How Occidental College Improved .edu Visibility and Enrollment Impact without a Website Redesign
- type
- Small Private Liberal Arts
- location
- Los Ángeles, CA
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Challenges
Occidental College (Oxy) needed to strengthen its digital presence to improve traditional and AI search visibility and better support enrollment. Their small team lacked the capacity to scale the work.
Prior to working with EAB:
- No SEO foundation or enrollment-focused content strategy
- Enrollment-critical pages difficult to find
- Limited web resources—a two-person team stretched thin
- Limited data to guide enrollment decision-making
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Solutions
Oxy partnered with EAB to build a web content strategy that improved search visibility and supported enrollment without requiring a website redesign.
How EAB partnered with Oxy to deliver this work:
- Conducted audits to identify gaps in enrollment-critical content, search visibility, and accessibility
- Expanded capacity through hands-on support and team upskilling, without adding staff
- Extended strategy with an AI Chat Agent for enrollment questions
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Results
With EAB, Oxy strengthened search visibility, increasing AI mentions 25% and generating 34.9M new impressions. They also drove measurable gains in enrollment-related action, with 11% growth in organic traffic and a 96+% engagement rate across core enrollment pages.
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+25%
increase in AI mentions
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+11%
boost in organic traffic at a time when most .edus are seeing declines
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96+%
engagement rate across core enrollment pages
How Oxy Got More Done with a Small Team
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Sustained and Scaled .edu Content Strategy
- Focused on enrollment-critical content first
- Followed EAB’s visual briefs and page structure guidance
- Completed EAB’s SEO error workbook and expert-led workshops
- Leveraged EAB’s collaborative model
What EAB Helped Oxy Achieve without Increasing Team Size
Extending Content Strategy with an AI Chat Agent
Once Oxy’s content foundation was in place, the team was able to extend that content into new formats—including EAB’s AI-powered .edu chat experience. 73% of Oxy’s Chat Agent conversations are about enrollment-critical topics—guiding students to the next step.
