Higher Education SEO Local & National
Background Information
Pennsylvania Institute of Technology (P.I.T.) is a private college based in Media, Pennsylvania, offering a wide range of associate and bachelor’s degree programs both on-campus and online. Their program catalog spans high-demand fields including healthcare, business, technology, and data analytics and is one of the most distinctive cannabis education programs in the country with associate degrees in Cannabis Business, Cannabis Health Therapy, and Cannabis Horticulture.
P.I.T. came to Sixth City Marketing looking for an SEO agency in Pittsburgh that could grow inquiries from prospective students at a time when many colleges and institutions were struggling to fill seats.
Initial Situation
When P.I.T. first started working with us in May 2024, their existing efforts were averaging roughly 250–300 organic SEO leads per month.
They had previously been in a marketing agreement that didn’t deliver the results they were hoping for, which meant we needed to do our part to not only show results but also build trust, too.
Our initial goal was to increase monthly SEO leads from prospective students to 400 per month. Adding to the challenge was that their online programs were competing not just against other local colleges, but also national schools.
Upon partnering with us, they gave us a clear list of which programs they wanted to focus on:
- Cannabis Business, Cannabis Health Therapy, and Cannabis Horticulture
- Licensed Practical Nursing Certificate
- Diagnostic Medical Sonography Associate Degree
- Physical Therapist Assistant Associate Degree
- Business Administration (Associate and Bachelor’s)
What Our Team Did to Help
We provided SEO services for higher education to reach the different types of potential students: recent high school graduates and professionals in fields like cannabis, healthcare, business, and data analytics. Our team focused on the following:
Program and Certificate Page Optimization
We optimized P.I.T.’s program and certificate pages with targeted keywords and detailed descriptions designed to match search queries for different career paths. We structured these pages to ensure they answered the questions a real student would be asking. For example: What career paths would this degree open up? How much money can I make with this program? And so on.
Statistics and Industry Data Content
We published a variety of career-focused and industry trend content and infographics such as “Data Analytics Trends for 2025” that allowed us to connect their specific programs with what’s happening right now in that respective industry.
Digital PR and Link Building
We used popular platforms such as Featured and Qwoted to help land new mentions and links to strengthen their domain in order to compete with larger national institutions that their online programs competed with.
Balance of Local and National Approaches
Because P.I.T. offers both on-site and online programs, our strategy had to balance both local, Pennsylvania-focused terms and broader national terms.
Results of Our Work
Through the combination of work, we were able to deliver record-breaking results for P.I.T. From June 2024 through February 2025, they gained:
- Organic form submissions that resulted in 170 enrolled students
- 260+ more organic leads over our goal in a single month (January 2025)
- 70x ROI on their SEO investment
Additionally, from May 1 to July 31, 2025, compared to the same period in 2024, we saw:
- Organic traffic increased 142% (58,950 vs. 24,408)
- Organic search impressions grew by more than one million (2.14 million vs. 1.02 million)
“We have been working with Sixth City Marketing for over a year and it has been a very good experience. They have helped up improve our SEO position tremendously.”
– Joe Klenk, Pennsylvania Institute of Technology