500x Growth of Student Leads via Content and SEO 

Challenge: Reliable Pipeline of Student Leads via Organic

When AIMS Education approached us in 2012, they knew their website had the untapped potential to bring in prospective students. Yet organic traffic was low, searches were mostly branded, and student leads – flat. 

We had to increase relevant traffic and conversions to get student leads flowing in. This is how we did it:

Solution: Website Refresh and Content Marketing

1. Technical and content SEO audits

We identified technical SEO issues, conducted thorough keyword research, and suggested an actionable list of audit implementation steps.

2. Content strategy

We came up with a content strategy to showcase the lucrative and rewarding career paths available for allied healthcare professionals.

3. Content production and SEO optimization

We consistently published high-quality, original articles on AIMS Education blog for 7+ years. The topics we chose are persona-driven, such as career opportunities in the allied healthcare field. We created 400+ pieces of blog content and refreshed and optimized 150+ evergreen articles. We boosted this content with social outreach campaigns for engagement and traction.

4. Website redesign + SEO health monitoring

We redesigned the website in 2020 in partnership with another agency. The goals were better UX, a faster modern interface, and increasing the conversion rate from organic traffic. We also started tracking the website’s SEO performance and ranking and set up alerts if any more changes were needed.

5. Video-first social marketing

We added paid marketing to the mix. We are promoting the training programs on Facebook with bespoke landing pages and video ads.

Results: 1000x traffic, 500x student leads

Student leads coming from the organic channel grew from an insignificant amount to 500/mo on average. 

Organic traffic bloomed in the thousands. More importantly, blog traffic was converting:

• 95.5% of all conversions on the site were influenced directly or indirectly by our content marketing work.
• 65% of all conversion paths included blog content. 
• 94.7% of all organic clicks to the website came from blog posts.
• Branded searches were only 0.01% of all queries to the blog. People interested in allied healthcare discovered AIMS Education through the blog content.

“We’ve been able to scale back some of our traditional marketing because we’re getting so much just through content marketing and social media marketing.”

Barry Ferguson
Director of Strategic Initiatives at AIMS Education