The Student Recruitment Web Team has been busy working on a number of projects since joining the University. We’ve already done our introduction post, but here is a look behind the screens at what we’ve been working on and a little sneak peak at what’s coming next.
Keeping us factually correct and compliant
Every new recruitment cycle brings updated entry requirements, revised fees and fresh key dates. Ensuring that every piece of information across the site is accurate and compliant is critical for building trust with prospective applicants.
What we did (Phase 1)
We conducted a comprehensive review and fact-check of ~400 key recruitment pages within the /study branch to make sure all information was 100% accurate and up to date for the launch of the new cycle.
This involved working with a large number of key stakeholders from across the University, checking facts, cross-referencing to other pages across the digital estate and hitting deadlines to ensure compliance.
A huge thank you from the entire team to those who worked alongside us in this project – from marketing to the fact-checkers across the University.
What’s next (Phase 2)
Having established an accurate baseline, we are now transitioning into Phase 2. This next phase takes a deeper dive into these pages through an SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and content marketing lens.
We’ll be looking at refining page layouts, improving copy readability, and targeting search terms to ensure our pages are easily discoverable when students search online.
Cleaning up our digital estate
Small site errors might seem minor individually, but combined, they can create unnecessary friction for users and negatively impact search engine performance.
What we tackled
We systematically resolved ~450 web hygiene issues across the Study branch, focusing on broken links, misspellings, CMS (Content Management System) preview links (internal links that point to CMS pages rather than to the live page) and incorrect heading hierarchies (H1, H2, H3).
As part of this project, we reviewed and implemented changes including:
- 26 CMS preview links changed.
- 64 incorrect subheading structures were altered.
- 108 misspellings and grammatical errors were amended.
- 146 broken links were fixed.
And from a user experience perspective:
- 53 links with unhelpful anchor text were changed.
- 44 large images were resized and re-uploaded.
- 6 email addresses missing the correct attribute were amended.
Why it matters
Fixing broken links and typos keeps prospective students focused on discovering what makes our institution unique, rather than getting stuck on dead ends. Frustrated people don’t stay on websites, and that’s the exact opposite of what we want – and need.
Correct heading structures ensure our pages are fully accessible to visitors using screen readers, while also making it easier for search engine crawlers, and LLMs (Large Language Models) to understand and index our content correctly.
The results
Using Siteimprove, our website quality assurance software, as our source of truth, it’s great to see our overall quality score increase by nearly five percentage points over the last 30 days.
This is a direct result of the team’s hard work on the hygiene project and comfortably puts us well ahead of the industry average (~74/100).
It’s also encouraging to see our overall SEO score increase significantly after remaining largely static for most of the year. Reaching ~88, our current score is the highest recorded since tracking began in February 2026.
After working through this project in bulk, we will now enter a phase of proactive monitoring, receiving regular reports from the platform to action quality issues as and when they are spotted – rather than allowing them to snowball over time.
Here’s some other stuff we’ll be taking you through in future blog posts…
- Procurement of SEO tooling – to allow us to track our visibility in search, we have procured software that will allow us to see how we appear in Google and AI chat bots.
- Structured data and schema – implementing behind-the-scenes code to help search engines better understand our pages, ensuring rich snippets (like key course details, dates and FAQs) display directly in Google search results.
- External agency keyword research – partnering with a specialist agency to uncover high-intent search terms and query gaps across, giving us the data needed to optimise our pages effectively.
- Homepage optimisation – workshopping and wireframing a new homepage that targets prospective students while maintaining our core values and research intensive nature.
Looking further ahead
Balancing foundational maintenance (like link fixes and fact-checking) with strategic visual and structural improvements allows us to build a seamless digital experience for our future students.
As we move forward into Phase 2 of our annual updates, continue testing new page layouts and produce exciting new content, we’ll keep sharing updates on our progress.
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