Rising from the Ashes

Brief

In late 2018, Open Colleges disbanded from TAFE, removing its associations with the training provider to solidify itself as a leader in online education in Australia. The move however, also meant the removal of courses and resulting SEO equity, which could impact rankings and traffic to other areas of the site. To plan for the changes, Dejan conducted a full risk assessment to identify the potential SEO impact of the changes, followed by ongoing support and co-execution of our recommendations. The two core objectives of the campaign were to:

• Mitigate risk of traffic loss to existing courses and;
• Increase new traffic following the discontinuation of TAFE courses

Activities

• Technical SEO
• Traffic risk assessment
• Snippet optimisation
• Content Quality Enhancements
• Link consolidation
• Link earning
• Channel alignment (PR)
• Team collaboration and support

Achievements

By understanding what areas would be most impacted by the loss of links and authority, an outreach plan was developed to reclaim lost link equity and send fresh link signals to key course areas. This effort included new content generation and the acquisition of links from authoritative domains worthy of updating. From a technical perspective, we also addressed internal linking from authoritative pages, implemented redirects, and resolved daisy chaining. In only a few months, Open Colleges achieved increases across 80% of its target course areas, resulting in a 18% traffic improvement YoY.

For further information relating to mitigating risk and improving site performance following major changes such as rebrands, acquisitions and mergers, feel free to get in touch.