The Q3 2024 benchmarking report for UK midlands universities has just been published. Learn how these 12 UK midlands universities perform across the digital space.

The latest Q3 2024 benchmarking report for UK midlands universities has just been published. It covers 12 of our UK midlands universities, including Staffordshire University, Keele University, Birmingham City University, Aston University, University College Birmingham, University of Derby, Nottingham Trent University, De Montfort University, Coventry University, University of Wolverhampton, Birmingham Newman University, and Loughborough University.

The research gives an inside track on who is winning the biggest share of voice online and quantifies the gaps, risks, and missed opportunities for other midlands universities to enhance their organic traffic through a successful keyword strategy and to improve their brand awareness to develop a trusting relationship with their audience and to also potentially seek new sign ups. The report highlights quick wins that will improve enquiries from your online strategy and identifies the barriers that may be reducing your site’s ability to optimise digital performance.

To see a preview and contents page of the Q3 report, click here. To get a copy of the full report and the key takeaways, please complete the enquiry form or schedule a call.

Q3 2024 WINNERS LEADERBOARD

For a glance into just six of the metrics we evaluated these 12 midlands universities on, check out our quick-look table below;

Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK midlands universities or request a copy of the report for the full review.

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What The Industry Research Report Covers

The 70+ pages of research benchmarks each brand based on 50+ metrics and indicators of a successful digital strategy, including organic visibility, domain authority, paid media ads, conversion performance, technical performance, site speed, universal search, content, social ads, accessibility, and mobile performance.  

Driving Optimal ROAS from Paid Media Channels

Some of the leading players in the space are high spenders on paid media channels such as Google, Bing and Facebook - but have a poor or sub-optimal conversion improvement strategy. Without an optimised, sophisticated conversion strategy that maximises the conversion rate, the return on investment is unsustainable or will underperform. Scaling spend on paid media is not achievable unless the conversion rate delivers optimal performance in the sector. Some in the space have paid media spend levels from £30k+ per month but dedicate minimal resources and budgets to conversion testing.  Given the cost per clicks on ad networks will continue to rise, we recommend spending at least 10% of your paid media budget on ongoing conversion optimisation testing schedules to ensure your paid media ROI maintains long-term viability, competitive advantage, and sustainability.

Technical Website Compliance

Savvy digital marketers know that having a technically sound website is an essential component of a successful fully integrated digital strategy - plus a site capable of maximising conversion performance. UK midlands universities should ensure that their website is easy to navigate with a minimal design (especially for mobile where screens are smaller) so consumers can locate information easily.

Aston University flagged 98 4xx errors, and it should address any links that are broken to avoid sending consumers down a dead end, which could lead them to mistrust the brand.

Site Speed & Conversion Rate Performance

When 62% of consumers are less likely to convert if they have a negative mobile site experience, ensuring that your site is quick and easy to load will see a significant improvement on your overall conversion rates. All universities should aim for a website that takes no longer than 3 seconds to load, helping to prevent customers from becoming frustrated with slow download speeds and potentially resorting to competitors.

The mobile site speed for this quarter ranged between 61 and 28, with Birmingham City University reporting the slowest mobile site speed. Upon closer examination, this university should reduce image size and include lazy loading to help increase its site speed for potential customers.

Building Competitive Advantage with Domain Authority

Domain authority (DA) is an essential metric for measuring the effectiveness of SEO performance, and helps create a reliable overall gauge of how effective your site is at achieving organic traffic, i.e. ‘free’ traffic that isn’t gained through sponsored ads. For brands in the education sector, creating connections with websites that have a similar target audience is an effective way to increase their number of backlinks and, thus, their DA rating. Reaching out to these websites is a great way to build this relationship, but, most importantly, brands should focus on delivering high-quality content that websites will want to link to.

A ‘good’ DA really comes down to how your competitors are performing, however, it’s generally considered average between 40 and 50, good between 50 and 60, and excellent above 60. The DA for this quarter ranged between 81 and 56, with Birmingham Newman University flagging the lowest DA. This university didn’t receive the fewest backlinks or backlinks from the fewest domains, though it should make improvements to its mobile site speed to help increase its DA score.

Organic Performance – Mobile & Desktop

A strong organic performance is strategically important as it ensures your site ranks above competitors for core, transactional keywords. When 93% of your customers won’t go past the first page of Google, your absence or lack of targeting for essential keywords will cost you conversions. Universities may see rise and fall in organic traffic depending on the time of year, so we can expect to see big fluctuations each quarter.

No university reported a decrease in organic traffic for desktop, while 4 saw a decrease in organic traffic for mobile. It’s to be expected that universities will see more traffic on desktop, given that people tend to use a larger device to access sites with critical information and a lot of page weight.

Universal Search Opportunity

Google Universal Search Results are an evolving opportunity to make your pages visible on a SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Universal results often appear before traditional listings and are eye-catching for users. Given that a university’s location places a big part in a student’s choice, midlands universities should focus on ‘local pack’ to help increase their findings in SERPs.

The results for overall Universal Search appearances are close, but Loughborough University stole the top spot with a total of 8,365 — the majority of which came from ‘images’ followed by ‘people also ask’. ‘Images’ was the highest total out of all categories.

The Longtail Keyword Opportunity

Longtail keywords are often considered high intent and potentially more likely to convert as a searcher is being more specific. Optimising for longtail keywords also puts your content strategy in a strong position to rank for new search terms as they enter Google’s index. Universities should adopt a longtail keyword strategy to reduce their competition and improve their conversion rates compared to shorttail keywords. All universities should focus on their location in the keywords to ensure they’re reaching their target audience.

Loughborough University reported the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (1,665), with Birmingham City University following closely behind with 1,16 appearances.

Facebook Adverts

With the number of Facebook users in the United Kingdom (UK) hitting over 44 million users in 2023, it is not surprising that companies have jumped at the opportunity to advertise on the social media platform. Facebook’s UK digital advertising revenue has been estimated to have breached 2.6b GB pounds in 2019.

We’ve included examples of University College Birmingham’s sponsored Facebook posts. This midlands university included unique text and media for each post, with a mixture of 1 video and 2 images. It also stuck to a maximum of 3 lines of text, which is the recommended amount to catch users’ attention when scrolling.

Top Social Shares & Content

When it comes to social media and on-site content strategies, it is important to release content that has a longer shelf life. An article is considered 'evergreen' if it has maintained its relevancy to an audience for a long period of time. It's great for your engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content which achieves traffic over a long period of time. Universities can create shareable social content that details announcements, the latest news, and information that’s relevant to their target audience.

Coventry University has the largest Facebook page (211,700 Likes), and Loughborough University has the largest Instagram account (186,000). All universities should focus on uploading content that includes updates about their university as well as general educational topics to also have a selfless approach, so they can become a resource for their target audience.

Website Readability & Accessibility

Around 20% of people in the UK have a disability – 2 million of which are people living with sight loss. In addition, 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women have some degree of colour vision deficiency. Midlands universities should aim to limit accessibility alerts, contrast errors, and errors, to improve readability for those on a screen reader.

University of Wolverhampton flagged the most accessibility alerts (510), which are mainly due to redundant title text (460). Additionally, Birmingham Newman University reported the highest contrast errors (38). All universities should regularly assess their website for these errors to prioritise their audience’s experience.

GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q3 2024 REPORT

To get a copy of the full report, please complete the enquiry form. If you want to talk to us about accelerating your digital performance, please call us on 01543 410014 or schedule a call with Mike Movassaghi.

Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash