How Is AI Changing SEO for Higher Education Websites?
September 3, 2025
By Matt Kenny
Key Takeaways
The usage of Large Language Models (LLMs) continues to grow at an accelerating rate, with recent data showing 58% of U.S. adults under 30 have used ChatGPT at least once.
Studies show that Google’s latest AI updates (like AI Overviews and AI Mode) will also decrease organic traffic for numerous websites.
To succeed in this new AI era, universities must update their SEO strategies by optimizing for AI search alongside traditional search.
If you’re worried about your website’s recent decline in organic traffic, you’re not alone.
From prospective students' rising usage of AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity to Google's own AI developments, there are plenty of reasons to be concerned about your university’s SEO performance metrics right now.
New research from Semrush even projects that AI search traffic (including Google’s own AI search features) could overtake traditional organic search traffic by early 2028.
Another recent study from Everspring found that the presence of Google’s AI overviews led to a 70-90% decline in organic clicks for their top-ranking university pages.
With new AI updates dropping every week, it can be hard to keep up with everything while simultaneously juggling your existing work responsibilities.
That’s why we decided to break everything down into a helpful article that explores how AI is changing SEO for higher education websites, as well as some practical tips on how you can adjust your strategy to keep up with these seismic shifts.
What are the significant AI changes happening right now?
The growing impact of AI on the SEO landscape can be seen through three key developments:
Growing usage of LLMs
Google AI Overviews
Google AI Mode
Understanding these developments is crucial for maintaining your institution’s online visibility and effectively recruiting prospective students through SEO efforts.
Let’s break down each.
What are LLMs?
Large Language Models, or LLMs, are advanced predictive language models trained on massive amounts of web text. They are designed to understand and generate human-like text, engage in conversational interactions, and provide direct answers to queries.
A notable example is ChatGPT, which was launched in November 2022 and has experienced widespread adoption, reaching nearly 800 million weekly active users as of April 2025. Other major LLMs include Perplexity, Claude, Copilot, and Google's Gemini.
Recent data indicate that 58% of U.S. adults under 30 have used ChatGPT at least once, with nearly half of these users being aged 18-24.
How are LLMs changing SEO?
LLMs are slowly changing the SEO ecosystem by altering user search behavior and what constitutes as "visibility" online. Since these tools primarily focus on providing users with direct answers rather than the ten blue links typically seen in traditional search engines (such as Google or Bing), this could lead to fewer website visitors as their adoption grows over time.
But just to be clear, LLM searches are nowhere close to overtaking Google’s over 14 billion searches per day, despite what you may have heard.
The real impact these tools are having on SEO is the AI enhancements they’re forcing traditional search engines like Google and Bing to make to keep up with users' evolving search habits.
Two of these AI enhancements from Google are causing a massive disruption to the SEO industry, which we’ll dive into next.
1. What are Google AI Overviews?
Google AI Overviews (AIOs) are AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of traditional search engine results pages (SERPs). They were first launched in May 2024 to provide users with quick, AI-powered answers to their search queries.
Since their original launch, numerous studies have been conducted across the SEO community, all pointing to the same conclusion:
The presence of AI Overviews leads to reduced clicks for top-ranking pages in Google.
In fact, Ahrefs conducted a study that found on average, AI Overviews reduce clicks by 34.5% for top-ranking pages in the search results.
This is one of the main reasons you might have seen a decline in your organic traffic over the past year, even if your site’s keyword rankings have remained the same.
Many in the SEO industry are now referring to this phenomenon as “The Great Decoupling” due to the growing disconnect between impressions and clicks from SEO content, as shown in the screenshot below.
As if this weren’t disruptive enough to the SEO ecosystem, Google rolled out another feature in early 2025 that many believe will become the new face of the search engine experience: Google AI Mode.
2. What is Google AI Mode?
Google AI Mode is an advanced, interactive AI-powered search experience that was launched in May 2025. It is designed to be more than just an upgraded version of their AI Overviews, offering a ChatGPT-like interface that has the potential to completely replace the traditional search results page.
AI Mode represents a fundamental shift in SEO, moving beyond the traditional ten blue links that we’re all used to seeing in typical Google search results.
Here are some of the top things we’re noticing from AI Mode so far:
It Uses a Query Fan-Out Technique
AI Mode utilizes a "query fan-out" technique, where a single query is expanded into multiple related subqueries, which are then executed in parallel to retrieve the most relevant content. This means even though a piece of content might be optimized for a specific keyword or topic, it could still be outranked in AI Mode because another page includes more contextually relevant sub-questions or sub-topics.
AI Mode Results Differ From Both AI Overviews and Organic Search
A recent study by SE Ranking found that AI Mode and AI Overviews only have an average URL overlap of 10.7% and a domain overlap of 16%. Additionally, the same study found that AI Mode and organic search results have an average URL overlap of 14% and a domain overlap of 21.9%. This suggests AI Mode could be operating under a different system than both AI Overviews and traditional organic search.
AI Mode Results Have High Volatility
In the same study by SE Ranking, they found that Google AI Mode results show only a 9.2% URL overlap across repeat searches for the same query. This means that tracking specific keywords in AI Mode will be close to impossible, unlike the relatively static search pages that most SEO professionals are accustomed to using when performing traditional keyword research.
What does all of this mean for higher education websites?
For higher education websites, these AI advancements signal a fundamental shift in how prospective students interact with search engines and discover programs. Here are some of the top things to keep in mind:
AI is the new "Front Door": Students are increasingly starting and ending their search journeys with AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews, which act as "advisors" and "gatekeepers". If your website is not cited in these different AI responses, you become effectively invisible to a large portion of your target audience, especially the more AI-savvy Gen Z demographic.
Organic traffic will decline: With AI tools designed to answer questions directly in their search results, the click-through rates for traditional organic results will continue to drop as AI adoption grows. However, the traffic that eventually funnels to websites from AI searches will become much more valuable. A recent Semrush study found that the average LLM visitor is 4.4 times more valuable than the average traditional organic search user.
Traffic quality will increase: Although organic traffic may decrease, the traffic that does come to websites from AI search tends to be higher-quality, being 4.4 times more valuable than traditional search traffic based on conversion rates. This is because AI models can provide users with comprehensive information upfront, leading to more informed and ready-to-convert prospects eventually reaching your website.
Channel diversification will be a necessity: AI models draw on a wide array of text and prioritize brand mentions, even unlinked ones, across the web. Your university's presence across different online channels (including forums, social media, and external websites) is now more crucial than just optimizing your own website. Brand authority and trustworthiness are now becoming the primary click motivators for people using these AI search environments.
How should you adjust your SEO efforts right now?
Strategic adjustments in your institutions’ SEO efforts will need to be made and tested to adapt to this new AI search landscape and ensure your university remains competitive and visible.
Here are some of our top recommendations based on everything we’re seeing right now:
1. Start tracking AI search performance:
Update your web analytics platform (e.g., Google Analytics) to ensure you track incoming traffic across different AI tools and pinpoint which pages this traffic uses to enter and convert on across your website.
Update your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) from only tracking organic clicks and keyword rankings within search engines to regularly measuring brand mentions, link citations, and share of voice across different AI tools.
2. Optimize Your Content for Both Traditional Search and AI Search:
Break up large walls of text into smaller subsections: Ensure your SEO content is well-structured with clear subheadings (H2/H3) and concise paragraphs underneath each one. Since AI tools break content down into smaller segments, or “chunks” as they’re also referred to, this approach to structuring your content will improve your chances of getting cited by them. Also, whenever possible, use bullet points to break up larger ideas and make your content more easily scannable for readers and AI tools – just like we’re doing in this blog post!
Cite relevant high-authority sources whenever possible: Improve citation-worthiness in AI tools by including specific, up-to-date, verifiable claims with source citations in your content (linking to studies, stats, experts). Show clear authorship and credentials for E-E-A-T (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) signals, and refresh content regularly with updated publish timestamps.
Shift from targeting “keywords” to “topics”: Move past targeting singular keywords in your SEO content plans by implementing a topic cluster model with comprehensive "pillar" pages summarizing broader topics and "cluster" pages covering specific subtopics more in-depth. Cross-link between these pages to establish clear semantic relationships across topics and subtopics, thus helping AI tools understand your authority across these different areas of focus for your website.
Integrate multi-modal support: Ensure images, videos, charts, and tables are crawlable and machine-readable. Use descriptive alt text for images, captions for visuals, and HTML tables instead of pictures of tables so that they can be better understood by AI tools scanning through your content.
Ensure AI Crawlability and Indexability: Allow AI crawlers (e.g., GPTBot, Google-Extended, PerplexityBot) through your robots.txt and firewalls. Render essential SEO content server-side and avoid noindex or nosnippet rules on valuable content you want AI to use and cite across their platforms to maximize your AI brand visibility.
3. Perform Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Experiments on Your Website:
As overall traffic from traditional search engines is expected to decrease, optimizing your website to increase conversions from reduced traffic becomes even more critical in this new age of search. Given that AI search traffic is often higher-quality, optimizing your on-site experience to maximize conversions can yield significant returns for your website.
4. Repurpose SEO Content for Different Platforms:
Beyond your website, develop content strategies for social media and user-generated content (UGC) platforms where prospective students might engage. This includes actively monitoring and engaging with discussions on platforms such as Reddit or YouTube, which are frequently cited by various AI tools.
5. Create SEO Content That Gets Your Brand Mentioned on Other Websites
Unlike traditional organic search results, studies show that getting mentioned by other websites can lead to higher visibility in AI search results, even if these other websites don’t link directly to your website. While originally viewed as a missed opportunity for gaining new backlinks to your website, these “unlinked brand mentions” are now an important piece in improving brand visibility in AI search, due to how AI tools scan & process written content differently from traditional search engines.
Using original research (like surveys, in-depth listicles, or other forms of studies) or in-depth thought leadership articles, create SEO content that makes your website the source of truth within your areas of expertise and encourages other sites to reference your brand’s unique insights.
Not sure how to tackle all this?
That’s where we come into play! As the Agency of Preference®, TrendyMinds is at the forefront of experimenting with new ways to win in this new AI search landscape and applying what we’ve learned to each higher education client we work with.
Additionally, we have extensive experience in enhancing digital ad performance for higher education institutions, as demonstrated in this client case study.
Contact us today to learn how we can help improve your website’s AI search presence and optimize your institution’s existing digital marketing efforts with additional channel support.
Matt Kenny
Matt Kenny is an SEO Director with 8+ years of experience in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and digital marketing. Matt’s top interests currently include: SEO content strategy, Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). When he’s not helping clients with all their SEO needs, he can typically be found chillaxing with his partner and 3 fur babies, playing video games, or shooting some hoops at a nearby basketball court.
