How an Online University in the UAE Grew Organic Traffic Sevenfold
With no campus for students to walk past, search was the front door. Bilingual content, internal links and portal listings opened it up. The university stays anonymous.
Results at a glance
- Industry
- Higher Education · Online Learning
- Market
- United Arab Emirates
- Services
- Content, Links & PR, International SEO
- Verified in
- GSC · Google Analytics
The starting point
Most of this university's programmes run online, so students who did not find it in search did not find it at all. Global online providers and local universities competed for terms such as "online university in UAE", in English and Arabic.
What changed
Articles with a purpose
Informational posts with commercial intent led readers to the matching programme.
Internal links that convert
Readers and authority moved from well-read posts to the pages where enquiries happen.
Education portals
Links came from sites where students research and compare universities.
How the work ran, step by step
Answer pre-application questions
English and Arabic posts covered how online degrees work and which programmes suit working professionals.
Optimise programme pages in both languages
Each page was matched to the searches students make for that programme.
Connect posts to programmes
Blogs link to their programme, and related programmes link to one another.
Earn portal links
Listings on comparison sites brought authority and students already weighing options.
The evidence
Six months against the six before: clicks from 43.7K to 118K, impressions from 883K to 1.85M, and average click-through rate from 4.9% to 6.4%.
Goal completions in July to October 2022 against the prior four months: up 75% (11,141 vs 6,367), with goal conversion rate moving from 5.83% to 7.68% and Arabic enquiries more than doubling.
Semrush estimated blog traffic, May to October 2022. It stays at zero until July, then climbs past 100 as new articles begin to rank.
Clicks and impressions from Google Search Console, conversions from Google Analytics, blog traffic from Semrush. The screenshots cover the first six months of the engagement.
Lessons for online education providers
- Treat search like a campus open day, because for an online provider it plays the same role.
- Give each article a programme to support. Otherwise blog traffic stays on the blog.
- Build Arabic and English together when students search in both.
Where to go next
Is search your only front door?
Send us your site and programme list. We will show you what students are searching for in English and Arabic.
Email raaquib@goupseo.agency · Dubai Media City, Dubai, UAE