Improve Page Rankings for Your University With a Hybrid SEO Team
February 25th, 2025 by
Key Insights
- Achieving top rankings for your program pages is no easy feat, especially when managing SEO in-house. It takes advanced skills and consistent effort to outpace growing competition.
- A hybrid SEO team empowers your in-house staff to focus on their strengths, as an agency handles the higher-level SEO tasks that drive measurable improvements in your program’s visibility.
- Whether you need immediate help for a specific project or long-term strategy support, working with an agency gives you the flexibility to scale your SEO efforts as needed.
- Take Search Influence’s Higher Ed SEO Quiz to determine whether combining your in-house strengths with agency expertise is the best way to optimize your program rankings.
You’ve spent weeks perfecting your program pages and refining the messaging to speak directly to prospective students. You know the ins and outs of your institution, its values, and what makes it unique. Despite your best efforts, your pages still aren’t ranking near the top of the search engine results, where visibility matters most.
Sound familiar?
Growing competition in higher ed and a shrinking pool of traditional 18-year-old college students have made it harder to reach and capture the attention of the right prospects.
Your program pages need to rise above the digital clutter — yet, without advanced SEO skills, all your hard work may never pay off.
If your in-house team is hitting a wall with SEO, collaborating with an agency gives your strategy the push it needs while ensuring your team’s impact stays integral to the approach. With a hybrid team, you’re rewarded with the best of both worlds: the strengths of your in-house insights and the technical expertise of an agency.
The Expertise an Agency Brings to the Table
Agencies provide the technical muscle and fresh strategies needed to elevate your SEO efforts beyond what your in-house team can accomplish alone.
Broader sector experience
SEO agencies work with clients across industries, including higher ed, healthcare, and hospitality. This diversity means agencies bring ideas and strategies from sectors beyond education, offering new perspectives to your team.
They know what works in SEO, what doesn’t, and will advise on how to approach your strategy accordingly.
Dedicated SEO focus
Unlike your internal team, which juggles multiple institution-wide priorities, an agency has dedicated experts focused specifically on your SEO strategy. With decades of combined experience among their digital marketing specialists, they know all the tricks of the trade and the latest trends.
Their specialized knowledge keeps your strategy moving forward — whether it’s fine-tuning content, solving tricky technical issues, or outsmarting algorithm updates.
Advanced technical SEO
Agencies bring a laser focus to technical SEO, tackling tasks like site structure improvements, crawlability fixes, and schema markup implementation. By uncovering and resolving hidden technical errors, they eliminate barriers that could drag down your rankings.
This targeted expertise ensures your site performs at its best and captures the attention of both search engines and users.
Effective link-building strategies
According to recent research by Backlinko, a website’s link authority closely correlates to its ranking success. Agencies know how to build links that matter, connecting your website with high-authority sources to improve your domain’s credibility and rankings. By incorporating authority-building tactics into your strategy, an agency will improve your E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) and generate more links back to you.
Think of it as networking for your website — building relationships that get your university noticed by the right audiences.
Sophisticated analytics and tools
SEO tools like SEMrush and Screaming Frog uncover powerful insights into keyword and listing management opportunities, plus on-site issues like broken links, but it takes expert analysis to turn those insights into results. Agencies excel at transforming raw metrics into strategic actions that deliver measurable outcomes.
Through clear analytics tracking and reporting, they make complex data easy to understand and even easier to act on.
Understanding the Strengths of Your Internal Team
With a strong grasp of your university’s inner workings, your in-house SEO team members know what to prioritize to meet your institution’s most pressing goals.
Familiarity with institutional culture
Your internal team knows your institution better than anyone — its mission, values, and branding guidelines. They ensure your SEO strategy aligns with institutional priorities, making your content feel genuine while keeping your messaging consistent across every channel.
Relationships with faculty and departments
From individual staff members to college departments, your team has built the relationships needed to uncover stories and insights that bring the best of your university online. They know how to facilitate internal collaboration for creating academic program pages, research highlights, and in-depth faculty profiles.
On-the-ground understanding of priorities
Your internal team has a pulse on what’s important to everyone: prospective students, current students, faculty, and alumni. They know exactly when to spotlight admissions deadlines, open houses, and other seasonal priorities to grab the attention of your target audience.
Local knowledge of audiences
Targeted marketing works best when it’s backed by a clear understanding of your audience. Your team knows the local culture, regional trends, and demographic factors that shape the interests and behaviors of prospective students, alumni, and the community.
This helps you connect with your prospects in a way that feels authentic and relevant.
How to Decide If a Hybrid SEO Team Is Right for Your Institution
Combining your in-house strengths with an agency’s expertise creates a well-rounded SEO strategy, but the balance must meet your institution’s needs.
So, how do you decide if this approach works for you?
And, more specifically, what tasks should remain in-house vs. outsourced?
Questions to ask yourself
To determine if a hybrid model is right for your institution, check your priorities, skill level, and overall capacity to take SEO head-on. Ask yourself and your broader team these questions:
- Are we ranking competitively for key academic programs and university pages?
- Do we have the in-house expertise to manage technical SEO challenges?
- Are we consistently tracking and analyzing our SEO performance?
- Do we have the resources and bandwidth to focus on SEO long-term?
If any of your answers expose gaps, a hybrid SEO team will help mend them with the full focus and time dedication your strategy deserves.
Indicators that a hybrid approach will work
If you think a hybrid approach is ideal for you, but are not sure if it will play out the way you’re hoping, here are some signs it’ll work:
- You have a small but knowledgeable in-house team that needs support in technical areas.
- You’re looking to scale your SEO efforts without overloading internal staff.
- You’re struggling to keep up with competitors’ online visibility.
The most successful collaborations happen when you focus on what you do best and leave the heavy lifting to a dedicated SEO team.
Examples of tasks to keep in-house
If you’re set on a hybrid approach, now you need to decide which SEO tasks to handle in-house vs. with an agency. Because your internal team has a unique understanding of your university’s mission and culture, some tasks may make more sense to keep in-house. These include:
- Writing content like course descriptions, faculty profiles, and blogs that showcase your inner knowledge of your institution’s strengths and values.
- Managing faculty and departmental collaboration.
- Leading university-wide projects tied to institutional priorities, such as alumni engagement initiatives.
Note: While these tasks may stay in-house, an agency is uniquely positioned to provide strategic oversight, ensuring all efforts align with a cohesive SEO plan. Agencies bring a fresh perspective to your internal initiatives and offer valuable insights that enhance the overall impact of your efforts.
Examples of tasks to outsource
While your team focuses on internal collaborations and managing university priorities, there are certain SEO strategy must-haves best handled by experts. These include:
- Conducting technical audits and fixing issues like site structure, crawlability, and broken links that affect search performance.
- Securing backlinks and implementing off-site strategies to increase your site’s domain authority and rankings.
- Tracking SEO performance and generating detailed reports to provide actionable insights for ongoing strategy improvements.
By handling these tasks externally, your team has more time to dedicate to strategic initiatives while maintaining a strong SEO strategy.
Benefits of Hybrid SEO Teams for Higher Education
With the power of your hybrid marketing team, you’ll gain the following benefits:
Comprehensive SEO strategies
This approach lets your in-house personnel bring the heart of your university’s story to life while the agency works behind the scenes to boost your SEO, build links, and monitor your most important analytics. With a collaborative SEO strategy for your university, you’ll have a dynamic, comprehensive framework that strengthens your university’s online visibility for sustained impact.
Optimized use of resources
You create a powerhouse of efficiency by combining your team’s insider knowledge with an agency’s data-driven tools and SEO skills. Tasks get done faster and smarter, with to-do’s distributed based on skill sets and priorities. This creates a streamlined system that optimizes your resources without wasting time or effort.
Enhanced flexibility
A hybrid SEO team will ramp up your university’s efforts for key campaigns or dial them back for long-term projects — whatever the moment calls for. This flexible approach evolves with your priorities and adjusts to the fast-paced world of higher ed trends, keeping your SEO relevant and effective.
Is a Hybrid SEO Partnership Better for Short-Term or Long-Term Goals?
Whether you’re looking for a one-and-done partnership or a years-long commitment, an agency works with you to tailor the right level of support for your needs and goals. Here’s how to determine which path will deliver the best results for your university.
When a short-term engagement makes sense
A short-term engagement is the perfect fit when your university needs a quick boost or targeted support. Consider this option for:
- Addressing specific issues, such as conducting site audits or executing link-building campaigns, with the support of experienced SEO professionals.
- Launching a new academic program or marketing initiative that requires a focused, short-term SEO push to generate immediate visibility.
Benefits of a long-term partnership
A long-term, outsourced SEO partnership sets your university up for sustained success and growth. This option is best when you need:
- Continuous monitoring and fine-tuning of your SEO strategy, so you’re always optimizing and staying ahead of the competition.
- Dynamic, ongoing support that adapts to your university’s evolving goals, whether it’s launching a new program or adjusting to shifting priorities.
- A roadmap designed for long-term success, keeping your SEO strategy on track for consistent results.
Collaborating With Search Influence
At Search Influence, we adapt to how you work, sharing SEO duties in a way that makes sense for your team. Some examples of what this looks like:
For one client, we provide the SEO strategy, optimize program content, and handle off-site SEO while their in-house team focuses on blog content and PR. We regularly collaborate to ensure that their in-house marketing efforts support their SEO rankings.
For another client, we provide topic and keyword strategy and technical SEO recommendations, while their in-house team writes and publishes content and implements technical updates.
No matter how hands-on you want to be, we’ll collaborate to ensure your SEO efforts are on par with your expectations.
Leverage a Hybrid SEO Team to Maximize Your University’s Potential
Keep your higher ed SEO efforts on track without overloading your internal team.
With the combined strengths of a hybrid SEO team, you’ll improve your program rankings and attract more students, faculty, and donors.
Discover whether a hybrid SEO team is the ideal approach for your university. Our Higher Ed SEO Quiz takes the guesswork out of deciding between an in-house, outsourced, or hybrid SEO team. After completing just five questions, you’ll receive personalized recommendations that help you make informed staffing choices and optimize your resources.
Take the SEO Quiz today, and let us guide you on your way to improved program page rankings.
