I lead digital marketing for a mid-sized state university. We’re getting crushed in AI search by commercial education sites.
The problem:
When prospective students ask ChatGPT or Perplexity questions like:
We’re almost never mentioned. Instead, AI cites:
Our situation:
The challenge:
How do we compete with commercial sites that:
Questions:
Feeling like we’re fighting with one hand tied behind our back.
This is a common challenge in higher ed. The good news: you have advantages you’re not leveraging.
Your hidden advantages:
The problem:
This content is buried, fragmented, and written in academic style.
The solution:
Centralized FAQ hub answering prospective student questions:
Write these in conversational language. Link to department content for details.
Quick win:
Create one comprehensive “Choosing [Your School]” guide with:
This single page can capture significant AI visibility.
We did exactly this at [Large State University].
Our approach:
Created a “Why Choose [Our University]” hub with:
Results after 8 months:
The centralized hub approach works because it creates a single, authoritative source that AI can easily cite.
Admissions perspective here. The content gap is real.
What prospective students ask:
What universities publish:
The mismatch:
Our content doesn’t answer the questions students actually ask. So AI cites commercial sites that DO answer those questions.
What we changed:
AI visibility improved because we finally created content that matches student queries.
Faculty perspective: we’re sitting on expertise AI should be citing.
The opportunity:
When students ask “What should I consider when choosing a computer science program?”, AI should cite actual CS professors, not blog posts.
What works:
Our department’s approach:
Each faculty member has a “For Students” section on their page:
This content gets cited because it’s expert + accessible + relevant.
Schema markup is underutilized in higher ed.
What universities should implement:
Common mistakes:
Quick implementation:
Most CMS platforms (WordPress, Drupal) have schema plugins. The effort is minimal, the impact is significant.
AI systems use schema to understand what your pages are about. Without it, they have to guess.
Community college perspective. Different challenges, some similar.
Our situation:
We compete with for-profit trade schools for AI visibility on career-focused queries.
What worked for us:
The local angle:
AI often includes local context in answers. We optimized for:
Local + practical + outcome-focused = AI citations.
The local angle is smart.
AI and local educational queries:
When users ask “best nursing program near me” or “computer science degrees in [city]”, AI needs local context.
How to capture this:
.edu domains + local optimization + conversational content = strong AI visibility for regional queries.
Content governance is the underlying challenge.
The higher ed content problem:
The solution:
Establish a central content team that:
Governance model:
Departments own program-specific content. Central team owns prospective student journey content. Clear handoff at application stage.
This structure lets you compete with commercial sites that have unified content strategies.
Track what’s working with data.
Metrics to monitor:
What we found:
Use data to prioritize content investment.
This discussion has clarified our path forward. Key takeaways:
Advantages we’re not leveraging:
What we need to create:
Governance changes:
Immediate actions:
Longer term:
We can compete. We just need to package our genuine advantages in formats AI can discover and cite.
Thanks everyone for the insights.
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