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Adelphi University

Vector’s ongoing and successful work with Adelphi University has helped them generate higher quality leads that convert into students, improve their brand recognition and search results, reduce their costs, and increase their online visibility. A distinct collaboration between our design, digital marketing, and development teams ensures that more of Adelphi’s prospects are turned into students. With profitable campaigns that are tied to the university’s business goals and aspirations, their ROI is much higher due to higher conversion rates.
Launch Site

Task Prioritize Essential Pages on a Large Site

Vector and Adelphi University have been working together for years— and our partnership has been undeniably successful. Due to our long-term client relationship, we continuously collaborate with Adelphi in an ongoing effort to give them the best possible results to match their strategic vision. Adelphi University is a large university with an even larger website, making the work both challenging and rewarding. Since Adelphi’s site includes information about everything from its extensive list of academic programs to its admissions process to its student life, the Vector Team had to focus on prioritizing. Our team strategically directed their energy to the pages where we were able to make the biggest impact.

Strategy Combine SEO and PPC to Achieve the Greatest Impact

After collaborating with Adelphi to understand their business, brand, and visual design landscape, we worked on both optimizing their organic search results and managing their paid search (PPC) campaigns. Adelphi had an outdated system that only tracked new leads according to ‘last touch’ attribution (i.e. if the user does a Google search after initial contact, the lead would be attributed to Google). We developed and implemented an attribution model that moved beyond this “last touch”, allowing us to track which channels and campaigns were successfully introducing people into the sales funnel. Next, we launched cross-channel, cross device remarketing campaigns to track users across multiple devices. We also integrated our cutting-edge proprietary technology that makes changes to campaign bids and budgets in real time, every 30 minutes, to automatically shift Adelphi's budget to the campaigns that are working best for them. This innovative approach enabled Adelphi to prioritize and reprioritize their campaigns more efficiently.

From the PPC perspective, working with Adelphi has yielded results that are a testament to the partnership’s success. Adelphi has seen a 320% increase in overall conversions, with a 68% drop in overall cost per acquisition (CPA). We were able to achieve this success by allocating funds to programs that have the highest probability of success instead of sticking to rigid allocations that are not as efficient. In-line with Vector’s overall integrated approach to projects, we use our findings from our work with SEO and PPC in order to help the two build off of each other.

Process An Ongoing and Collaborative Approach

When we began working with Adelphi, we ran a technical audit to analyze and correct any issues, such as missing site maps, HTML errors, and duplicate pages that could affect their organic rankings. Adelphi has since seen a 57% increase in page 1 organic rankings. We also focused heavily on creating keyword-enriched title tags and meta descriptions. By having thoroughly researched the site in order to see which pages generated the most traffic and had the highest conversions, we knew which pages to prioritize.

Through search keyword research, mapping, and theming of pages we were able to increase Adelphi’s visibility. By helping Adelphi create landing pages to familiarize new visitors with the university, we were able to nurture relationships with users to convert them into customers. Utilizing curated relevant content to pull people in, Adelphi was able to see a 98% increase in clicks and an 18% drop in cost per click (CPC), with only a 63% increase in spend. With refined pages serving more targeted markets, Adelphi has had an extremely high yield rate: 34% of applications that were influenced or generated by our efforts turned into an actual student.

Result An Optimized Website That Drives Results

The work we do with Adelphi is ongoing. We stay on top of their constantly changing and growing site. We regularly go through a re-optimization process where we repeat our original SEO process with adjustments based on rankings in an effort to continuously improve those rankings. Our relationship with Adelphi is highly collaborative—our work involves a great deal of exchanging information back and forth, but the process is smooth and effective. By layering in audience data (both 3rd party and Adelphi’s 1st party) to move potential students thru the funnel, we are able to refine our work based on their feedback. We continue to build on our organic success, while keeping Adelphi’s strict university guidelines in mind. With strong SEO and PPC strategies accelerating their growth, we always make sure our work is relevant, does not go off-brand, and adheres to their standards and expectations.

WORKED ON THIS PROJECT

Very valuable in assisting with the execution of client SEO campaigns

Faith Zaki

Manager, SEO

Passionate about beautiful and functional design. Mostly fueled by tacos and iced coffee.

Kate Lechleiter

Designer

Leads our highly-talented Search Marketing team

Lee Goldberg

Marketing & Strategy
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