 | $2.4 | 4,639 | 86.35% |
wgu.edu | $2,791,701 | $4.0 | 2,273 | 90.79% |
usc.edu | $1,104,499 | $1.3 | 569 | 96.33% |
waldenu.edu | $777,770 | $0.7 | 499 | 96.16% |
worldcampus.psu.edu | $722,354 | $10.1 | 549 | 94.09% |
nu.edu | $691,752 | $1.0 | 989 | 95.03% |
gcu.edu | $463,228.0 | $1.2 | 458 | 98.14% |
uc.edu | $342,688 | $1.1 | 497 | 97.70% |
As you can see, there is a lot of value in ranking organically. These are keywords that other schools are paying top dollar for, and even for the schools that do rank well, using paid ads alongside organic rankings is a good strategy to help take up more real estate on the front page of the search engines.
Closing Thoughts
Looking at the traffic patterns of all of the top schools is an interesting way to see who is capturing the search traffic of the tens of millions of monthly searches for what you offer. With all eyes on the impending ‘enrollment cliff,’ universities should be implementing a growth strategy using SEO best practices.
Not all traffic is created equal. Some traffic is top-of-funnel, some is middle-of-funnel, some is bottom-of-funnel, and some is not relevant at all.
As part of a comprehensive digital marketing strategy, mapping your student inquiry journey to keywords and then creating content or filling content gaps, alongside with technical SEO and link building will grow your traffic value, and, if done well, your enrollments.