Higher Education Inbound Marketing Agency Harnessing the Power of Blogs To Grow Visibility, Traffic, and Reputation

Inbound marketing is founded on the principle of attracting, engaging and delighting audiences through valuable, personalized content. One of the best strategies for reaching audiences through inbound marketing is blogging. Well-optimized blogs have become one of the best ways to increase visibility, traffic and reputation by ranking on top of Google search results. Here are some case studies where our inbound marketing and blogging efforts have paid off for many clients:

Capitol Technology University

Background: Capitol Technology University, a national leader in cybersecurity programs, is a small STEM university located in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. They are a part of the job-rich pipeline supplying human capital to America’s most technologically advanced government agencies and their private sector supply chains. They turned  to Elliance to position them as one of the leaders in  STEM education. 

What We Did: One of the main focuses of our inbound marketing campaign has been to optimize their blog content. They were running a pretty robust content engine on their blog but the missing part was optimized content. Elliance created a Keyword Guide and an Editorial Calendar to inform their content machine, and optimized their blog posts to achieve top Google rankings.

Results: As a result of our campaign, the majority of their blog traffic now comes from organic search, which is a result of the top rankings that they’ve achieved.Their blog traffic has doubled in the last two years. Currently, their blog accounts for almost 30% of their overall website traffic which has continually grown year over year. 

Carlow University

Background: A small Catholic college in Pittsburgh, PA, Carlow has a lot to contend with. With the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University just down the street and another 26 regional colleges, Carlow wanted to strengthen its reputation, expand its geographic footprint,  and increase enrollment in some of its key helping professions, humanities and technology  programs. 

What We Did: We employed the power of SEO and started an inbound marketing campaign. First, we crafted a Keyword Guide and an Editorial Calendar that would inform their content campaign. Next we created a blog along with an optimal tag and category structure. Since some of the faculty members showed interest in supplementing our blog writing efforts, we offered them a blog-writing workshop.  

Results: As a result of our efforts, blog traffic increased 460% year over year and their blogs were shared almost 11,000 times in a two year time frame. The senior team presented the results to the university’s board of trustees, who were pleasantly astonished to find Carlow on Google page one for almost any keyword they typed. After three years, Carlow unaided brand awareness grew measurably and enrollment grew by 9% — the highest in a decade with the largest growth coming from organic visitors.

Hartford International University for Religion & Peace

Background: Unique among theological institutions across the globe, Hartford International University has built an interreligious environment like no other. They turned to Elliance for help with rebranding, changing their name, developing a new identity, rebuilding their website and starting an inbound marketing campaign. With a completely new, recently re-launched program portfolio, they needed help with building visibility for those programs and strengthening their reputation with their new name. 

What We Did: Our foundation work of brand and website redesign really set the stage for us to build on to launch our inbound marketing campaign. Starting with a Keyword Guide and Editorial Calendar that would give direction to the campaign, our next step was to create a blog. The focus was to secure Google page one rankings for interreligious education however someone searched for it. We wanted to set them up as a thought leader in the realm of interreligious and interfaith education. 

Results: As a result of our consistent content creation and optimization efforts, Hartford International University is now ranked for a large number of variations of keywords like  “interreligious studies” and “history of interfaith dialogue” on page 1 of Google. Their blog traffic has increased 407% in the last two years while their blog organic traffic has increased over 1,700%. They have become believers in SEO/inbound marketing and insist on incorporating it into their annual marketing budget. 

William Woods University

Background: Located in the middle of  Missouri, – an hour from Saint Louis and three hours from Kansas City – William Woods University is a community of more than 3,500 students, representing traditional undergraduate, graduate and online students. They offer some really unique nationally acclaimed programs like ASL and Equestrian along with other commodity programs like Business, Communications, and Liberal Arts. More than six hundred of their  Education program alumni have gone on to become assistant principals, principals, superintendents and district superintendents in the state of Missouri. 

What We Did: Our partnership with William Woods spanned 7 years during which we rebranded the school, redesigned their website, ran paid digital and inbound marketing campaigns.  We created 5 blogs to raise awareness beyond Missouri for their undergraduate, graduate and online programs. 

Results: As a result, we were able to track 482 keywords, 66% of which were ranked in the top 5 positions on Google. While the SEO/inbound campaigns were live, their Facebook followers more than doubled , and for 5 straight years we saw increases in blog traffic every year. Their undergraduate enrollment grew modestly, their graduate enrollment grew by 20%, and their online enrollment doubled. Once again, the largest growth came from organic visitors.

Saint Vincent College

Background: A small, liberal arts, catholic college in Latrobe, PA, Saint Vincent is built on the principles of educating students to build a more inclusive society. Located an hour from Pittsburgh, attracting students is a challenge. They came to Elliance to help them increase brand awareness and enrollment across all their undergraduate programs. 

What We Did: They partnered with Elliance to re-launch their brand and redesign their website. As part of the website launch, we baked SEO thinking throughout their website to gain rankings on search engines across all their programs. To promote key programs, we used an inbound marketing campaign and set up a blog to continue to improve rankings and gain higher visibility for the brand.

Results: The Saint Vincent blog received a 795% increase in traffic from year 1 to year 2.  The overall organic traffic to the website improved by 32%.

If you are seeking a higher education inbound marketing agency to grow your enrollment, endowment and reputation, consider partnering with us.