What was the challenge?
A UK university had just opened its campus in Dubai. Its name carried weight in the UK, but students searching in the UAE weren't finding its Dubai programmes, and those programmes were hybrid (part online, part on campus), which students needed explained before they'd apply. It needed organic visibility for its Dubai programmes, fast.
SEO terms in plain English
- Organic leads
- Enquiries and applications from people who found the website through Google's normal search results, not ads.
- LLM traffic
- Visitors who arrive from AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity after the assistant mentions or links to your site.
- Outreach
- Contacting relevant websites to earn a link or mention, rather than buying links.
- Student journey
- The steps a prospective student takes on the site, from first visit to enquiry, and the information they need at each one.
What was the strategy?
- 01
Support every programme with in-depth informational blogs
- 02
Earn links from authoritative education websites through outreach
- 03
Fix the programme pages: a clearer student journey, written around the terms students search
What exactly did I do?
4 moves, each with what I did and why it mattered.
- 01Content
Backed every programme with in-depth blogs
Published detailed informational blogs around each programme, answering what students in Dubai ask before choosing a course, including how hybrid study works in practice.
Why it mattered: A new campus has no search history in its market. Thorough answers to real questions build relevance quickly, bring students in earlier in their research, and are exactly the kind of content AI assistants quote and link to.
- 02Authority
Earned links from authoritative education websites
Ran outreach to well-respected education websites and earned links to the university's Dubai pages.
Why it mattered: Links from trusted education sources tell Google, and the AI assistants that lean on the same sources, that the Dubai campus is a credible place to study, not just a new page on a UK website.
- 03Programme pages
Rebuilt programme pages around the student journey
Restructured the programme pages so students could find what they need to decide, in the order they need it, with a clear path to enquire.
Why it mattered: Traffic only turns into leads when the page answers the student's questions and makes the next step obvious. This is where the 140% rise in organic leads came from.
- 04Programme pages
Wrote in the words students search with
Researched the terms students most often search for each programme and worked them naturally into the page content.
Why it mattered: Universities tend to describe programmes in their own language. Matching the words students actually type is what lets each page rank for the searches that matter.
What do I stand for?
Leads are the measure
Traffic matters because it fills the enquiry pipeline. I judged this work by organic leads, and the programme pages got as much attention as the blog.
Write for Google and AI assistants together
Clear, thorough content backed by trusted links ranks in Google and gets cited in AI answers. It's one strategy, not two.
A strong brand still has to earn local search
Reputation in one country doesn't carry over to search in another. A new campus has to build its visibility in its new market from the ground up.
How the results were verified
- Organic traffic, leads and AI assistant referrals verified via Google Analytics 4.
- The client stays anonymous to protect confidentiality; the numbers are real.
Government University in the UAE
8K → 16K+ organic traffic, 100% growth in a single year
