Case Study Boosting Global Organic Reach for a Legacy EdTech Network
How we overcame global aggregator dominance to drive a 38% organic impression lift for a legacy language school network.
+38%
Organic search impressions
+7%
Organic clicks
+33%
Site health score improvement
The Client
Educating over 317,000 students globally through a legacy language school network.
The client is a highly established global EdTech and English language training provider with over 34 years of operational experience. Operating a massive network of physical campuses and online classrooms, they have taught more than 317,000 students across key international markets, including the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, and Australia. Their comprehensive course catalog includes General English, Business English, pathway programs for higher education, and structured IELTS preparation.
In the highly competitive international education market, the client represents an industry benchmark for quality and student outcomes. However, maintaining this standard across a large physical and digital footprint is a major task. Prospective students from around the world search for English language training in specific cities and countries, making local, localized, and global search visibility the primary channel for student acquisition.
Over more than three decades, the client had built a complex web infrastructure with dedicated portals for different campuses, courses, and target student countries. While this allowed them to serve highly personalized information, it also created technical complexity. Duplicate content, uncoordinated regional pages, and slow legacy technologies began to limit their organic search potential, preventing them from competing effectively with modern aggregators.
The Challenge
Aggregator dominance and technical debt in a multi-campus network.
When we began this engagement, the client was facing an increasingly difficult search landscape. Global course aggregators and directory websites were dominating page-one search results for core keywords, making it harder for individual school networks to stand out. Additionally, search engine platforms were rolling out AI Overviews, which reduced organic click-through rates by answering user questions directly in search results.
Internally, the client's multi-campus structure had led to severe duplicate content issues, as multiple school pages across different cities used identical course descriptions. Gaps in content on their primary school and course pages limited their ability to rank for high-intent search terms. Furthermore, their development cycles were slow, meaning that critical technical SEO and UI/UX recommendations remained unaddressed for months at a time, leaving them vulnerable to faster competitors.
Global aggregators and directory sites dominating core search result pages
AI Overviews reducing organic visibility for traditional search queries
Duplicate content risks caused by identical templates across multiple physical schools
Content gaps on critical high-intent course pages and school directories
Slow UI/UX deployment cycles due to a lack of structured development practices
What our audit found
Mapping structural conflict and performance bottlenecks.
Our diagnostic process started with a complete technical and content audit of the client's global domain footprint. We analyzed page load performance, mapped out internal linking structures, and crawled their entire directory to evaluate duplicate content issues. We also conducted a detailed keyword gap analysis to find search opportunities that they were currently missing.
The audits revealed that search crawlers were wasting resources indexing duplicate course descriptions across regional directories. This diluted the organic authority of their primary landing pages. We also found that their site's technical foundation was causing poor mobile loading speeds, leading to lower search visibility. Finally, a lack of structured data meant that their pages were not appearing in Featured Snippets or capturing rich search highlights.
Wasted crawl budget caused by duplicate course content across campus pages
Low mobile performance scores contributing to poor user experience and lower rankings
Missed search intent opportunities due to a lack of detailed course and school page content
Poor internal link distribution preventing the flow of search authority to high-value pages
Total absence of structured Schema markup to capture rich search results
The Solution
How we turned it around.
Topical authority building and content expansion.
To build the client's search authority, we launched a comprehensive content expansion campaign. We refreshed legacy blog posts to ensure they met modern standards of accuracy and helpfulness. We also designed a keyword clustering strategy to expand their reach across long-tail search terms. By building detailed, intent-driven content assets, we established the site as a trusted resource for international students preparing to study abroad.
What we shipped
- Refreshed existing blog posts with updated facts and improved internal links
- Grouped target keywords into clusters to expand organic reach across long-tail queries
- Developed detailed content blueprints for primary course and school pages
- Created resource guides addressing common student questions about visas and living costs
Multi-campus structure and location page optimization.
We optimized the site structure to better represent the client's physical campuses. We rewrote duplicate course and school descriptions across all locations, ensuring that each campus page featured unique content tailored to its city. We also optimized headings, page titles, and body copy for location-specific search terms, allowing the client to rank higher for localized search queries.
What we shipped
- Rewrote duplicate text across all school and campus pages
- Optimized page titles and headings for location-specific keywords
- Implemented canonicalization rules to guide search engines to primary regional pages
- Built structured directories that linked campus hubs to their corresponding courses
Technical SEO and schema implementation.
We resolved the critical technical SEO issues identified in our audits. We cleaned up duplicate page variations, fixed redirect loops, and optimized crawl paths. To improve search presence, we integrated comprehensive FAQ and Course schema markup across the site. This structured data helped their pages stand out in search results, capturing Featured Snippets and rich search highlights.
What we shipped
- Deployed Course and FAQ schema markup across all program pages
- Reclaimed crawl budget by resolving parameter loops and redirect chains
- Improved site indexing rates by cleaning up XML sitemaps
- Configured robots.txt rules to keep search engines focused on high-value pages
UX collaboration and migration support.
We collaborated closely with the client's design and development teams to recommend key UX improvements and support a smooth SEO migration. We helped streamline the development workflow to ensure technical fixes were deployed faster. We also optimized images, script delivery, and CSS structures, which resulted in a massive boost to their mobile performance scores and overall site health.
What we shipped
- Provided structural recommendations to improve mobile loading times and UX
- Supported the development team during a smooth SEO migration process
- Optimized image files and script delivery to improve Core Web Vitals
- Helped set up a faster release cycle for technical SEO deployments
The Numbers
Outcomes we can talk about.
The technical optimization and content expansion campaign delivered significant growth across the client's global footprint. Organic search impressions rose by 38%, growing from 7.79 million to 10.7 million, while organic clicks increased by 7%, rising from 99,600 to 106,800. These visibility improvements were accompanied by a 33% increase in technical site health and a 63% boost in mobile performance scores.
Keyword rankings on page one of search results grew by 40% in the United Kingdom, 67% in Canada, and 17% in the United States. Long-tail keyword visibility showed even stronger growth, rising by 64% in the UK, 75% in the US, and 100% in Canada. Average search positions improved from 20.3 to 15.4 for school pages (a 24% growth) and from 25.1 to 20.4 for course pages (an 18% growth).
These results helped the legacy brand stand out in a crowded market, capturing valuable organic leads from prospective students. By focusing on technical accuracy and high-quality content, the network secured its position as a global leader in international language education.
+38%
Organic search impressions
+7%
Organic clicks
+33%
Site health score improvement
+63%
Mobile performance score boost
+40%
Page 1 keyword growth in the UK
+67%
Page 1 keyword growth in Canada
+17%
Page 1 keyword growth in the US
What We Built
What's Next
Enhancing localized search and conversational AI optimization.
The next phase of the strategy focuses on expanding the client's local search presence by optimizing Google Business Profiles and local directories for all physical campuses. We also plan to roll out translated content hubs to capture search traffic from students looking for courses in their native languages.
Additionally, we are preparing the site's content structure for conversational search queries and voice interfaces. By continuing to optimize for natural language patterns and structured data, the network will maintain its visibility as search behavior evolves, ensuring a steady stream of student inquiries for years to come.
Frequently Asked Questions
About This Project
The questions teams usually ask when they want to run a similar engagement.
The multi-campus structure had led to identical course descriptions being published across multiple school directories. We resolved this by writing unique content for each location page and setting clear canonical tags to guide search engines.
The Real Numbers
Need real numbers? Let's talk.
We kept the names off the page. The story is real, the outcomes are real, and we're always happy to walk a serious team through the rest of it.
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