Arden University challenged ClickThrough to increase leads to their course pages year-on-year by 50% in 2020. Read our case study to find out how we did it.

CLICKTHROUGH INCREASE ORGANIC VISIBILITY BY 373% FOR ARDEN UNIVERSITY

Arden University provides blended learning degree courses at its study centres in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, and Berlin. Degree courses are also available fully online to students globally. With courses available at postgraduate, undergraduate, and undergraduate with foundation year level across a comprehensive choice of industries, Arden’s aim is to make higher education more accessible, convenient, and relevant for today’s learners.

Objective

Although growing Arden University found their website traffic had plateaued and they wanted to regain momentum. Arden approached ClickThrough in January 2020 with the task of improving organic traffic and leads to their course pages year-on-year by 50% in 2020.

Strategy

To begin we focussed on ‘quick wins’. First, we identified six priority subject areas, such as Business & Management and Psychology, to form the basis of our activity. We identified the keywords that subject area webpages were ranking for in positions 5 to 30 on Google. We then worked to optimise these pages to for these keywords, with the aim to move them up to page 1 of search engine results.

Alongside this work we also fixed a number of technical errors we had identified on the website, including broken links and missing meta data. This allowed us to ensure that the site had the solid foundations in place required to rank higher in search engine results. We also began cleaning up the backlinks the website had amassed, working to stop spammy sites from linking to Arden, and identifying new sites we wanted to suggest link to the Arden website.

These three factors combined quickly resulted in a positive impact on Arden University’s organic performance (with a +9% increase in the first month of activity), with priority course pages appearing in high positions for high-volume search terms. This ultimately led to a significant increase in visitors to the site.

Although work began before the pandemic hit, we had to quickly pivot to ensure that any strategy we employed was both adaptable and durable enough to minimise any traffic loss brought about by COVID-19, whilst maximising traffic gains due to increased interest in online and distance learning.

Results

• July 2020: 167% YoY increase in organic sessions to course pages
• July 2020: 88% YoY increase in organic conversions on course pages
• Organic Visibility increased by 373% YoY
• Organic keywords ranked on page 1 increased by 173%

Our client says...

"The way ClickThrough worked with us to identify problems and implement solutions has been refreshing. We are really pleased with the traffic growth we are seeing and continue to see. Plus their adaptability during the pandemic has been a real bonus and has ensured our newfound momentum hasn’t dipped." Oana Joshi, Arden University.