K-12 Nonprofit Drives More Brand Awareness with SEO

Industry: K-12

"To stay competitive, relevant, and visible, strong search engine optimization has become a critical marketing tactic to employ. We want iCivics to be the first resource that educators find when they are searching online for teaching resources. To achieve this goal, iCivics hired Jenny to help us strategically optimize our website content and help us leverage paid search advertising campaigns. Jenny is a true expert in her area and brings a positive, can-do attitude and an educational approach that has developed the knowledge and skill sets of our internal team. We are incredibly grateful for her partnership, bright energy, and excellent work that has pushed us forward."

View The Results

How to Use SEO, Paid Search, and Digital To Drive More Brand Awareness From New Teachers

iCivics is a well-known, reputable nonprofit in the education industry that provides civic education resources to teachers across the US. While they have a very strong brand, the team wanted to make sure they were findable to new teachers in the industry, and those who were looking for resources (lesson plans, videos, infographics, curriculum, etc.) with general keywords in order to diversify the way they were bringing in traffic and capturing all traffic and prospects in their niche.

As with many of my clients, I began working with iCivics on SEO strategy, implementation, and training, and we added Paid Search campaigns to supplement for specific events and important dates. We have worked together for over two years now, and while we have gotten great results, there is even more opportunity to be had, which is exciting.

The Results

SEO and PPC Results and Attribution

Typically, because direct SEO ROI is not straightforward, we have to look for KPIs. For example: ranking increases, clicks, average position increases, and YoY granular and high-level traffic increases. Years ago in Google Analytics, we did have direct SEO conversion data, but Google took that away when they turned 99% of our keywords into “not provided.”

Also, typically we can measure SEO results YoY (year over year). However, due to COVID and its impact on the education industry and the shift in searches to other priority areas, we can’t measure this way as we could in a non-COVID year. This is why it’s important to identify and track KPIs, such as keyword tracking, which we did in Semrush, and proactively monitor how optimized pages and targeted keywords are performing.

As typical of a mature organization with thousands of pages and the nature of SEO requiring many decisions and factors that have to come together, results are still coming in, but have conclusively shown to make a big impact thus far:

  • In the critical fall season, teacher registrations were up over 20% YoY
  • Registrations from Organic Search increased by over 17% YoY
  • Registrations from Paid Search increased by 136%

In addition, we tracked over 200 important target keywords on Page 1, and moved several priority keywords not only onto Page 1, but to the very top spot.

"To stay competitive, relevant, and visible, strong search engine optimization has become a critical marketing tactic to employ. We want iCivics to be the first resource that educators find when they are searching online for teaching resources. To achieve this goal, iCivics hired Jenny to help us strategically optimize our website content and help us leverage paid search advertising campaigns. Jenny is a true expert in her area and brings a positive, can-do attitude and an educational approach that has developed the knowledge and skill sets of our internal team. We are incredibly grateful for her partnership, bright energy, and excellent work that has pushed us forward."