Higher Education Digital Marketing Agency

Search engine visibility is the amount of traffic that your institution’s website receives from its rank in the organic search results. Some tactics we may implement into your digital marketing strategy to help improve your search engine visibility include targeting your pages for keywords, evaluating your website for mobile-friendliness, and crafting compelling page titles.

To quickly answer a user’s query, featured snippets are spotlighted clips of text that are automatically pulled from a webpage and presented near Google’s organic search results. By optimizing your content for specific featured snippets, we help increase your university’s brand visibility and organic traffic to generate more leads — and applicants!

No matter how great your institution’s marketing efforts are, an existing degree program or faculty spotlight web page may just seem to lose its traffic as time passes. To help improve the quality and relevance of your web pages, we’ll review and update your site’s existing content by:

• Rethinking content structure and substance
• Optimizing images and keywords
• Assessing internal and external link-building opportunities

Google Search data helps signify where your target audience is in the marketing funnel, as well as where your institution’s advertising efforts should be. Our team will keep a pulse on Google Search trends as they relate to your university and recommend the next steps for effectively targeting your audience.

Google’s AI Overviews are quickly becoming one of the first stops in the student research process. Our study revealed that 56% of prospects are more likely to trust institutions mentioned in these summaries, making inclusion a critical credibility factor. We build content strategies that align with the specific queries and intent surfaced in AI Overviews, helping your institution increase the likelihood of being cited.

AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity are changing how students research programs, admissions, and career outcomes. These platforms synthesize information from multiple sources, making it essential that your institution is recognized as authoritative and relevant. We optimize your website’s content, structure, and metadata to ensure AI systems can understand and highlight your institution’s offerings.

Being cited by AI platforms signals trust and authority to students who rely on these tools. Our strategies strengthen your institution’s credibility by emphasizing structured data, faculty expertise, and clear student outcomes. We also identify gaps where your content can provide authoritative answers that AI is likely to use in its responses.

AI-driven search technology is evolving at a rapid pace, with new features and behaviors appearing regularly. To keep your institution competitive, we continuously monitor changes in how generative platforms surface information and how students engage with these results. Our team evaluates patterns in student behavior, tests emerging tools, and refines your AI SEO strategy accordingly.

Because these groups share similar demographics and interests with existing students, lookalike audiences are considered the most likely to engage with your content — and even enroll in your degree programs. Using data from your institute’s existing students, we’ll develop online advertising campaigns that help broaden your university’s reach to the students most inclined to take action.

From halts to annual search term reports to privacy limitations, Google, Facebook, and Apple have recently made sweeping changes to the accessibility of tactical data extracted from ad networks. Amidst these changes, our paid search agency for higher education can support your ad targeting goals by focusing on proprietary data to effectively tailor each campaign to your audience segments.

According to Google, advertisers can expect to witness 10% more conversions, on average, when incorporating the multiple components of a responsive display ad. Because our digital advertising moguls acknowledge the performance potential of responsive ads, we’ll work with your team to create ads that drive relevant leads to your higher ed institution.

While Google’s Search Network may be one of the best ways to capture your user’s intent, not every web surfer will automatically know about your university. This is where the Google Display Network can lend a helping hand. With Google Display, our team can help you invest in building brand awareness for your college using comprehensive audience research and targeting techniques.

A higher education website must actively drive engagement and enrollment. That means positioning your site as a resource that answers student questions, highlights your institution’s strengths, and guides users toward meaningful actions like program exploration or application. Our team helps you reframe your site as a central marketing asset by auditing and refining existing content, aligning it with prospective students’ intent, and ensuring every page supports your enrollment goals.

Your website is your school’s leading marketing tool when it comes to communicating with your community. If your site is out of date or complex to navigate, prospective students may bounce from your site as soon as they land on it. To keep your website accessible, informational, and engaging, our development team can work with you to:

• Maintain your institution’s brand within the website design, including color scheme and tone
• Incorporate visual content (e.g., alumni photos, video testimonials by passionate students)
• Create easy-to-navigate paths for prospective students, current staff and students, and alumni
• Make it accessible to all and optimally functional, no matter the user or device

In 2020, Google announced the rollout of its Core Web Vitals, a set of user-focused metrics that assess a web page’s “health” — or how well it provides a smooth, seamless user experience. These metrics consist of three components:

• Content loading speed
• Interactivity
• Stability

With gradual advancements to the algorithm, Google has been able to analyze small details like these metrics to provide the best content and results in response to relevant search engine queries. According to Google's standards, the sooner your institution’s website moves toward a user-centric approach and optimizes for these Core Web Vitals, the higher it’ll rank.

As an effective part of any strategic web marketing campaign, a long-tail content strategy focuses on narrow and direct searches that prospective students, parents, and community members are intentionally scouting the web for. Our team will work with your university to develop a long-tail content strategy that combines target keywords, target market segments, and target geographies to deliver high-quality content to individual users who are more likely to be engaged leads.

Quality content doesn’t always need to have a short shelf life. Get more out of your institution’s best content by repurposing it! Whether it’s a blog post turned infographic or a webinar turned LinkedIn article, we’ll help you recycle the content that truly counts and attracts more leads while releasing content that feels fresh and unique.

Connect with prospective and current students and guide them through the admissions funnel by emphasizing what matters most. We’ll ensure that your website, Google Business listings, and overall marketing messages boast your institution’s strongest selling points — your students’ career, financial, and academic outcomes.

When executed properly, email marketing campaigns can be highly effective for recruiting and retaining students while also engaging your university’s current student body and alumni. No matter how big or small your university campus is, we can develop personalized email marketing strategies to target a wide variety of readers and foster long-lasting student relationships.

Encouraging inquiries and campus visits doesn’t end with simply initiating student interest. Using email campaigns, your university can nurture student interest by delivering consistent messages that meet your recipients where they are in the marketing funnel. To generate and convert more leads into applicants, our email campaigns can distribute content on upcoming events, program requirements, and more.

Getting a prospective student’s email is only half the battle in enhancing your higher education institute’s enrollment numbers. To really drive your students through the funnel — beyond inquiry — you’ll need compelling emails that get the right information to the right people at the right time. By crafting thoughtful and highly targeted email campaigns, your institution can more effectively improve your student recruitment practices while also increasing conversion rates.

Call tracking lets you know exactly who a prospective student may be, from the state they are calling from to how they first found your university. By utilizing a call tracking strategy, we can help you shift your marketing campaigns towards a specific target audience, better anticipate rapid-fire questions, and focus on the ads that bring in the most leads.

When tracked over time, higher education metrics provide meaningful insights into your institutional objectives and inform future marketing strategies. From how effectively you’re nurturing leads to whether you’re on track to meet enrollment targets, these key performance indicators help your university evaluate its success at each stage of the higher education funnel. To ensure your performance metrics signal success, we’ll track everything from impressions and website traffic to enrollments and retention rates.

Digital marketing is highly effective for higher education institutions because it meets prospective students where they spend their time: online. From search engines to email, digital marketing ensures your programs stay visible throughout the decision-making process. By combining targeted advertising, SEO, and content strategies, schools can consistently generate qualified leads and increase enrollment.

The ROI of digital marketing comes from its ability to generate qualified leads, improve enrollment rates, and strengthen brand visibility at a lower cost than traditional methods. Campaigns are tracked across every channel, allowing institutions to see exactly how each effort contributes to inquiries and applications. With AI-enhanced targeting and analytics, you can focus your budget on the strategies that deliver the highest returns. Over time, this creates a sustainable marketing engine that reduces cost per enrollment while maintaining steady growth.

A marketing agency improves your in-house team by providing specialized expertise, advanced tools, and added bandwidth. While your staff understands your institution’s culture and goals, a full-service agency brings experience in SEO, AI search optimization, paid media, and analytics tracking that may be difficult to maintain internally. Agencies also help uncover blind spots, offer fresh perspectives, and ensure campaigns align with current digital trends. This partnership empowers your team to focus on strategic priorities while knowing execution is in expert hands. Learn more about in-house vs. outsourcing.

Search Influence primarily specializes in higher education, healthcare, and hospitality, all industries where digital visibility directly drives growth. In higher education specifically, we’ve partnered with institutions across the country to improve SEO, digital advertising, and lead tracking. Our experience in regulated industries like healthcare ensures we understand compliance needs, while our work with tourism and local businesses sharpens our ability to connect with niche audiences. This cross-industry expertise allows us to apply proven strategies to a wide range of marketing challenges.

Yes. Search Influence manages PPC advertising campaigns that are designed to maximize ROI and drive qualified student inquiries. We create campaigns that target prospective students based on their intent, demographics, and search behaviors. Our team continuously optimizes ads by leveraging AI tools, keyword data, and performance analytics to ensure your budget is spent effectively. As a Google Premier Partner, we have a proven track record of running PPC campaigns that move your enrollment strategy forward.