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Top Higher Education Conferences in 2024: A Must-Attend List
Higher education conferences present a valuable opportunity for leaders in the field to enhance their skills and stay informed about the latest trends and challenges. As an SEO agency specializing in higher education, we have curated a list of 16 must-attend conferences for 2024.
These gatherings are not only essential for keeping abreast of industry developments but also provide a platform for meaningful interactions and networking with peers. Each conference on our list represents a worthwhile investment for professionals seeking to elevate their expertise and connections in higher education.
16 Higher Education Conferences in 2024
Spanning from early March to the year’s end, we’ve selected ten higher education conferences that are essential additions to your calendar. These events, carefully chosen for their relevance and impact, offer a diverse range of opportunities throughout the year to engage with the latest trends and network with industry peers. Mark your calendar to ensure you don’t miss these key gatherings in the higher education sector.
The 2024 SXSW EDU, as an internationally recognized event, offers a platform for educators, policymakers, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders to come together and shape the future of teaching and learning. With a diverse array of sessions, workshops, learning experiences, mentorship opportunities, film screenings, and policy discussions, the conference promises to be a transformative experience for all involved.
The event continues to distinguish itself as a true thought leadership summit, featuring hundreds of sessions and esteemed speakers from various sectors, including notable figures such as Sarah Rose Siskind (Science Comedian & Founder, Hello SciCom), Dan Ackerman (Editor-In-Chief of Gizmodo), and Rapsody (Emcee & Recording Artist, ROC Nation)
For over a decade, this annual event has drawn deep learners from around the world, providing a reminder of the profound impact educators have on shaping the future. At DL24, participants are invited to envision the limitless potential of schools as places of hope, healing, and inspiration.
Deeper Learning has been likened to “Coachella for educators,” offering a vibrant platform where individuals tap into the power of a global network of educational leaders, engage in meaningful dialogue, and collaborate on innovative school designs. The Event Team, led by Project Director Randy Scherer and School Redesign Director Tina Schuster, ensures a seamless and enriching experience for all participants, further amplifying the mission of Deeper Learning to empower every student to realize their unlimited potential.
The UPCEA Annual Conference is a significant gathering that stands out as a pivotal event for those involved in continuing, online, and other forms of non-traditional education, offering engaging keynote speakers, high-energy concurrent sessions, and ample networking opportunities. The conference agenda encompasses pressing topics in the field today, such as federal policy, finance and operations, marketing and enrollment management, instructional design, noncredit programs, and alternative credentialing.
While the roster of speakers has yet to be announced, notable figures like Ian Khan, Maria Flynn, and Javier Reyes are set to inspire and share insights on transformative trends shaping the future of education.
Building on the association’s esteemed legacy since 1920, AACC Annual has consistently served as the cornerstone event for the nation’s predominantly associate degree-granting regionally accredited institutions. This premier gathering offers a dynamic platform featuring impactful keynote presentations, focused breakout sessions addressing key sector challenges and opportunities, demonstrations showcasing disruptive technologies, and intensive problem-solving sessions.
AACC Annual is an unparalleled opportunity to engage with the nation’s community college leaders, collectively serving over 40 percent of the nation’s undergraduates. This event fosters an environment conducive to designing solutions for today’s priority challenges while identifying innovative opportunities to support the diverse needs of community college students nationwide.
The ASU+GSV Summit for 2024 is set to be a transformative three-day event, gathering some of the world’s foremost experts in business, entrepreneurship, higher education, and education innovation. With a mission to foster a future where all individuals have equitable access to opportunities, the summit emphasizes the pivotal role of scaled innovations in education and workforce skills delivery.
Past editions of the summit have featured an illustrious lineup of speakers, including prominent figures such as Barack Obama, George Bush, Priscilla Chan, John Legend, and Bill Gates. This year’s roster promises to be equally inspiring, with speakers like Ashley Andersen Zantop, Jenny Anderson, Emma Bloomberg, and Ruby Bridges, alongside numerous other influential voices poised to share insights and drive forward-thinking conversations.
The 2024 NAGAP Conference, hosted by the Association for Graduate Enrollment Management, serves as a premier gathering for professionals dedicated to the intricate landscape of graduate enrollment management (GEM). As the only professional organization exclusively focused on the concerns of those working in GEM, the conference provides a vital platform for networking, gaining insights, and sharing knowledge among peers and experts in the field.
While speakers for the conference are yet to be announced, attendees can anticipate engaging sessions, thought-provoking discussions, and invaluable resources to advance their careers and drive excellence in graduate enrollment management.
In 2024, the National Association of Foreign Student Advisors (NAFSA) will convene again in the United States, bringing together professionals to address critical issues pertaining to foreign students and international education programs. The conference is particularly suitable for international educators and administrators seeking to enhance their knowledge and expertise in navigating the complexities of global education.
While spotlight presenters are yet to be announced, attendees can anticipate a stimulating lineup of speakers, including the May 28 Plenary featuring Luis von Ahn, an esteemed entrepreneur and former professor at Carnegie Mellon University, whose insights promise to inspire and inform discussions on the future of international education.
The annual Slate Summit returns to Navy Pier in Chicago, promising an immersive experience into the intricacies of the student lifecycle. Hosted by Technolutions, a leading software development firm specializing in higher education information management systems, this conference is a must-attend event for educators and higher education experts utilizing Slate CRM.
Designed to explore marketing automation and CRM innovation for higher education, the 2024 Slate Summit offers expert-led sessions, network opportunities, and affinity group breakouts tailored to the needs of the Slate community. Join peers from esteemed institutions like NYU Undergraduate Admissions, Occidental College, and Ohio University for a deep dive into the latest trends and challenges shaping the future of student enrollment and engagement.
In 2024, educators from around the globe eagerly anticipate the 13th edition of PBL World, a multi-day conference dedicated to Project-Based Learning (PBL) presented by PBLWorks. This premier event serves as a pivotal gathering for teachers, instructional coaches, as well as school and district leaders, all unified by their commitment to initiating and advancing their practice of Project Based Learning.
Although the keynote speakers for the event have not been announced yet, the attendees can expect insightful talks from carefully selected speakers. These talks will focus on how high-quality Project-Based Learning can transform the lives of all students while reigniting the joy of learning for both students and teachers.
Big Bang is the annual conference hosted by Big Picture Learning, which is dedicated to fostering student-centered learning. This unique gathering brings together students, educators, leaders, and partners in an intergenerational collaboration where everyone is considered an equal contributor to the learning process.
Participants have the opportunity to learn from each other as well as from the host community, creating an environment rich in diverse perspectives and experiences.
More information and details about this event are coming soon.
As the world grapples with unprecedented challenges and accelerated technological advancements, the imperative to navigate an uncertain future grows ever more pressing. This conference highlights the key role of marketing in guiding individuals, businesses, and societies toward preparedness and resilience in the face of uncertainty.
This conference covers various topics such as digital marketing, global marketing, and sustainability, offering valuable insights into marketing research and practice. Some notable conference tracks include:
Advertising, Promotion, and Marketing Communications:
This year’s EAIE event will explore the dynamic landscape of international higher education, focusing on integrating sustainable practices, exploring digital technologies, and fostering innovative approaches to support the diverse needs of students and staff. As professionals in the field, we are committed to continuous learning and identifying opportunities for growth and development.
While the lineup of speakers is yet to be announced, the conference offers professionals working in international higher education an opportunity to apply for sessions. These sessions are open to all participants and will provide dynamic forums for exchanging ideas. Facilitated by session chairs, the discussions will encourage interactivity and allow diverse perspectives to flourish.
The National Association for College Admissions Counseling (NACAC) annual conference stands as the premier event for professionals in the college admission counseling field, and in 2024, it returns to Los Angeles. This highly anticipated gathering offers a platform for experts to convene and exchange best practices, innovative ideas, and cutting-edge research in college admissions.
With over 200 exhibitors and more than 100 education sessions, attendees can expect a wealth of resources and opportunities for professional development. Tailored for college admissions specialists and recruitment counselors across the United States, the NACAC conference promises to inspire and empower attendees to navigate college admissions with confidence and expertise.
The PLTW Summit offers an unparalleled opportunity for STEM educators nationwide to come together every two years for transformative professional development and networking. This event is designed to inspire educators, connect them with Master Teachers, PLTW partners, and peers, and provide valuable insights into improving student outcomes through PreK-12 STEM programs.
Through the keynote speakers, interactive breakout sessions, and hands-on experiences with the PLTW curriculum, attendees will gain practical skills and strategies to enhance their classroom instruction. The summit also fosters connections within the PLTW community, empowering educators to collaborate and innovate to advance STEM education.
The Rural Schools Conference is a platform that promotes collaboration and innovation among a diverse community of national experts, K-12 and higher education practitioners, leading researchers, policymakers, and philanthropic leaders. The event is hosted by the National Rural Education Association and Rural Schools Collaborative in partnership with the Georgia Department of Education. It aims to enable rural communities to harness local resources and create meaningful student learning experiences.
The conference is expected to attract hundreds of participants and promises to be an exciting platform for sharing knowledge, building partnerships, and driving positive change in rural education nationwide.
At this premier event, attendees from across the education transformation space converge to engage in action-oriented learning and development, fostering connections and collaborations vital for advancing change in their work. With a focus on real-world solutions and visionary practices, the Symposium offers insights into next-generation learning models, equity-driven approaches, and future-focused education transformation.
The Symposium caters to educators, school leaders, policymakers, researchers, and innovators alike, featuring highly rated professional development sessions, workshops, and comprehensive information on new trends and successful policies. Proposals for presentations are currently being accepted, with keynote speakers set to be announced soon.
Registration will be open in Spring 2024.
Conclusion
Among the many conferences planned for the year, these 16 stand out as essential for higher education leaders. From renowned events like the AACC Annual and ASU+GSV Summit to more specialized gatherings like PBL World and EAIE Conference, each offers unique insights into the challenges, trends, and innovations shaping the educational landscape as well as invaluable networking opportunities.
Each conference promises to deliver fresh perspectives, collaborative connections, and moments of inspiration. Seize the opportunity to expand your horizons, cultivate relationships, and immerse yourself in the dynamic world of education.
Google Analytics 4 for Higher Education: A Comprehensive 2023 Guide
As an agency that specializes in Higher Education SEO services, we know how important it is to stay on top of the latest trends and tools. As digital transformation continues to reshape the industry, university administrators and marketers must continually analyze user behavior, monitor ROI, and devise effective marketing strategies. One of the most widely-used tools for this type of analysis is Google Analytics.
But did you know that the current version of Google Analytics (Universal Analytics) will stop collecting new data starting in July 2023? This means that unless you move to another analytics platform, you’ll need to migrate to the latest version of Google Analytics, called Google Analytics 4, as soon as possible to avoid losing any valuable data.
Get started with GA4 for your website
Migrating from Google Universal to Google Analytics 4 is no simple task. Sure, account setup is relatively straightforward, but setting up the proper conversion tracking is much more complicated now. Google Analytics 4 has its advantages and disadvantages, but like all new forced changes, it will take time to get used to. Google Analytics 4 will actually be an improvement on your analytics data as it is based solely on events and parameters.
Let our team of Google Analytics 4 experts do the heavy lifting for you.
In this blog post, we’ll provide a guide for higher education marketers looking to migrate accurately from Google Analytics UA to Google Analytics 4. We’ll cover the key steps you need to take, the benefits of the latest version, and how to ensure a smooth transition. Don’t miss out on the powerful features of Google Analytics 4 – read on to learn more.
What’s new on Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
Since Google Analytics’s inception in 2012, many things have changed with the rise of mobile apps, consumer behavior shifts, privacy regulations, big data, and the way we collect and analyze data. Google needed to consider and reflect on how its current Analytics tools evolved to fit market changes and demand. This must have required a 10.000-foot view of the whole spectrum, starting from how the data are collected and presented, to deliver seamless insights and data-informed decision making.
Saying that Google Analytics 4 is an update or an upgrade from Universal Analytics would be an underestimation of reality. The best way to think about it is as a completely new product, built on a different data model, made for scalability, machine learning, privacy, and customization.
To understand how those two versions of Google Analytics differ from one another, we will break down some of the main differences, so you can have a clear picture of the new platform before starting to migrate to GA4.
Data Collection
The ability to analyze data depends highly on how those data are collected and organized in the first place. The better they are organized, the easier it will be to make further data manipulation and analysis.
Data collections represent a fundamental difference between Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4.
Universal Analytics (or GA3) organized all of its data into Sessions and Hits. All information that went to Google Analytics belonged to a Session, which belonged to a User. This data modeling doesn’t give you much space to collect and organize information around your users and their behavior, especially across multiple devices. That’s because you had numerous data layers that were not communicating with each other, and making it work required A TON of custom work.
On the other hand, Google Analytics 4 has an entirely different data model, which is simpler yet powerful. Any interaction on your Web or Mobile is organized under Events (Event scoped), which belongs to a User (User scoped). A Session is an event, a Page View is an event, a File Download is an event, an Ecommerce sale is an event, and so on, you get the idea.
In GA4, when someone views one of your website pages, a page_view event is triggered, and that event will be saved under a specific User in GA4. Here is how previous hits translate to Events in GA4.
This data collection model gives Google Analytics 4 an edge over its predecessor in analyzing user behavior across multiple devices and building custom reports. This is because GA4 can link all interactions to a User, and enables you to organize them the way it fits your needs. That’s why GA4 needs more customization setup than GA3, where you had a ton of pre-defined reports built with a “one size fits all” approach.
Data Retention & Privacy
One of the most significant changes from UA is user data retention, or “how long does Google save user interaction data”. In UA, the default option for data retention was “unlimited”; however, in GA4, the longest you can hold on to Events and User data (including conversions) is 14 months.
Having a maximum of 14-month-old data might freak out a lot of higher education marketers as they won’t be able to make YoY comparisons; however, there are workarounds to this, such as integrating GA4 with tools like BigQuery and reporting them via tools like Google Data Studio. BigQuery allows you to export raw data unsampled to conduct a much more granular analysis with confidence in your data, which I highly recommend before your data expires from GA4.
This limitation in data retention does not apply to standard aggregated reports, where you will be served reports based on sample data.
AI + Machine Learning
Google uses Machine learning (ML) on GA4 to fill in data gaps and make predictions by looking for patterns, feeding those data into AI algorithms, and predicting the future behavior of your users.
However, In a cookie-less and privacy-conscious world, tracking users’ activities is not something platforms like GA4 can ignore, and that’s where Machine Learning comes in. It fills out the data gaps and provides predictions by putting users into different cohorts and creating a composite overview of how people with certain traits move through your university website.
This is very helpful for universities as it allows them to predict their university’s growth by making predictions on potential students (leads) you could get next semester. If you have conversion rate data from your past activities, you can easily make necessary calculations that would lead you to predict enrollment numbers.
Machine Learning also powers up Automated Insights, which helps you observe trends and keep an eye on changing user behavior. For example, you can be alerted to changes in application numbers, which might lead you to understand that the application form isn’t working as expected.
Recommendation:
Do not forget to create anomaly detections when you set up GA4.
Cross-Device Tracking
Cross-device tracking is at the heart of GA4. The new data model enables GA4 to consistently store data from multiple sources and report them back into the same Analytics property for further analysis.
GA4 bases its cross-tracking mechanism on something called “Identity spaces”. It tries to identify a user using multiple data points without revealing their identity. This is done by using three different types of identifiers, which enables it to stitch them together into a single unified cross-device user journey:
GA4 creates a single user journey from all the data associated with the same identified identity. Because this identity is used in all reports, they allow you to de-duplicate users and tell a more unified, holistic view of their relationships with your university.
For example, suppose your university offers a login area for your students. In that case, you can assign User IDs along with the interaction data you send to GA4 when a student enrolls (you might need the help of a developer to implement this) and later map the entire journey of that student in Analytics.
If you don’t have a User ID to assign to events, you can enable “Google signals” and all data sent to Google Analytics will be associated with that user. However, Google will only be able to assign these User ID’s to signed-in users who have consented to share this information.
If you do not enable Google Signals, the only option left for Analytics will be to identify users based on Device ID; however, that alone might not be enough to allow cross-device identification.
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GA 4 lets you build custom audience segments based on your site visitors’ behavior and interests. They are groups of users created based on dimensions, metrics, or events that you can use during your analysis and show ads to them via Google Ads.
As your Google Analytics keeps receiving data about new users from your university website, audiences are constantly reevaluated to make sure that they meet the criteria you had defined when you created that audience.
You can use your custom audiences in Google ads only if you have linked GA4 property with a Google Ads account (and you have also enabled Google Signals),
Integrations
For the time speaking, GA4 lets you integrate your analytics data to more than ten other tools, including some tools of its suite. However, GA4 is still under massive development, and we expect to have more integrations available soon.
These integrations mean that you can synchronize data between GA4 and another tool of your choice to make robust analyses and facilitate your decision-making process. For example, you can link GA4 with Display & Video 360 or Google Ads to see the entire student cycle, from how your future students interact with your ads to how they finally complete the Request More Information form on your site. You can also use your custom audiences for display/search advertising and synchronize conversions between two platforms.
To deal with the data retention limitations, you can connect GA4 with Big Query, and store all Analytics data in BIgQuery. Once you connect to Big Query, you are the sole owner of that data, which you can use to make further in-depth analysis and YoY comparisons. This is a paid tool, but its cost is super cheap. I have data assets that constantly process more than 1TB of data, and I have never spent more than $10/m. Yes! That’s how cheap it is.
If there is one recommendation I would make about integrations, is to connect your Analytics with BigQuery ASAP so you do not start to lose important data when you reach the data retention limit (which is 2 or 14 months, depending on how you configure it)
Pros and Cons of Switching to GA4
As with every tool out there, GA4 has its pros and cons. It’s a constantly evolving and improving tool that will take some time for you to adapt as a higher education marketer.
On the PROS side, this entirely new Analytics product outperforms its predecessor in many areas. Its extra layers of analytics capabilities are built for a world where data and marketing are increasingly crucial for the success of higher education institutions.
On the CONS side, there are some things you might need to consider before taking the next step of migrating to GA4. Because GA4 is built on a data model made for scalability and Machine Learning, it’s not an out-of-the-box solution that you can meaningfully use right away after you set it up. You need to tweak it based on your needs and build custom reports (most of the reports you are used to seeing in Universal Analytics do not come out of the box in GA4). You might need to be patient as you go through the learning period (it will take some time, trust me) and let the data flow within the tool, so you benefit from AI/Machine Learning capabilities of GA4.
Setting up GA4 for Universities
Now that you have a bigger picture of how GA4 works let’s dive deeper into how to set it up so your university can take advantage of all the new features that the tool offers.
If you are reading this post by the middle of 2022, the chances are that Google Analytics 4 is still not mature enough to be used as a standalone analytics tool. Hence, you should use both tools (UA and GA4) at the same time so you feed data into the GA4 ASAP, but at the same time, use the reporting you are currently using in Universal Analytics (so that you can make the transition easy for you)
However, if you are reading this post in late 2022 or even more in the future, it will probably be mature enough for you to switch to Google Analytics 4 completely.
UA will stop collecting new data from July 2023, so every day of not setting up GA4 means a day less with data you could use for analysis and decision-making. So make sure you are pushing data to your GA4 account ASAP. Otherwise, you will lose YoY data.
Let’s learn how to set up the GA4 account first.
How to set up a GA4 Account for my University?
There are two ways you can set up a GA4 account. One option is to create a whole new property (it will be a GA4 by default), and the other option is to use GA4 Setup Assistant. This time, I’ll focus on creating a whole new property because the result will still be pretty much the same, and I can walk you through the entire process.
Creating a new GA4 Property
Go to the Admin section of your Google Analytics interface (by clicking the Admin at the bottom-left corner) and then (in the Property section) click Create Property.
Then enter the name of your University, choose your University’s main campus country, reporting time zone, and the main currency your University operates in, and click “Next”,
Then, fill out your business information. Suppose you are a university of 11-100 employees. In that case, we recommend the following setup, as GA4 will adjust some configurations and enhancements based on the category of the business and the intent of how Analytics will be used.
Once you click “Create”, your GA4 property will be ready. However, there are still some setups you need to make to start using it.
Data streams
The next step to complete is to configure your first Data Stream. This tells Google the data source from where it will get the data before sending it to your Google Analytics 4 property. You can have multiple data sources in a single property. For example, three web properties, 1 for the Web, one for an Android app, and 1 for an iOS app. However, for most universities and colleges, 1 Data Stream (web) will be enough.
While on the property that you just created, click “Data Streams” and choose “Web”
Once you enter your university Website URL and Stream Name (Example: My University Name – Website), you will be able to enable/disable default events that come as part of “Enhanced Measurement.” These out-of-the-box events that GA4 automatically sends to your data warehouse without requiring you to implement them via GTM or asking a developer.
When enabled (which is the default option), Enhanced Measurement will automatically track the following events for you:
Page view (event name: page_view)
Scroll (event name: scroll)
Outbound link click (event name: click with the parameter outbound: true)
Site search (event name: view_search_results)
Video Engagement(events: video_start, video_progress, video_complete)
File Download (event name: file_download)
If you prefer, you can enable/disable such events manually by clicking the gear button on the right bottom side of the gray widget
When you are done with the above configuration, click the “Create Stream” button, and you will automatically be presented with tagging instructions.
GA4 Tag Installation
Each of your Data Streams has a unique “MEASUREMENT ID” that you will need to use to send data right into your Google Analytics account. You can install the GA4 tag manually on your website or use a platform like Google Tag Manager (our recommended way).
If you are doing this in 2022, MAKE SURE your Universal Analytics code is still running so you are collecting data for both UA and GA4 simultaneously.
Let’s see how we install GA4 via Google Tag Manager
Installing GA4 via Tag Manager
While on the Data Stream details page, copy the “Measurement ID” as you will need this to add to your GTM account.
Go to your Google Tag Manager container, click “Tags” -> New” and on the “Tag Configuration” box, choose the “Google Analytics: GA4 Configuration.” tag.
Enter the ID ID in the Measurement ID field that you just copied in the GA4 interface. If you want GA4 to track pageviews automatically, keep the “Send a page event” enabled. If your website is built as a Single Page App (ask your developer), you might need to disable the “page_view” event as it will not get consistently fired on the user navigates on your site.
In the Triggering section, select “All Pages,” click “Save,” and then name the tag according to your naming convention: “GA4 Configuration – G-{your measurement id}”
Testing GA4 Integration via GTM
Let’s test our integration.
While on your GTM, click the “Preview” on the upper right side of the windows, and you will be able to enable GTM Preview mode to test the integration.
Once you type your website URL and click Continue, you should see the new GA4 tag among the fired tags.
Once you see your fire being fired in GTM Preview, ensure the event is being sent to GA4. You can test it by going to GA4 -> Configure -> “Debug View” and waiting for events to fire (you might experience some seconds delay until the data starts to appear in Debug View). If everything has been appropriately integrated, you will see something like this:
Once you ensure that the data is coming in and shown correctly in GA4, you should submit your GA4 changes in the GTM container and publish it.
Publishing GA4 Integration via GTM
To publish changes, go to your Tag Manager container, and on the top right side of the page, click “Submit”, type a version name of the deployment (optional) and a description of changes you have done (optional), and click the “Publish” button.
When you publish changes, you should soon start seeing data coming in your GA4 real-time reports.
Congratulations! You have just set up GA4 with Google Tag Manager. However, GA4 needs a lot of customizations, remember?
Installing GA4 on your University WordPress Site
There are two ways you can add a GA4 tag on your WordPress site. One is by placing a direct “gtag” code directly on the <head> HTML part of your website, and the other is by installing it via a plugin. Let’s cover both of them.
Installing GA4 tag code manually on WordPress
Go to your GA4 Property and click “Data Streams”, and choose the Website data stream you just created to get stream details.
On Tagging Instructions, copy the Global Site Tag and place it into the <head> section of your HTML code (you might need the help of a developer to do this)
Get started with GA4 for your website
Migrating from Google Universal to Google Analytics 4 is no simple task. Sure, account setup is relatively straightforward, but setting up the proper conversion tracking is much more complicated now. Google Analytics 4 has its advantages and disadvantages, but like all new forced changes, it will take time to get used to. Google Analytics 4 will actually be an improvement on your analytics data as it is based solely on events and parameters.
Let our team of Google Analytics 4 experts do the heavy lifting for you.
You can use multiple plugins to install the GA4 tag on your University Website. However, we recommend using the “GA Google Analytics” plugin as the most straightforward WP plugin to integrate Google Analytics into your WordPress website.
Once you install the plugin, go to its Settings page, add your tracking Measurement ID under “GA Tracking ID” select “Global Site Tag” and then click “Save Changes”.
That’s it! You have now installed GA4 on your WordPress site. Make sure you receive real-time statistics by going to your GA4 -> Home and see if your current traffic is being reported.
Installing GA4 on your University WIX Site
If you use WIX on your university website, you need to add your Measurement ID on your Marketing Integrations page. You can do it by following the instructions below:
Copy your Measurement ID under Web stream details.
Click the Show More icon in the top right corner of the page
Click Edit
Paste your Google Analytics 4 Measurement ID in the pop-up.
Click Save.
Congratulations! You have just installed GA4 on your WIX site.
Installing GA4 on your University Squarespace Site
Squarespace has a built-in feature to connect GA4 without too much hassle.
To install GA4 tag on your Squarespace site, follow instructions below
Go to Settings
Go to Advanced
Click External API Keys
Paste your Measurement ID under the “Google Analytics” input
You can paste both UA and GA4 code on the same field, separated by a comma..
Test your installation by opening your website URL in a new window and opening the GA4 -> Home report to see your real-time statistics.
Filters
Filters in GA4 allow you to limit or modify the data before entering your Analytics account, and they do not work retroactively. Unlike Universal Analytics, where you could create a “raw view” account without filters and another one with certain limitations, filters on your GA4 are applied at the property level. As we are writing this post, there are no Views in GA4. That makes testing your filters in GA4 more critical than in Universal Analytics.
Currently, there are only two types of filters in GA4:
Developer Traffic
Internal Traffic
Filtering Developer Traffic
Develop traffic is the traffic generated by your website administrators/developers while developing or debugging the website.
This is done by adding a specific event called “debug_mode” or “debug_view” (with a value of 1) every time your GA4 code is executed during your developing/debugging sessions. You will still be able to watch that traffic coming through in Configure -> Debug View, but you will not be able to see it across other reports in GA4.
Filtering Internal Traffic
This is the traffic generated by people directly or indirectly connected to your university who are not your targeted audience. Those can include your faculty members, administrative staff, services providers, and vendors. As such, including their traffic in your Analytics can skew your analysis.
Currently, you can only filter your internal traffic by IP addresses (way more limited than it used to be in UA). To do that, you should:
Go to the Data Stream you previously created
On “Additional Settings”, click “More Tagging Settings”
Click “Define internal traffic”
Click “Create” Button
Add your IPs under “IP addresses” section and click “Create”
Events
Because of the way Universal Analytics was built and its data structure model, there were quite some limitations regarding data you could send via events (eg. only event_cateogry, label, and value). This made it challenging for higher education marketers to collect data across the whole student journey and analyze in-depth data on the scale.
This has changed, and Events are now the core of Google Analytics 4. But, before going further on events, let’s make sure we understand what an event is and how they work.
What is an Event?
An event is an interaction of the user with your Web or Mobile App. All interactions on your website/web such as clicks, visits, downloads, form submissions (leads), student applications [and more] are considered “Events”.
The data model of GA4 offers much more flexibility when it comes to tracking events and sending additional information with it.
In Universal Analytics, you could only send up to 4 event attributes of an event to Google Analytics:
Event Category (required)
Event Action (required)
Event Label (optional)
Event Value (optional)
As discussed earlier, everything in GA4 is considered an Event. Depending on your scenario, you can send up to 25 additional parameters with an event without limiting how you name them. For example, let’s say that a future student is reading a program page and decides to fill out a “Request More Information” form. You could send the following event:
event_name: lead
lead_type: request information
degree: bachelor of business administration
lead_palce: header
In_military: yes
The last four parameters on the list above are custom events you can send along with your event, which you can later use to do performance analysis on your Analytics account.
Apart from custom events, GA4 also comes with a set of default events and recommendations for you to follow. Let’s go through them and see how you can utilize them to structure your GA4 configuration better later on.
Categories of Events in Google Analytics 4
There are four categories of events in GA4:
Automated Events
Enhanced Measurement Events
Recommended Events
Custom Events
Here is how to choose between event categories in GA4:
Automated Events
Automatic Events on GA4 include interactions that Google must collect to perform its fundamental analysis on the tool. Those events are automatically triggered by GA4 itself on some predefined user activities. This includes session_start, first_visit, scroll, or user_engagement and other mobile app interactions such as app_update, ad_click, etc. You can get the full list here.
Enhanced Measurement Events
Those are additional automatic events by GA4, with the only difference being that you can enable/disable them on your property level.
You can enable or disable them (they come enabled by default) when you configure your web Data Stream in GA4.
When this feature is enabled, Enhancement Measurement will automatically track the following events:
Page view (event name: page_view)
Scroll (event name: scroll)
Outbound Clicks (event name: click with the parameter outbound: true)
Site search (event name: view_search_results)
Youtube Video Engagement (events: video_start, video_progress, video_complete)
File Download (event name: file_download)
You can enable or disable each one by clicking the gear button on the right side of the Enhanced Measurement section. Moreover, you can also customize some of them to fit your university website needs.
Page views:
This event is sent to GA4 when a new page loads or the URL of the page changes without reloading the page (a.k.a. history change events). Suppose your university website is built on SPA (Single Page Application), where your entire page doesn’t refresh when pages are changed. In that case, you need to ensure that your website is changing pages/URLs and changing the browser’s history events (you might need a developer’s help here).
Scrolls:
GA4 can automatically send events when a visitor scrolls below 90% of the page height. If you need to track scroll on a different scale, you might need to do that via Google Tag Manager manually.
Outbound clicks:
This event is automatically triggered when a user clicks on a link redirecting them to another domain. This is a great feature you can use to see which of the websites you have linked on your website content are helping your students answer their questions.
If your university operates in multiple domains, set up cross-domain tracking (via GA4 property > More Tagging Settings > Configure your domains) so clicks on your own domains are now considered outbound/referral links.
Site search:
This event allows you to track searches performed by your current and potential students on your university website. When enabled, it will automatically send a “view_search_results” event to GA4, if the page loads and the URL of the page contains a query parameter, such as q, s, search, query, and keyword.
If you are using WordPress for your website, there is nothing you need to change on the “Search Term Query Parameter” input, as the letter “s” will automatically get the job done. Otherwise, make sure you include your search query parameter on the configuration. For example: if your website search looks like https://www.my-university-webste.com/search?term=tuition-fees, you need to enter the word “term” as an option in the above configuration.
Video engagement:
This is built to track the user’s interaction with Youtube videos on your website. However, due to some technical reasons, this feature will not work by default unless your developer changes how those videos are served.
File downloads:
GA4 can automatically detect the download of files on your website and send an event when your link url contains one of the following extensions: .pdf, .xls, .xlsx, .doc, .docx, .txt, .rtf, .csv, .exe, .key, .pps, .ppt, .pptx, .7z, .pkg, .rar, .gz, .zip, .avi, .mov, .mp4, .mpe, .mpeg, .wmv, .mid, .midi, .mp3, .wav, .wma.
Once you’re done with all of the above configurations, click Save, and your GA4 will automatically start to track those events once you set up the GA4 tag on your website.
Recommended Events:
Those are events recommended by Google for different business categories but not enabled and configured by default. You will need to follow the recommended naming convention and set them manually on your web/app and Analytics to benefit from additional features Google may introduce to the platform.
If none of these we have previously listed in Automatic and Enhancement events doesn’t fit your needs, then look at the recommended events Google has published in its documentation. For the time being, Higher Education institutions can use the following recommended events based on their needs:
If you offer online classes where students can purchase online, then use respective events from the “Online Sales’ category
If your students cannot purchase your classes online, we recommend using the “generate_lead” event to track “Request Information Form” requests.
You can also use other events as you see fit.
Google recommends that you implement their recommended events when it makes sense for you because it can use those them to better understand your web/app performance during its Machine Learning analysis.
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If none of the previously discussed events fit your needs, you can create custom events. They work pretty much as the above events; however, they are some things you need to consider before deciding to use custom events:
You would need to create them manually
They do not show on standard reports.
It’s recommended that you use the same naming convention
For the time being, GA4 does NOT allow you to edit or delete your custom events. So make sure you have a thoughtful events strategy in place before reaching out to the 500 unique event limit
Let’s see how a higher education institution can use custom events to measure its marketing performance.
Tracking Conversions on GA4
Before going further, let’s set the table about what a Conversion is for a Higher Education Institution.
A conversion is a significant interaction you want your visitors to complete on your website. That can be a micro-conversion, a Conversion that puts your visitors one step closer to the main (macro) conversion (such as subscribe, download, chat discussion), or a macro conversion, a final conversion on your website (such as leads or student applications).
By tracking these conversions (and others), you are in a better position to measure the performance of your marketing activities and make decisions based on data.
In GA4, you can, for example, create a segment of visitors who have read a page about a certain degree who didn’t request more information and then use custom dimensions to understand their behavior compared to the ones who converted.
Now, In Universal Analytics, you used to track conversions by setting up Goals. You may have had a thank you page for your Request Information Forms and used that page as a trigger to create a goal.
In GA4, all conversions are tracked via Events. So, before a Conversion becomes “a Conversion”, it has to be an Event. You can use a pre-defined conversion event (such as “generate_lead”) or create a custom Event and mark it as a conversion by going to Configure > Events and marking a specific event as Conversion.
Alternatively, you can go to Configure > Conversions, then press the New conversion event button and enter the event’s name, for example, application_submitted.
Once you do that, wait for up to 24 hours, and you will start seeing conversion data in the list of all Conversions.
When it comes to tracking conversions for Universities and Colleges, here is a list of events that we recommend creating and marking as conversions:
generate_lead When a potential student submits a Request More Information form
application_view When a potential student views the application form
application_started When a potential student starts to fill out the application form
application_submitted When a potential student submits the application form
GA4 Tracking Strategy for Higher Education Institutions
The ultimate goal of events is to take action. If you have an event or metric on Google Analytics for which you cannot answer the question, “If I have this information, I could do this” then the chances are that you are using a vanity metric, and you won’t be seeing value out of it.
When it comes to deciding what metrics are essential for your university to track, it might be necessary to take a step back, look at it from a broad marketing and business perspective and ask questions like:
What problem am I trying to solve?
How does my Google Analytics fit with my overall marketing strategy?
Do I have the necessary infrastructure to measure what’s essential for my school?
Do I clearly understand my student’s journey and conversion funnel?
How can I use Google Analytics to link my marketing investment with actual Return on Investment?
Once you answer these questions, it might be time to start thinking about how you can translate them to concrete actions on Google Analytics. Using a framework like QIA to identify the right metrics for your school can be helpful. Start by asking these three questions:
What Question do I want to answer?
What Information will I need to get the answer?
What Action will I take based on the answer I get?
Let’s take an example of a scenario many higher education marketers face: What is the conversion rate of students for each channel? (Q)
You would need to figure out what information (I) you need to answer that question. In this case, you would need:
Student conversion data
Conversion data for each step of the decision-making process (TOP, MIDDLE, BOTTOM of the funnel) for each channel
Is that information already stored? Do I need to track it and keep it in Google Analytics? If you don’t have funnel conversion tracking set up, for now, you might need to add it to your @todo list.
Great! Now that we know what information we need, let’s decide about the most critical part of the framework: Action (A):
How will the answer be presented? How will the report look? Who is the report built for? What format do they prefer?
“What actions will I take if the answer is ‘X’?”
“What actions will I take if the answer is ‘Y’?”
You will need to plan actions based on answers to these questions. For example:
“If the conversion rate from Organic Search is 2% or higher, we’re doing well. If it’s lower than 2%, we’ll re-evaluate funnel pages, the effectiveness of the call-to-action and the SEO strategy to see how we can improve it”.
Answers like this will help you build an action plan with specific actions on implementing this tracking strategy, from defining events to conversion, account setting, and reporting.
Reports in Google Analytics 4
Reporting in Google Analytics 3 takes another level due to the flexibility of its data model.
In Universal Analytics, you have had numerous ready-to-use reports that, even though you might have found practical, were very limited in capabilities and pretty much the same for everyone.
While you now have much fewer ready-to-use reports in GA4, its flexibility in adapting and creating advanced custom reporting based on your needs is way beyond what we are used to seeing in the previous version of Analytics.
Reporting in GA4 is divided into two sections, which can be found on the main left navigation
Default Reports
Explore
Default Reports
Google offers numerous default reports on GA4 to help you kick off analysis faster. However, to fully utilize the benefits of the tool, you might need to customize such reports based on your use cases and needs.
For example, if you do not directly monetize your university website, you don’t need to see the monetization charts on your reports. You can go to Reports > Library > Edit Collection and then remove/add the necessary report from the main navigation.
While on Library, you can add two types of new reports: Overview and Detail Report
Overview report: A dashboard (comprising a set of cards) that summarizes a detailed topic report (A topic can have only one overview report.)
Detail report: This can have up to two visualizations and a table with dimensions and metrics.
You can also customize individual reports only to show what’s important for your university. You can do that by going to a specific report and clicking on the “Customize reports” icon on the top right side of the page. From there, you can add/remove cards (widgets) and set dimensions/metrics as per your needs.
As you can see, there are certain limitations on the number of widgets, tables, and customizations you can make on default reports, and that’s where custom reports come in.
Exploration reports (Custom Reports)
Exploration is one of the best features of Google Analytics 4. It’s a collection of advanced techniques of analysis that can help your university create advanced reports and reveal deep insights about your future students and their behavior.
You can access exploration reports by going to the main navigation and clicking on Explore. You can create a fully customizable report (if you are short on time or now sure how to start), or you can use built-in templates.
Let’s explore some of the built-in templates, so you can have a better understanding of their benefits.
Free form
Use this template to find out more about your website visitors. You can visualize data in a table or graph format, use multiple dimensions, segments, and metrics, and compare.
Funnel Exploration
This template is pretty helpful for visualizing the steps your students took before converting to a lead or application as part of a pre-defined conversion funnel.
Path exploration
Use this template when you want to discover your students’ interaction toward a conversion. You can also do a reverse analysis and find out what your students do before converting.
Segment Overlap
This template allows you to show and compare the relationship between (up to 3) segments.
The learning curve to creating custom reports may be long for many higher education marketers. However, once you go through built-in templates and do some trial and error, you will start discovering new insights that will lead you toward better decision-making.
Final words
Now that you know the main differences between GA3 and GA4, you’re better positioned to migrate your university website from Google Analytics 3 to Google Analytics 4.
GA4 is an entirely different beast from its predecessor. It’s more flexible, more powerful, and more capable of making data-driven decisions. However, it’s not a simple migration process; you need to make sure you are making the right strategic decisions before starting the migration and have all the necessary information to set it up for success.
If you are just starting with GA4 in general and you are not sure where to start or how to properly migrate your university website to GA4, feel free to reach us, and we will be happy to help.
Get started with GA4 for your website
Migrating from Google Universal to Google Analytics 4 is no simple task. Sure, account setup is relatively straightforward, but setting up the proper conversion tracking is much more complicated now. Google Analytics 4 has its advantages and disadvantages, but like all new forced changes, it will take time to get used to. Google Analytics 4 will actually be an improvement on your analytics data as it is based solely on events and parameters.
Let our team of Google Analytics 4 experts do the heavy lifting for you.
Choosing a higher education institution is a pivotal decision, and a growing number of students in the US are starting to research their options months—sometimes years—before enrolling. Every time prospective students go online to research, higher education marketers have a massive opportunity to show up with relevant digital content and help them make a well-informed decision.
Students now research almost entirely online
Finding the right institution used to involve campus visits and flipping through stacks of brochures, but students today increasingly choose to spend their time researching online, bouncing between devices. In fact, 97% of students in a study done by Google researched their options online. Search was a crucial resource for most of these students, with 65% using a search engine at some point during their path to purchase.
Interestingly, students were more certain about their choice of coursework than about their choice of institution when they started their research—72% of students started with a specific course in mind, while only 36% were sure of their provider of choice. When they’re ready to learn about an institution, students get the bulk of their information from providers’ websites. A site full of helpful information is paramount, but an institution’s search performance is still a top factor: 45% of prospective students reported that they have a better opinion of universities that appear on the first page of search results.
Your higher education institution might offer excellent study programs, with some of the best professors in the field and superb facilities to accommodate students. But, if the school’s site doesn’t appear in the first few rankings of relevant search results, it’s less likely that students will ever see it while searching for suitable programs and, therefore, not be aware of all you have to offer.
Google is by far the dominant search engine, with an impressive 87.72% of all searches in the U.S. happening on it. So, higher education institutions can significantly benefit from the increased visibility of their website in Google searches by employing the proper Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies.
From targeting the right keywords to optimizing your website’s on-page elements, by using SEO as a marketing channel, you can increase the quantity and quality of leads and applications coming from your website.
Organic search (SEO) has the second highest lead to application to student conversion rate, beaten only by Direct traffic, and it’s way ahead of other channels like Paid Search, Social, and others.
So, read on and learn more about how you can grow college enrollment with SEO for higher education, or directly take action and contact our agency that specializes in higher education SEO services.
The importance of SEO for college enrollments growth
There are currently 4,360 higher ed. institutions in the U.S., so this is undoubtedly a fiercely competitive market. Most are familiar with Google Ads and spend hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars on it yearly. The education vertical is one of the biggest spenders in Google Ads.
Yet, SEO which allows you to rank organically without the need to pay for every click, has a better ROI, and is more sustainable as a marketing strategy, is left out when the budgets are decided.
This could be your secret weapon.
The cost to show your ads for specific keywords has increased year over year, and the competition is brutal, but the same can’t be said about SEO. Over 70% of the clicks that happen on search results go to organic results, and only a few higher ed. institutions are capitalizing on it.
The goal is to rank for relevant keywords. This way, when students search these keywords, they will quickly come across your institution. The organic position of your site will help you expand your reach, resulting in more qualified traffic where students visiting your site are more likely to enroll in your programs.
Another benefit of using SEO as a marketing channel for your higher education institution is that it can help you improve the brand’s credibility. Typically, a higher search ranking is associated with credibility, as people are more likely to trust the first few results listed to provide the correct information.
In a chain reaction, the improved ranking that offers more credibility is then responsible for more qualified traffic, as reports show that the first organic result in Google Search has an average click-through rate of 43.32%. In addition, the second and third results have a 37.36% and 29.9% click-through rate, respectively. Therefore, SEO will not only help your site rank higher but, as a result, also make it a more trustworthy and reputable source, thus increasing student enrollment.
SEO strategies for college enrollment growth
Throughout the following sections, we will go into more detail about some SEO enrollment strategies where we tackle keywords, on-page SEO elements, mobile performance, website speed, and the content provided.
The role of keywords in SEO college enrollment
Keywords are a group of words people use in the search bar for information and are a fundamental part of SEO. By conducting keyword research, you can find out what terms people are actively searching for and how competitive each keyword is. You can then use the data gathered for marketing plans to increase your site’s organic traffic and ranking.
Before determining your content’s keywords, you must first identify your target audience via market research and your students’ insights. This way, you can pinpoint potential students’ needs, behaviors, and concerns and therefore consider what questions they might have regarding college and study programs so you can direct your keyword research toward the information they need.
Once you identify the keywords related to your services, you have also determined what the searchers want and, therefore, can focus your content on those topics to meet their wishes. The more instances of a keyword used in your content and meta tags, the higher the potential for better search ranking and improved visibility. But if you ignore keywords or use the wrong ones, you will not get the visitors you want because your content does not match what the audience is searching for.
Typically, keyword research tools identify the keyword’s monthly search volume and difficulty level. When choosing the keywords, you’ll want to find keywords that have a high monthly search volume but are also easy to use and have less competition.
The most important thing to remember when choosing keywords is understanding the search intent behind that keyword. When that is understood correctly, you know with what type of content (program page, info page, location page, or blog post) you can target that keyword & have a shot at ranking.
The importance of on-page optimization in SEO
On-page optimization refers to the SEO strategy that helps shape various structural elements of a website with the intention of increasing its search engine visibility and rankings. This strategy covers all internal aspects of a webpage, including the title tag, meta description, header tags, URLs, internal linking, and more, as they attempt to boost the page’s ranking.
Similar to what was previously discussed regarding keyword optimization, through on-page optimization, the implementation’s objective is to attract more qualified traffic through better visibility.
Your site can achieve such objectives through a series of actions. Firstly, update the title and description of pages/articles with relevant keywords and add necessary, creative, and engaging descriptions about the site and content integrated into it while maintaining a balanced ratio of targeted keywords used throughout them. Furthermore, it is best to structure the content using header tags that, once again, incorporate relevant keywords but also help present a better-organized page. Headers and subheaders offer the ideal areas to strategically include keywords without overstuffing the content.
Optimizing your site’s on-page content will help Google, and any other search engine gain context about the main topic and subtopics discussed on your page. This way, users can quickly determine that your site matches their search intent, click on it, and hopefully enroll at your college.
The importance of elevating your content strategy
Though keywords and on-site optimization help provide more visibility to your site and therefore help your site reach wider audiences, the actual test of whether you generate qualified conversions depends on the content provided once they click on your site. In short, elevating your content strategy is vital to college enrollment.
In your quest to improve your content, there are a few things you can do. To begin, go back to the target audience we mentioned. Think about your audience, what they want, and what they are searching for online. Then, consider how your programs can benefit them and create content compelling them to take action.
Your site will attract prospective students by providing helpful information, as the right content strategy is your ticket to establishing a positive brand image. Furthermore, having a precise content strategy that is value-based as well as audience-focused and being consistent with it will result in people constantly coming back for more content from you. As a result of all this, your audience will see your site as a trustworthy and informative source, and when the time comes to convert, they’ll remember and come to you.
The importance of optimizing your website for mobile & page speed
We’re seeing mobile become increasingly important to students’ research, particularly early in the process as students narrow their consideration sets. Higher education-related searches on mobile are on the rise, growing by 8% in 2017.2 And when an institution’s website or app wasn’t optimized for mobile, 36% of students said they’d be less likely to revisit it.
With more students choosing to research on mobile, it’s also crucial that marketers ensure that their websites and apps are optimized for a smooth, easy-to-navigate mobile experience and that attribution models are updated to accurately value mobile’s role in the path to enrollment.
Our experts point out that minimizing the use of plugins, leveraging caching, and image compression are some of the best practices that can help optimize your site’s page speed.
The benefits associated with page speed can be seen in one of our case studies. Before we started working with them, their site had several issues, including page speed. However, once we conducted our research, identified the problems, created the right strategies to deal with each one, and made the changes needed, the results were exceptional. Through similar approaches as the one provided above, we achieved a +550% increase in leads coming from SEO, a +2,500% increase in organic traffic, and an over $80k increase in monthly traffic value.
How to grow enrollment with SEO in higher education (Pacific College case study)
A sure proof of the success that can be achieved through SEO is our work together with Pacific College, which resulted in a 900% increase in organic leads.
The challenge:
Pacific College changed its CMS from WordPress to Squarespace in 2018. When this migration happened, many SEO best practices weren’t implemented, and the organic traffic dropped significantly.
They had a lot of deleted pages that used to drive tons of highly qualified organic traffic. These pages were deleted during the migration as the team managing this process wasn’t aware of their traffic contributions to the site.
Also, when the CMS changed, the URL structure changed as well. Program pages were the ones most affected by this. Important pages with a lot of backlinks weren’t migrated to the new Squarespace site, resulting in ‘link equity’ going to 404 pages instead.
They lacked content. A news section existed, and it was updated from time to time, but apart from that, there was no content strategy in place.
Conversion tracking wasn’t set up. Google Analytics was implemented, but it wasn’t tracking any type of conversions. Also, when the new Squarespace website was built, a new GA view with no historical data was created & implemented, resulting in fragmented data sources.
What did we do?
Missing pages: We recreated and updated all the missing pages deleted during the migration. We did the same thing with broken pages that had backlinks. In just a few weeks, they started to drive a significant amount of qualified search traffic back to the site.
Broken internal links: We fixed all broken internal links. We used this opportunity to audit all internal links, optimize anchor text on most of them, add new internal links on pages where we had this opportunity, and other optimizations.
Website speed: We identified the areas slowing down the site and optimized those for better performance.
Conversion tracking: We implemented best practices, and the data we were able to gather from tracking conversions helped us adjust and improve our overall SEO strategy.
Content strategy + implementation: After we were done with the SEO audit, we dived deeper into understanding / analyzing the search landscape & our competitors. We found out that there is a lot of search demand around the degrees Pacific College offers, and very few institutions are talking about them.
We realized that there is a lot of potential in creating content around informational topics like “lvn vs rn” or “what does a nurse practitioner do”. These were potential students looking to educate themselves, and the pages that were ranking weren’t doing a great job of offering the best answer.
We had the expertise & it was in our niche, so we did an extensive keyword search, built a content calendar, and started publishing content regularly.
Conclusion
While students’ paths to enrollment have migrated almost entirely online, they still crave the knowledge gained by a real-life campus visit—and SEO is making it easier for schools to bridge that gap. As higher education options become more readily available, institutions can capture prospective students’ attention by showing up in search results with helpful, relevant content and creating a seamless experience for them as they bounce between devices to help inform one of the most important decisions of their lives.
Are you interested in witnessing firsthand all the benefits of a good SEO strategy? Contact us for a free SEO gap analysis to learn more about the potential of your site and all the opportunities we can provide you with. Begin your SEO journey and take the first step toward success!
Web Design for Higher Education: 7 Tips for Your Next Website Redesign
In the competitive world of higher education, effective web design is essential to attract, engage, and retain students, faculty, staff, and alumni. With the increasing prevalence of online learning and the importance of digital communication, institutions must have a visually appealing and user-friendly website.
However, designing a successful website for higher education can be challenging, considering various audiences’ different needs and expectations. This article will explore seven tips for your next redesign of a higher-education website. By following these tips, you can create a website that showcases your institution’s strengths and values and provides an optimal user experience for all visitors.
Why Does Higher-Education Website Design Matter So Much?
A good higher-education website design is crucial because it is often the first impression prospective students, parents, and faculty members have of the institution. The website design can influence how individuals perceive the institution’s brand, mission, and values, impacting their decision to apply, enroll, or work there.
A well-designed website that is easy to navigate, visually appealing, and accessible to all users can enhance the user experience and promote engagement. Additionally, a website that is optimized for search engines can increase visibility and attract more visitors to the site. Therefore, higher-education website design plays a critical role in attracting and retaining students, faculty, and staff and building and maintaining the institution’s reputation.
The Keys to Great Higher-Ed Web Design
Excellent higher-education web design combines vital elements to create an engaging and practical user experience. First, the design should be visually appealing and reflect the institution’s brand and identity. It should also be easy to navigate, with intuitive menus and clear calls-to-action that guide users to the necessary information. The website should be accessible to all users, including those with disabilities, through appropriate color contrast, alt text, and other accessibility features.
The site should also be optimized for search engines and designed to load quickly, ensuring users can easily find and access the information they need. Finally, excellent higher-education web design should prioritize mobile responsiveness, given the increasing use of mobile devices for web browsing. By incorporating these key elements, higher education institutions can create a website that effectively communicates their mission and values and provides a positive user experience for all visitors.
What Do I Need To Know About Accessibility?
Regarding web design for higher education, it’s vital to prioritize accessibility to ensure that all users, regardless of their abilities or disabilities, can access the information and resources provided on the website.
Accessibility involves designing the website in a way that accommodates users with disabilities, such as visual impairments, hearing impairments, motor impairments, or cognitive impairments. This can include using appropriate color contrasts, providing alternative text for images, using captions or video transcripts, ensuring keyboard accessibility, and designing a user-friendly layout.
Additionally, it’s essential to adhere to web accessibility standards such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and to regularly test and evaluate the website’s accessibility to identify and address any barriers to accessibility. By prioritizing accessibility in web design, higher education institutions can ensure that all users can fully engage with the resources and information provided on their websites.
What Do I Need To Know About User Experience?
When designing a website for higher education, user experience (UX) should be a top priority. The UX of a website refers to the overall experience that users have when interacting with the site, including how easy it is to navigate, how quickly it loads, and how well it meets their needs.
Designing a user-friendly interface that prioritizes ease of use and straightforward navigation is essential to ensure a positive UX. This can be achieved using clear and concise language, providing well-organized and intuitive navigation, and ensuring fast load times.
Additionally, it’s crucial to ensure the website is optimized for mobile devices and incorporates features such as search functionality and easy-to-use forms. By prioritizing UX in web design, higher education institutions can create a website that is user-friendly, accessible, and meets the needs of all users.
#1: Tell a Story With Your Content
Telling a compelling story through content is essential for higher-ed websites as it can engage visitors and convey the institution’s values, goals, and achievements. The story can be crafted through a combination of text, images, videos, and other media to provide a comprehensive and engaging experience for visitors.
The story can cover various aspects of the institution, such as its history, academic programs, research, campus life, and community outreach initiatives. It can also highlight the successes and achievements of students, faculty, and alumni.
By telling a compelling story, higher-ed websites can attract prospective students, engage current students and faculty, and build a strong brand image. The story should be consistent with the institution’s identity, mission, and values and should resonate with the target audience. A well-crafted story can make a lasting impression and give visitors a positive perception of the institution.
#2: Form Follows Function
Designing a higher-education website can be daunting because you have to balance the form, i.e., the design itself and the function. Fortunately, there are some tips that can help make the process easier.
Firstly, consider using white space effectively, as it can help draw attention to important elements on the page and make the website look more organized. Another tip is to provide contrast, such as using different colors for text and background, as it can improve readability and make the website more user-friendly.
Appropriate fonts are also necessary, as they can significantly impact the website’s overall appearance and readability. Fonts should be easy to read and consistent throughout the website to provide a seamless user experience. Additionally, keeping the design simple and avoiding clutter can help create a user-friendly website that is easy to navigate.
#3: Create Positive Emotional Connections
Creating positive emotional connections is essential to higher-ed website design, as it can enhance the overall user experience and leave a lasting impression on visitors. Positive emotional connections can be created by designing a visually appealing, user-friendly, and easy-to-navigate website.
Compelling images, videos, and stories can also help evoke positive emotions in visitors. Additionally, incorporating interactive elements such as quizzes, polls, and surveys can help to engage visitors and foster a sense of community.
Personalization is another way to create a positive emotional connection by tailoring the website experience to the specific needs and interests of the user. For example, displaying information about the user’s program of interest or location can help to make the website experience more relevant and engaging.
By creating positive emotional connections, higher-ed websites can foster a sense of loyalty and engagement among visitors, ultimately leading to greater success in recruiting and retaining students, faculty, and staff.
#4: Focus on Your Institution’s Branding
Focusing on the institution’s branding is crucial for higher-ed website design as it can help convey its identity, values, and mission. A strong brand can help to differentiate the institution from its competitors and attract students, faculty, and staff who share its values and mission.
The website should be designed with the institution’s branding in mind, incorporating its logo, color scheme, and other visual elements consistent with the brand. It’s also important to use language consistent with the institution’s brand voice and highlight its unique selling points. This can include its academic programs, research initiatives, campus culture, and community outreach efforts.
The website design should appeal to the institution’s target audience, whether it be prospective students, current students, faculty, or alumni. By focusing on an institution’s branding, higher-ed websites can build brand awareness, improve visibility, and enhance the institution’s reputation.
#5: Create a Career Pathway
Creating a career pathway is essential to higher-ed website design as it can help students navigate their academic journey and prepare for their future careers. The website should provide information on the institution’s academic programs and courses, including prerequisites, course descriptions, and degree requirements.
It’s also important to provide career counseling, job search assistance, and networking opportunities to help students connect with potential employers and develop their professional skills. The website can also feature success stories and testimonials from alumni who have pursued successful careers in their fields of study.
Higher-ed websites can help students make informed decisions about their academic and career paths by creating a career pathway, leading to greater success in their chosen fields. The career pathway should be designed to be user-friendly and accessible, with clear navigation and easy-to-find resources to help students achieve their goals.
#6: Address Multiple Audiences
Addressing multiple audiences is an important consideration when designing higher-ed websites, as the website must appeal to various users, including prospective students, current students, faculty, staff, and alumni.
The website should be designed with a user-centered approach, considering the needs and goals of each audience. This can be achieved by creating targeted sections of the website that cater to the specific needs of each group, such as providing information about academic programs for prospective students, course registration for current students, faculty resources for faculty members, and alumni events and networking opportunities for alumni.
It’s also essential to provide straightforward and intuitive navigation to ensure audiences can easily find the information they need. By addressing multiple audiences, higher-ed websites can improve user experience and engagement, leading to greater success in recruiting and retaining students, faculty, and staff.
#7: Be Interactive
Being interactive is an important aspect of higher-ed website design as it can engage visitors and provide a more immersive experience. It’s crucial to design interactive elements that are user-friendly and accessible to ensure that all visitors can participate and engage with the website.
Interactive elements can include quizzes, surveys, polls, games, social media feeds, discussion forums, and live chat features. These elements can encourage visitors to engage with the website and each other, creating a sense of community and belonging.
Additionally, interactive elements can provide valuable feedback to the institution, allowing them to better understand the needs and interests of their audience. By being interactive, higher-ed websites can provide a more engaging and memorable experience for visitors, ultimately leading to greater success in recruiting and retaining students, faculty, and staff.
Conclusion
Designing an effective website for higher education requires careful planning and consideration of the needs of multiple audiences. A well-designed website can improve the reputation and visibility of your institution, ultimately leading to greater success in achieving your academic and recruitment goals.
By following these seven tips for your next redesign, you can create a visually appealing, user-friendly, and engaging website. From focusing on your institution’s branding to building a career pathway and being interactive, each tip plays a vital role in creating a website that will attract and retain students, faculty, staff, and alumni.
We hope these tips will help you create a successful website for your institution. If you’re planning a website redesign, or want to build a new website from scratch, consider working with Manaferra. Our team of experienced designers and developers can help you create a website that reflects your institution’s brand, meets your goals, and engages your audience. Contact us today to learn more about our web design services.
Recruiting International Students: 3 Key Strategies
Universities in the United States are widely regarded as some of the best. According to a survey, 59% of people outside the U.S. believe American universities to be above average compared to universities in other developed countries. Naturally, such a belief is associated with high numbers of international students interested in studying at universities in the U.S.
To increase the number of international students recruited for your higher education institution, you must center your international enrollment strategies on resource efficiency by utilizing various technology and digital marketing techniques. So, read on and find out the top three strategies from the agency that specializes in SEO services for Higher Education, that will help refine your recruitment plan with effective international student recruitment strategies for 2023.
International Recruitment Strategy #1: Optimising Your Website
Optimizing your website for international students is crucial since websites are often the first exposure potential students have to higher education institutions. Before deciding whether they want to apply to your study programs, they need to learn more about your institution and the opportunities you offer. Therefore, you should pay close attention to what you present on your website and how you present it.
Similar to techniques typically used for growing college enrollment through SEO, you should improve your site’s landing pages and contact forms in order to increase click-through rates and convert website visitors into qualified leads. To begin, make sure you include all the information potential students must know about your institution on the landing pages.
Next, make the text readable and minimize using complex language or colloquialisms that your international audience might have difficulty understanding. Keep the content engaging—include visual elements such as infographics and videos that explain topics relevant to potential students and their decision-making process, like tuition fees, accommodation, and program structure, including information specific to international students.
Do not forget to include keywords relevant to your target audience in order to increase lead generation by improving your site’s visibility and pushing its content through the ranking in organic search results.
As you work on optimizing your website, focus on the following elements:
Easy navigation
Engaging homepage
Relevant content
Meta titles and descriptions
Keywords
International Recruitment Strategy #2: Incorporating Virtual Campus Tours and Zoom
Even prior to the pandemic, international students have faced challenges traveling to the U.S. or other countries for in-person campus visits. However, these visits are crucial for students to make informed decisions about the institutions they are considering, as they offer a glimpse into the facilities, atmosphere, and culture associated with the institution. In light of this challenge, a useful strategy to bridge this gap is to offer virtual campus tours and Zoom meetings.
Virtual campus tours allow prospective students to engage with your institution and experience what it is like to walk around your campus from the comfort of their homes. Many universities have already developed 360-degree tours using virtual reality technology or Google Maps Street View, and there are numerous benefits to incorporating these tours. By offering virtual campus tours, you can:
Provide equal access for all: Regardless of the reason why potential students cannot visit your campus in person, whether it be because of financial limitations, time constraints, or something else, with virtual campus tours, you help provide the same experience to anyone interested in joining your study programs. Virtual campus tours are cost-affordable for both students and institutions to upkeep.
Improve interaction: Students can have little to no interaction with the tour guide because of the large tour groups. Therefore, they will not be learning much about the institution. However, with virtual tours, the information and visuals are on the screen for students to access and go through as many times as they want.
Better accessibility: Unlike physical tours, virtual campus tours are not affected by factors such as weather conditions or time constraints. Therefore, students can choose to visit your higher education institution’s campus on a Monday morning, Saturday at midnight, or any other time of the week and day.
More inclusive: Virtual tours can easily incorporate live captions, ASL translation, audio descriptions, and other elements that help students with disabilities navigate better throughout the campus tour.
In addition to the tours, your institution can make use of several web-conferencing tools, such as Zoom, that help provide potential international students with a more personalized interaction between them and your admissions committee.
Regardless of the distance, your counselors can communicate with potential students and help them by clarifying any information needed, sharing relevant documents, and guiding them throughout the whole process.
International Recruitment Strategy #3: International Student Success Stories
Providing proof of successful international student experiences is a surefire way to make potential international students feel more connected, included, and comfortable choosing your institution. Therefore, you should focus your recruitment efforts on improving the experience of your current international students in order to generate better referrals and leads.
It would be best for you to work toward ensuring that international students have an environment where they can thrive in your higher education institution, as well as dedicating a portion of your website to displaying their success stories. This way, you can expand your reach and influence over your target audience. After all, when it comes to studying abroad, students want to enroll in a school where they are most likely to grow and progress academically and socially. Therefore, they will research the experience of other students in similar circumstances before committing to the school.
You can also expand your strategic international partnerships in order to enhance your brand’s reputation and improve the student experience. Consider research collaboration opportunities and exchange programs that might benefit your international students.
Use all opportunities presented to you and provide a good experience for international students that choose your school. In turn, they will help advocate your brand and share their success stories that inspire other students to join your college as well.
The Bottom Line
Spread your wings and generate leads from all over the world. Attract potential international students by optimizing your website for international students, incorporating virtual campus tours and web-conferencing tools, as well as leveraging the success stories of existing international students and alumni. With these three strategies, you can ensure a better and easier experience for students getting to know your school.
Are you interested in learning more about how to improve your higher education institution’s website? Contact us for a free SEO gap analysis and learn more about your website’s potential. Join us and become our next success story!
Best SEO Agency for Higher Education
SEO for higher education focuses on helping schools outrank their competitors by reaching a wider audience, producing more leads, and increasing conversion rates.
So, how does a higher placement on the search engine results pages (SERP) turn into an increase in enrollment? Well, it’s all about attracting your target audience and driving prospective students to your website. By ranking high, your school has better chances of students actually clicking on your site, learning more about the programs offered, and enrolling there. After all, the first website on a search engine results page gets an average click-through rate (CTR) of 27.6%.
So, the higher you are on the SERP, the better visibility you have and the more traffic you will attract. Ultimately, this will lead to better chances of landing prospective students and increasing your enrollment numbers.
Various factors contribute to a successful SEO marketing strategy for higher education websites, starting from on-page elements and content to the reputation. However, as you work on optimizing such elements, you can encounter various challenges, including technical issues.
Working with an experienced SEO agency, such as ours, will make it easier for you to navigate through various difficulties. So, let’s look at what makes us a top-notch SEO agency and how we can help your SEO strategy.
Establishing a Strong SEO Foundation
The first step to establishing a strong SEO foundation is to be aware of your site’s current state, the competition, and areas needing improvement. Therefore, we’ll start by performing an in-depth analysis of your search performance. Once we have gathered enough data to make an informed decision, we’ll develop an actionable SEO strategy that clearly defines the roadmap needed to put your higher education website on top of the SERPs.
On average, this step takes around 30-45 days to complete, depending on the size of your website.
Improving high-impact pages
Based on our comprehensive research of your website, target audience, and current performance, we will implement our recommendations to optimize your online presence. Our approach includes a thorough examination of your site to identify and rectify technical issues, ensuring that your content is displayed optimally for a seamless user experience.
Moreover, we will audit and set up analytics, utilizing tools such as Google Analytics 4 to track the effectiveness of your marketing strategies and monitor your conversion rate. If you already have analytics in place, we will review and fine-tune them to gain more in-depth insights into your website’s performance.
At this stage, it is also crucial to improve your content. We’ll help you find new content opportunities as well as identify and work on improving the already-existing content that could be performing better. With these steps, you will start to see improvements in your site’s organic traffic in just a matter of weeks.
Producing content that drives value
Our objective is to enhance your higher education institution’s website and ensure it reaches the right audience—those interested in exploring your institution’s offerings and programs. By producing content that drives value, your site can bring relevant traffic from potential students who want to pursue a degree in the programs of study you offer and then funnel that traffic down to conversion.
To achieve this goal, we conduct a comprehensive analysis of what students are searching for at different stages of their college decision-making journey. With the insights gained from this data, we work with you to create content that aligns with their needs and matches their intent.
Driving traffic and brand recognition
In addition to improving conversion rates, increasing organic traffic is crucial to establishing your brand. Our link-building team will craft a link-building strategy by analyzing your existing links as well as those of your competitors and finding ways to not only catch up but surpass them.
We will ensure that your higher education institution gets coverage on various authoritative and relevant sites where potential students can encounter your website and learn more about the programs provided. Throughout the link acquisition process, our team will help your site acquire valuable links that drive qualified traffic to your website and improve brand recognition.
Measuring performance
After implementing some of the steps planned in our lead generation strategies for your website, we will use multiple data sources to identify the strengths and weaknesses of our search strategy. This way, we measure performance based on specific pre-defined key performance indicators (KPI), such as the click-through rate, domain authority, keyword ranking, page views, and more. Based on the results, we make the necessary adjustments to keep improving and adapting to the standard of the ever-changing market.
But just because your site sees significant improvement after the first few months of working with us doesn’t mean that our work is done. We will always be looking for ways to update and upgrade our strategies and goals in order to help your website reach and stay at the top.
Conclusion
SEO has become a crucial part of college enrollment growth. To be the best, you must work with the best SEO agency for higher education. Our team has extensive experience working with higher education institutions to help them rank higher in search results and reach outstanding growth after only a few months. Want to be the next success story? Contact us for a free SEO gap analysis, where we estimate your site’s potential and share more growth opportunities.
4 Higher Education Marketing Trends To Watch in 2023
In higher education and many other fields, staying on top of the industry news and trends is crucial to gaining a competitive advantage. You can benefit significantly from using a strong higher education marketing strategy that aids you in identifying opportunities for growth, generating leads, and retaining students. As an SEO agency for higher education, we know how important this is!
Read on to learn more about the current higher education marketing trends, how to adapt to digital transformation within the industry, and how to use cutting-edge technologies to succeed.
4 Higher Education Marketing Trends for 2023
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on higher education can be noticed in the visible shift in marketing strategies toward digital reinforcement and virtual events. In comparison to before, the path to reaching prospective students has changed. The immense use of digital platforms has necessitated a similar approach to marketing strategies.
The key to higher education success is not only accepting these marketing trends but fully embracing them. So, read on and learn more about higher education marketing strategies you can use to stand out from the crowd in 2023.
1. Student-centered content has the potential to drive significant results in higher education marketing
Considering the rising cost of education and the heavy burden of student loans, today’s prospective students are facing new challenges in deciding what higher education they should enroll in or if they should do so. As a result, higher education marketing must shift towards a more student-centered approach to drive results. Before, higher education institutes’ marketing concentrated on “this is why we are great” messages. Now, it focuses more on “this is why we are great for you.”
There are many ways you can reach prospective students by developing your brand identity, including content marketing. Quality content naturally helps boost engagement and helps build credibility. You can reach audiences on various platforms ranging from written content to audio and image.
Firstly, a common communication channel between higher education institutions and their audiences is blogs—spaces where the school can share relevant content, introduce various topics and programs, and create a community. Blogging is a highly effective tool for content marketing associated with many benefits on top of educating and engaging students. According to a study conducted by HubSpot Marketing, on average, companies that blog have:
55% more visitors
97% more inbound links
434% more indexed pages
To attract even more prospective students, you can utilize guest blogging to share content on a third-party blog. This way, you can create hyperlinks that direct visitors to your site and thus improve your visibility and web traffic.
Another format you can utilize for content marketing is podcasts. The popularity of such a tool has been at an all-time high in recent years. Statistics show that in the U.S., around 41% of the population listens to podcasts every month, with 28% doing it weekly. Because podcasts are naturally conversational, often featuring guest speakers that introduce content in a more personal way, there is plenty of room to create student-centered content.
Video content is also gaining popularity in higher education content marketing. Both long-form and short-form videos are helpful, depending on the content you are presenting. For example, in higher education, you can utilize long-form videos for personalized campus tours, explanations of the application process, financial aid explainers, tutor introductions, and much more.
Your strategy should be to create high-quality content and incorporate it within your social media posts to reach customers. Link your blogs, podcasts, videos, and more on social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more—provide your audience with a glimpse of the content they can access by visiting your site.
2. Use short-form videos to promote your higher ed institute
Short-form videos provide viewers with a timely snapshot of important events and programs within your school. You can accompany them with a clickable link, sticker, message option, hashtag, and more to increase engagement and stay connected with your audience.
A popular destination for such videos is TikTok which has quickly grown in popularity, with over 80 million monthly active users in the United States. An interesting statistic to keep in mind is that 60% of TikTok users are Gen Zers—a prime demographic for higher education institutions. Therefore, TikTok is an excellent platform for your university or college to connect and engage with Gen Zers as prospective students in an entertaining and relatable way.
Though you can create videos that provide students with scholarly content that gives them an idea of what your university can provide academically, it is best to mix such videos with non-academic ones. Videos focused on student experience, athletics, your university’s student services, the campus, and much more are where the real engagement opportunities lie. We advise you to involve your student body in order to present the most authentic representation of what life would be like for students at your university.
3. Consider shifting your PR strategies online in order to improve your higher education marketing efforts
You can also improve your higher education marketing by shifting your PR strategies online and collaborating with other professionals. Consider shifting your focus from school-produced content to student-focused and student-made content in order to better connect with your target audience. Furthermore, place ads on content websites typically frequented by prospective students and increase the chances of them interacting with your site.
Another element you should add to your marketing efforts is establishing ties with professionals that can help you create content as well as have an established presence on social media platforms with a dedicated following, such as:
Editors
Professors
Reporters
Student ambassadors
Leverage such tactics by embracing these influencers with the ability to reach your prospective students more effectively through their content.
4. The importance of local SEO for higher education marketing is expected to increase in the future
It is no surprise that SEO has considerable control over today’s marketing strategies, and rightfully so. It is the marketing channel that helps your site rank higher on a search engine results page (SERP) and consequently receive more traffic. However, a more recent marketing trend you should consider using is local SEO to optimize local searches. According to statistics, about 46% of all searches have local intent. Therefore, implementing basic local SEO strategies will help your site’s ranking in the local market, reaching many prospective students for recruitment.
You should work with SEO experts and devise a strong content strategy that focuses on producing content answering questions from searches near your area and containing relevant keywords so as to improve local visibility. All improvements made in your online presence within your region will help recruit local students.
Conclusion
It is clear that one must always stay updated with higher education marketing trends as the field is constantly evolving. To stay ahead of the curve, keep generating leads, attract students and retain them, you should keep up with the trends and implement the necessary practices in your strategy. Recently, for example, higher education marketing trends include the increased importance of digital marketing, especially through student-centered content, short-form videos on popular platforms, and local search engine optimization.
A well-chosen digital marketing strategy is crucial to expanding your institute’s student base. Our digital agency can help you stay on top of the current trends and be one step ahead of all that is to come. We’ll devise and implement a successful digital marketing strategy that encompasses all the above trends and much more. So, schedule a free consultation, and let us help you grow your education institution!
