Attracting international students is hard enough — being invisible online makes it impossible. A well-known university in Norfolk was watching its traffic decline while competing institutions pulled ahead in search. Their off-page SEO had been neglected entirely, and with a tight deadline to turn things around, they needed a partner who had done this before. That’s how Link Building HQ got involved.
The Dilemma
The university’s backlink profile was too thin to support meaningful rankings for competitive Master’s program keywords. Without authoritative external links, Google had little reason to surface them over bigger, better-connected institutions. Internally, the marketing team lacked both the time and specialist expertise to run a sustained link building campaign. Every month without action was another month of declining visibility and missed enrollment opportunities.
The Course of Action
We applied our proven education-sector playbook — building a diverse, authoritative backlink profile within a tight 11-month window.
In-depth Analysis:
We mapped the university's existing backlink gaps and identified high-authority educational directories, research journals, and niche blogs as the strongest link-building opportunities aligned with the institution's academic programs and target student profile.
Content Creation
We produced compelling guest posts for reputable education websites and developed resource pages on the client's site — designed to naturally attract mentions and backlinks from other blogs, journals, and academic platforms.
Strategic Outreach
We secured 150+ placements across authoritative educational publications and research journals, building a diverse backlink profile that signalled credibility and relevance to Google across all of the university's key program areas.
Results Overview
In 11 months, the campaign delivered some of the strongest percentage gains across the entire case study portfolio.
Organic traffic surged by 336.36% over the course of the campaign — a result of 150+ high-quality backlinks driving both authority signals and direct referral visits to the university’s program pages.
Top-3 keyword rankings grew from just 5 to 28 — a 460% increase — putting the university in front of prospective students for the first time across its most competitive search terms.
Positions 4–10 expanded from 21 to 71 (up 238%), and positions 11–50 grew from 28 to 60, building a deep, sustainable pipeline of keywords moving toward the first page.
Number of Keywords Ranking on Google SERPs
Google Position
February 2023
January 2024
Percent Increase
1–3
05
28
460%
4–10
21
71
238.10%
11–50
28
60
114.29%
Key Wins At A Glance
336.36%
More Traffic
194%
More Impressions
460%
More Clicks
The Ball's In Your Court
Link building remains a core tool for effective search engine optimization.
And no one does it better than Link Building HQ.
Are You Ready To Earn Powerful Backlinks?
Schedule A Meeting With Us And Get Your Free Link Plan Today.
