The dreaded demographic cliff is just about here. According to the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) “the number of 18-year-olds nationwide who graduate from high school each year — and are therefore candidates for college — will erode by 13 percent, or nearly half a million, by 2041.”

That’s not exactly breaking news in the higher education sector. According to a report from United Educators , enrollment concerns reclaimed the top spot as the most pressing risk facing colleges and universities in 2024, with 71% of institutions identifying it as a major challenge. And their concern is certainly warranted as at least 16 nonprofit colleges and universities announced closures in 2024 and 73 have closed since 2020.

Some schools need not worry as their draw and appeal will survive this downturn. Other schools, however, won’t be so lucky. There simply won’t be enough traditional students to fill all the available seats nationwide. Those schools are going to have to work harder and smarter than their competition in order to survive.

One tactic that is poorly underused in enrollment marketing is search engine optimization, or SEO for short. SEO is the process of optimizing websites so that they rank well on search engines through organic (non paid) searches. One of the primary benefits of appearing organically in search results is the value an organic listing holds over a paid listing in the mind of a user. If your program page (i.e. Nursing, Accounting, Computer Science, etc.) is listed organically next to a paid listing, a savvy user will understand that the organic result is there because it carries a high relevance to your search query. In other words, there’s a high degree of probability that the information on that page will satisfy the user. With paid results, savvy users know that although the content is most likely relevant, it’s placement in the search results is also influenced by the school’s willingness to pay for that placement and the content might not be as relevant as the organic result.

At Calculate, we have seen tremendous success with search engine marketing (SMM) via Google Ads even though these are paid ads. We attribute this success to the inherent nature of the mindset of the user during these interactions. A user who finds your website via a search engine query in actively interested in, searching for, and finding the programs and degrees you are offering at the exact moment they are interested in learning more about them. This is opposed to social media marketing (SMM) or programmatic advertising where you are broadcasting your messaging to a targeted audience and hoping you can capture their interest and steer them towards a landing page.

Adding in a strategic SEO campaign to a paid SEM campaign is only going to strengthen your position within the search results for the long-term and draw in additional prospects who are actively looking for the degrees and programs you offer. And this just might be the tactic that tips the scales in your favor over the next several years. Consider this: “84% of [higher education] marketing departments see SEO as a core part of their marketing strategy, but half (51%) do not have an established SEO strategy.”

Do you see the golden opportunity there? More than half of your competitors are NOT using SEO as an enrollment marketing strategy. They’re probably all buying lists/names and marketing to the same cohort of students. That’s not a viable strategy. Anecdotally, I can tell you that two of my children never even bothered to look at the mountains of traditional recruitment mail that came their way after taking the SATs. For one thing, that tactic just doesn’t resonate with them and secondly, the amount of print material sent their way was too overwhelming.

It's 2025 and it’s time to start utilizing enrollment marketing tactics that actually work with today’s traditional students and SEO is absolutely one of those tactics.

So what are the issues keeping schools from employing SEO?

1. It’s difficult to implement because it requires a specific skill set and schools may not have that expertise in-house.
    
2. It’s time-consuming and the benefits of SEO take months to appear.
    
3. Schools still rely heavily on traditional tactics that leave little marketing dollars for “newer” tactics.

The ramifications of the enrollment cliff will be fatal to many schools. Those that fail might be a little “insane” in their thinking. That is, they might continue with the same strategy and tactics they’ve been using for years and expect different results.

Conversely, the ones that survive might have a little United States Marine Corps in them as the improvise, adapt, and overcome.

Here’s how you can get started with SEO today and begin seeing results before the start of the Fall 2025 semester. If you don’t have the expertise in house, partner with a qualified vendor to help formulate a proper SEO strategy that includes:

• Performing an initial SEO audit and identifying your existing keywords
• Doing a competitor analysis
• Identifying the new keywords you’d like to be ranked for
• Setting up your Google Search Console
• Etc, etc.

Once you perform your initial SEO research and setup, you can then begin to optimize individual pages with:

• Title tags
• Meta Tags
• Heading tags
• Image optimization
• Content optimization
• Etc, etc.

Finally, you can utilize the SEO tactics that finish the job and help get your pages to rank higher during search engine queries:

• Blog, news, or other content creation
• Backlinks
• Ongoing optimizations
• Etc, etc.

Schools do a tremendous job of spending money as a reaction to current needs. SEO does not fit well into that model. SEO is a strategic, long-term, and forward-thinking initiative that will bear fruit – and lots of it – over time. Schools that are willing to make that investment today will see results by the time students start arriving for the Fall 2025 semester. That will allow them to get a leg up on their competition for Fall 2026. Schools that don’t make the investment, are going to rely on the same tired tactics that they – and apparently the majority of other schools out there – have been using for years. For example:

• Is your beautiful 30-page Viewbook making the impact you think it is or is it sitting on a table with all of the other viewbooks. Or worse, put in the recycling bin the same day it is received?

• Are you and your competition sending out mass emails to the same list of names you all just purchased? Are they even reading them?

You can do all of those things again and although you’ve made it this far, there is no guarantee it will keep working. It’s time to improvise your marketing strategy, adapt to the new realities of what it’s like to market in 2025 and beyond, and overcome the impending enrollment cliff.

Ooh ra!