iFactory

A high schooler asks ChatGPT about your school's transfer credit policies. The answer pulls from four different pages on your .edu: admissions, the registrar, an academic department, and an old PDF buried in financial aid. Do they all even say the same thing?

That student doesn't know your org chart. They don't know which office "owns" the answer. They just know they got a confusing or incorrect response from AI search, and 18% of them will quietly remove you from their list because of it.

Your site was probably organized around how your institution is structured. AI search is organized around how prospective students actually ask questions. Those two things are no longer aligned, and the gap is starting to show up in your funnel.

We're offering free customized AI Readiness Audits for higher ed institutions. You'll see exactly how AI search tools currently find, interpret, and represent your .edu, plus where the contradictions and gaps are pulling you out of consideration.

Request yours: https://bit.ly/42JP7Iz

A few years ago, SEO felt like a settled discipline.

We knew the playbook. Clean architecture, smart content, earned links. Higher ed teams who put in the work eventually saw the rankings climb. Now we are watching prospective students turn to ChatGPT and Perplexity before they ever opened Google. Seeing AI Overviews answer questions our clients used to win clicks for. Realizing the institutions getting named in those AI answers weren't always the ones ranking highest.

It would be easy to read this as SEO dying, or to dismiss Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) as the next buzzword cycle. We don't think either is right. GEO is a new layer that sits on top of solid SEO foundations. The institutions doing both well are the ones whose names show up when a prospective student asks AI for program recommendations. The ones picking sides are losing ground in different directions depending on which side they pick.

We’ve spent the past few weeks writing up what we've learned about how SEO and GEO actually compare for higher ed: what's the same, what's genuinely different, and where to focus optimization work over the next two quarters.

Read our latest post. https://bit.ly/4f62FW2

Most Drupal vs. WordPress comparisons miss the point.

After two decades of building on both platforms for universities, academic medical centers, and nonprofits, we've stopped believing the feature-by-feature debate helps anyone make a better decision. Both platforms are enterprise-ready. Both can handle federated multisite, complex integrations, SOC 2-grade security, and the governance demands of institutions with thousands of pages and dozens of editors.
If they're both that capable, the interesting question isn't which one is better. It's which one fits the organization you already are. Our new piece walks digital leaders through the six factors to decide a CMS selection.

Choosing a CMS is mostly an exercise in knowing your own organization. The institutions that choose well are the ones that treat it that way.
Read the full piece. https://bit.ly/4ezDAT9

Let’s take a walk, Boston.

Rush Hour is a novel networking experience for Semrush customers in Boston. No slides. No pitches. Just a small group of local marketers, a great walking route through the city, conversation, and coffee at Revival (on Semrush ☕)

Join us on April 28 from 9:00–10:30 AM for a not-so-typical networking event, hosted by Beth Carron, iFactory’s Director of Higher Education Services and a Boston-based digital strategist with over 17 years of experience.

SEMRush will cover the café tab — you just have to show up. We can’t wait to see you there. Register today.https://bit.ly/47YUqXI