Advanced SEO Metrics every Higher Ed marketer should track

Tracking SEO performance is essential for higher ed marketers, but relying on vanity metrics like traffic and rankings often leads to incomplete insights. The challenge lies in identifying the right metrics, those that provide actionable insights, align with institutional goals, and directly impact student enrollment and engagement.

This article goes beyond listing advanced metrics. It offers a practical framework for higher ed marketers to measure what truly matters, leverage the right tools, and transform their data into strategies that deliver measurable results. Whether your focus is driving enrollment, improving stakeholder engagement, or strengthening your institution’s visibility, this guide will help you connect the dots between SEO efforts and real impact.

Aligning Metrics with Institutional Goals

One of the biggest mistakes higher education marketers make is focusing on metrics without connecting them to broader institutional objectives. Traffic and keyword rankings, while important, tell only part of the story. 

For instance, a spike in traffic may look impressive, but unless it leads to actions like applications or inquiries, its value remains unclear.

To truly measure success, SEO metrics must be mapped directly to institutional priorities:

• Enrollment Growth
  Metrics like “Application Conversion Rate”, “Applications Submitted”, and “Application to Enrollment Rate” track how well recruitment campaigns attract and convert prospective students.
• Brand Visibility
  Organic impressions of share of voice data reveal how effectively your institution is competing for attention in a crowded digital space.
• Engagement with key stakeholders
  “Content Engagement Rate”, “Pages Per Visit”, and “Time on Page” highlight whether your content resonates with prospective students, alumni, and other audiences.

By identifying these connections upfront, marketers can ensure that SEO efforts aren’t just improving numbers; they’re driving meaningful outcomes.

How to choose the right metrics: Metrics vs. KPIs

One of the most common challenges higher ed marketers face is selecting metrics that truly reflect the success of their SEO strategies. This starts with understanding the difference between Metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

• Metrics are data points that track activity or performance. They help you monitor trends, diagnose issues, and gain a broad understanding of what’s happening.
• KPIs, on the other hand, are goal-oriented metrics. They are directly tied to specific outcomes and measure progress toward institutional priorities like enrollment growth or alumni engagement.

By focusing on KPIs over Metrics, marketers can ensure that their efforts are aligned with outcomes that matter to their institution’s success.

Examples of KPIs for Higher Ed Marketing

Here’s how you can define meaningful KPIs based on common institutional goals:

Enrollment Growth

• KPI Example: Lead Conversion Rate
  
  Tracks the percentage of website visitors who complete an RFI, providing a direct measure of how well your content is performing in converting Website Visitors.

• KPI Example: Application Conversion Rate
  
  Tracks the percentage of leads who complete an application, providing a direct measure of the quality of your traffic and leads and how well your recruitment efforts are performing.
  
• KPI Example: Application To Enrollment Conversion Rate
  
  Measures the number of applications that got enrolled, indicating the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and admission processes.

Alumni Engagement

• KPI Example: Repeat Visitor Rate on Alumni Content
  
  Tracks the percentage of alumni returning to specific sections of your site, such as events or giving pages, reflecting alumni engagement and interest.

• KPI Example: Alumni Event Conversion Rate
  
  Monitors how your alumni are converting in your events, offering insights into event-related content effectiveness.

Brand Visibility

• KPI Example: Share of Voice in Organic Search
  
  Measures how often your institution appears in search engine results page (SERP) compared to competitors, helping you assess the share of your digital presence.

• KPI Example: Click-Through Rate (CTR) on Branded Keywords
  
  Tracks the percentage of users clicking on your institution’s links for branded search terms, indicating brand recognition and relevance.

Organic Growth

• KPI Example: Organic Traffic to Program Pages
  
  Measures the number of prospective students who land on program pages through organic search, indicating the effectiveness of your SEO strategy.
  
• KPI Example: # of Leads
  
  Measures the number of leads you get from organic traffic (or any other channel), indicating the effectiveness of your websites, landing pages, and overall marketing initiatives.

Aligning Metrics and KPIs with your Institution’s goals

It’s important to remember that every KPI should serve a larger institutional goal. For example, tracking Organic Traffic to Program Pages might seem useful, but unless it ties to an objective like increasing applications, it remains just another useless data point. Begin by defining your goals, and then map the metrics and KPIs that will help you evaluate progress.

This approach ensures that your SEO strategy isn’t just improving numbers but is actively contributing to your institution’s mission.

Going beyond basic metrics

Traditional SEO metrics like Organic Traffic and Keyword Rankings are often the easiest to measure, but they don’t provide the depth of understanding needed to refine strategies or showcase impact. When you use advanced metrics that are linked to end goals, you end up with a more nuanced view of user behavior and content performance.

Engagement Metrics

Engagement metrics such as scroll depth, time on page, and exit rates are critical for assessing how well content resonates with your audience. For instance:

• Scroll Depth shows how far users scroll on a page. If key calls to action (CTAs) or application links are placed below the point where most visitors drop off, they may never be seen, which may translate to lower conversions.
• Time on Page indicates whether users find content relevant and engaging. A longer Time on Page often correlates with higher interest, but it can also highlight where additional clarity or user-friendly design is needed.
• Exit Rate pinpoints specific pages where users leave the site. High exit rates on important pages, like financial aid or program pages, may signal unclear content or poor navigation.

Branded vs. Non-Branded Traffic Metrics

Tracking both branded and non-branded SEO traffic is crucial for higher education marketers because it provides a comprehensive view of how potential students discover and interact with your institution online.

Branded Traffic includes search queries that include your institution’s name (e.g., “X University MBA program”). It reflects brand awareness, often driven by offline campaigns and previous engagement with your website/brand or alumni. It also indicates a higher level of intent, as these prospective students are already aware of your university and chances are, they are further along in the decision-making process, making them more likely to convert into applicants or enrolled students.

Non-Branded Traffic includes queries without your institution’s name (e.g., “best online MBA programs”). This traffic captures a broader audience that may be in the early stages of exploring their educational options. These prospective students might not yet be familiar with your institution, presenting an opportunity to introduce your programs and unique offerings to a diverse pool of prospective students.

Why It Matters

Branded Traffic measures the strength of your reputation and brand reach.

Non-branded traffic helps assess your ability to expand your audience and capture prospective students unfamiliar with your institution. In our analysis, over 80% of organic traffic to the top 100 .edu websites comes from branded keywords. This shows how important it is for your institution to optimize your website to rank for keywords that include your institution’s name. However, focusing only on getting traffic from the ones that are already familiar with your brand may reduce your ability to reach a new audience that is unaware of your brand.

How to Use This Insight

Segment Traffic – Use Google Analytics or Google Search Console to track branded vs. non-branded queries.

Optimize for Balance – If non-branded traffic is low, create content targeting broader keywords. For branded traffic, ensure you maintain visibility for key institutional terms.

Set KPIs – Track branded traffic for brand health and non-branded traffic for audience growth.

Conversion-Related Metrics

Advanced conversion metrics, like assisted conversions and multi-touch attribution, uncover the paths users take before completing key actions.

• Assisted Conversions recognize the value of pages that contribute to a prospective student’s decision-making process but aren’t the final step. For example, a blog about scholarship tips may drive traffic to a financial aid page, which ultimately leads to an application submission.
• Multi-Touch Attribution allows higher ed marketers to track the cumulative impact of different interactions like organic searches, email clicks, or social media engagements across the entire student journey. This approach ensures that every touchpoint receives the credit it deserves.
• Data-Driven Attribution distributes the credit for the key event (like leads and applications) based on data that each of those key events gathers in conversion time. It’s different from the other models because it uses your GA4 account’s data to calculate the actual contribution of each click interaction.

Content Performance Metrics

Content-specific metrics, like click-through rates (CTR) and Repeat Visitor rates, provide insights into how well your content serves the needs of prospective students and other stakeholders.

• A low CTR might indicate that your meta descriptions or page titles aren’t compelling enough to attract clicks, even if your content ranks highly in search results.
• High Repeat Visitor Rates suggest that your content fosters trust and sustained interest—critical for long decision-making cycles in higher education.

Analytics tools you can use

Without the right tools and systems in place, tracking SEO metrics can be daunting. Higher education marketers should invest in platforms and processes that make it easy to collect, analyze, and act on data. Here are some tools we recommend every marketer should use:

Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

GA4 represents a shift of the previous Google Analytics version toward an event-driven data model that enables marketers to track each user interaction as an individual event, rather than grouping them together by session. With its ability to create custom dimensions, you can track specific event attributes such as program interests, enrollment status, or campus locations that aren’t included by default when an event is registered into GA4. This tailored data provides deeper insights into prospective student behaviors and preferences, enabling more targeted and effective marketing strategies.

Pro Tip: Set up event-based goals, such as clicking on the “Start Application” button to understand what pages, CTAs, and button placements are driving your applications

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a powerful, free tool that provides insights into how your institution’s website appears in search results. It helps higher ed marketers monitor and improve performance by focusing on key metrics such as:

• Organic Impressions – Understand how often your pages appear in search results, providing a measure of your visibility. By Measuring this metric, you can understand the relevance of your content to specific search queries (that you might or might not know about) and inform your decision about how to optimize them further for better ranking.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR) – Track how many users click your search engine links compared to the number of impressions, offering insights into the effectiveness of your titles and meta descriptions.
• Search Rankings – Monitor your position for targeted keywords and assess your competitive performance. This metric helps you monitor the effectiveness of your strategy in ranking for specific topics and queries.

Pro Tip: Use the Performance Report in Search Console to identify high-impression, low-CTR pages. Optimize their meta titles and descriptions to make them more compelling and aligned with user intent.

SEO Analytics Platforms

Platforms like SEMrush and Ahrefs offer tools for monitoring keyword rankings, share of voice, and backlink quality. These insights are critical for benchmarking your institution’s performance against competitors, especially for high-value keywords like “best online MBA programs.”

Pro Tip: Use Ahrefs’ content gap tool to identify keywords your competitors rank for that you don’t, and develop content to close those gaps.

Custom Dashboards

Google Looker Studio allows marketers to consolidate data from multiple sources into intuitive dashboards. This helps simplify reporting and enables cross-departmental teams to access the data they need without navigating complex tools.

Pro Tip: Build dashboards tailored to specific goals. For example, create one focused on enrollment metrics and another on alumni engagement.

Turning Metrics into Action

Having the right metrics is only half the battle; success lies in how you use them. To turn your data into actionable insights, follow these practical steps to ensure your SEO efforts are driving measurable results that align with your institution’s goals.

Set Benchmarks

Benchmarks provide a baseline for evaluating your current performance and measuring progress over time. They also offer context for interpreting metrics in relation to industry standards or institutional goals.

How to set benchmarks:

• Internal comparisons – Analyze historical data to determine your average performance metrics, such as conversion rates or CTR. For example, if your program pages typically convert 10% of visitors into applicants, use that as your baseline.
• Industry standards – Research benchmarks for similar institutions or competitors. If other universities achieve a 20% CTR on branded keywords, set that as a target.
• Track competitors – Use tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs to monitor keyword rankings, backlinks, and share of voice to assess where your institution stands.

Pro Tip: Regularly revisit and adjust benchmarks to reflect new goals, updated strategies, or external factors like algorithm changes.

Identify Trends

Trends reveal the bigger picture behind your metrics, helping you spot opportunities and address potential challenges before they escalate.

How to identify trends:

• Analyze historical data – Review performance over the past quarter, year, or recruitment cycle to identify patterns. For example, do organic traffic spikes coincide with application deadlines?
• Segment your data – Break down metrics by audience segments (e.g., prospective students, alumni) or key pages (e.g., application forms, scholarship resources).
• Monitor seasonal shifts – Account for predictable changes, such as increased interest in specific programs during application season or holiday giving campaigns.

Pro Tip: Use visualization tools like Google Looker Studio to spot trends at a glance and share insights with stakeholders.

Take Action on Insights

Metrics are only valuable if they inform decisions and lead to improvements. Connect the dots between your data and specific optimizations to enhance your SEO strategy.

Examples of actionable steps you can take from analyzing insights:

• Revise content – If engagement rates are low on program pages, ensure the content is relevant and aligned with user intent. Add engaging visuals or simplify complex information.
• Improve navigation – If users are dropping off before reaching key CTAs, streamline navigation or optimize user experience (UX) to attract more inquiries or applications.
• Refine page titles and descriptions: Use low CTR data to craft more engaging meta titles and descriptions. A title like “Top Online Nursing Programs – Apply Now” is more compelling than “Nursing Programs Overview.”
• Enhance content strategy – If there are high-volume, relevant keywords not currently targeted then incorporate these keywords into your website content, meta tags, and blog posts to attract more qualified traffic.
• Address content gaps – If competitors are ranking for keywords your site isn’t targeting or you discover trending topics you want to be ranked for, then you might need to develop new content around these keywords to capture additional search traffic. from prospective students.
• Test and optimize – Conduct A/B testing for CTAs, headlines, or page layouts to see what resonates best with your audience.

Pro Tip: Tie every action back to a measurable outcome. For example, “Optimizing our program pages led to a 20% increase in completed applications.”

Monitor and adjust regularly

SEO is an ongoing process. Regularly review your metrics to ensure you’re on track to meet your goals and adapt as needed.

How often should you monitor your SEO performance?

• Weekly: Monitor real-time performance for quick wins or emerging issues, like a sudden drop in organic traffic.
• Monthly: Compare metrics to benchmarks and assess overall progress.
• Quarterly: Perform a deeper analysis to identify long-term trends and make strategic adjustments.

Pro Tip: Schedule regular check-ins with cross-departmental teams (admissions, marketing, etc.) to align metrics and actions with their objectives.

By setting benchmarks, analyzing trends, and taking targeted action, you can transform their metrics into meaningful insights. This approach ensures your SEO strategy not only drives traffic but also delivers measurable results that align with institutional priorities.

Conclusion

Success in Higher Education SEO requires more than just monitoring traffic and rankings; it demands a focus on the metrics that truly matter. The SEO metrics shared here provide the data to measure what impacts institutional goals, from driving applications and enrollments to engaging alumni and boosting brand visibility.

By combining these metrics with a clear understanding of tools like GA4 and Google Search Console, and focusing on actionable KPIs, you can go beyond vanity metrics to make data-driven decisions that deliver measurable results. Setting benchmarks, tracking trends, and aligning metrics with institutional priorities ensures that every effort contributes to meaningful outcomes.

When advanced metrics are aligned with broader goals, they become more than just numbers; they become a roadmap for growth and impact. Use these insights to refine your strategies, prove your ROI, and elevate your institution’s marketing to the next level. Let the results speak for themselves.

Ready to take your institution’s SEO to the next level? Let’s talk about how our strategies can deliver measurable results for your institution.

FAQ

1. Why should higher education institutions focus on more advanced SEO metrics?
Advanced SEO metrics provide deeper insights into user behavior, content performance, and conversion pathways, enabling institutions to align their SEO strategies with key goals like enrollment, brand visibility, and alumni engagement. Unlike basic metrics such as traffic or rankings, advanced metrics help quantify SEO ROI and guide data-driven decisions.

2. How do I know which SEO metrics to track for my institution?
Start by identifying your institution’s strategic priorities. For example:

• If your goal is increasing student applications, track conversion rates and organic traffic to program/application pages.
• For boosting alumni engagement, focus on metrics like repeat visitors and time on page for alumni-related content.
• To measure brand visibility, monitor the share of voice and organic impressions.

The key is to select metrics that directly tie to your institutional objectives.

3. What tools are essential for tracking advanced SEO metrics?
Some of the most effective tools for higher education include:

• Google Analytics 4 (GA4): Ideal for event-based tracking and monitoring user interactions.
• Google Search Console: Monitors organic performance, including CTR, impressions, and search rankings. Essential for optimizing visibility.
• SEMrush or Ahrefs: These tools help with keyword analysis, competitive benchmarking, and backlink tracking.
• Google Looker Studio: A powerful platform for creating custom dashboards that consolidate key performance metrics.

4. How can these SEO metrics help improve my content strategy?
SEO metrics like click-through rates (CTR), scroll depth, and time on page can reveal which content resonates with your audience. For example, a low CTR might suggest your meta descriptions need improvement, while high engagement on specific pages could signal opportunities to expand those topics further.

5. How do I explain the value of SEO metrics to non-technical stakeholders?
Frame the conversation around outcomes that stakeholders care about. For instance, rather than discussing engagement rates, highlight how an increase in engagement rates led to a measurable increase in completed applications. Use visual dashboards and storytelling to connect metrics with institutional priorities and ROI.

6. How often should I review my SEO metrics?
Regular reviews are essential to stay proactive.

• Weekly: Monitor real-time performance to catch immediate issues or opportunities.
• Monthly: Analyze trends and compare them to benchmarks to understand overall progress.
• Quarterly: Evaluate long-term outcomes and refine your strategy based on data-driven insights.

7. What’s the biggest mistake institutions make when analyzing SEO metrics?
One common pitfall is focusing solely on vanity metrics, like total traffic or keyword rankings, without considering their relevance to institutional goals. Always prioritize actionable metrics that reflect real-world outcomes, such as completed applications, increased donations, or improved engagement.

8. What’s the first step to implementing an advanced SEO metrics strategy?
Start with a clear understanding of your goals and select tools that align with those objectives. Define the key metrics that matter for each goal, set up your analytics platform for accurate tracking, and begin monitoring data to identify actionable insights.