{"id":1115,"date":"2026-04-15T12:25:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T12:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/webteam\/?p=1115"},"modified":"2026-04-15T13:28:50","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T13:28:50","slug":"seo-as-a-silo-buster-connecting-exeter-through-the-web","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/webteam\/2026\/04\/15\/seo-as-a-silo-buster-connecting-exeter-through-the-web\/","title":{"rendered":"SEO as a Silo Buster: Connecting Exeter through the Web\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Universities are knowledge-generating machines; large,\u00a0complex\u00a0organisations with specialisms\u00a0extending across\u00a0teaching and research,\u00a0sustainability, global partnerships, and professional services. And as in many\u00a0large\u00a0institutions, the biggest inefficiencies are rarely caused by people working badly.\u00a0Rather, they are caused by people working well. In parallel, independently, and without visibility of one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the silo problem in higher education (HE). Structurally complex with a tendency to fragment into a\u00a0labyrinthine\u00a0network of self-contained units, universities are increasingly looking to tackle the efficiency drag that silos create.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With teams often developing their own workflows, channels, and definitions of success, one result of this problem is an over-generation and under-utilisation of content. With well-documented\u00a0HE\u00a0sector pressures in the UK and\u00a0around the world,\u00a0doing more with less has never\u00a0been more important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As part of Digital Visibility 2030, the University of Exeter\u2019s strategic initiative to optimise and increase our presence on traditional and AI search platforms,\u00a0we are discovering that search engine optimisation (SEO) and silo-busting are more intertwined than they might first appear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An unlikely strategic asset <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Our Digital (Web) Team manages the central University\u00a0website, ranging from our corporate and information pages, through to tactical research and student recruitment content. Our centralised web management structure, whilst seeming\u00a0unremarkable on the surface, is significant in practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a sector where web governance is frequently and inconsistently devolved to various levels of organisational units, we have a single team with full oversight of the institutional web presence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That means we sit at the intersection of huge swathes of the University\u2019s content generation. Whether it\u2019s research communications, marketing campaign assets, sustainability commitments, partnership announcements \u2013 all of it passes through, or is at least visible to, our\u00a0team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is an unparalleled breadth of organisational visibility, and one we are increasingly exploiting for strategic value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Digital Visibility 2030 <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Digital Visibility 2030 is the University of Exeter’s strategic SEO initiative. Launched as a one-year sprint project with ambitions to embed lasting change,\u00a0what has emerged as one of the most\u00a0productive strategies within the project was not something we planned from the outset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the project has developed, it\u2019s become increasingly clear that the central position of our team, combined with an SEO framework for evaluating our digital estate and\u00a0content portfolio, has given us a powerful tool for identifying and exploiting content that was already sitting elsewhere in the University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short: we\u00a0are hunting down collections of\u00a0pre-existing\u00a0content, that has genuine search value or potential, and that\u00a0either is not optimised for search and discovery or hasn\u2019t been put onto the web at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SEO as Organisational Glue <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The reason SEO works so well as a silo-busting mechanism is that it provides a neutral, evidence-based framework for evaluating content across teams. Search data tells us exactly what our stakeholders are looking for.\u00a0It does not care which team owns the content, or what internal structure it sits within. It simply shows us the types of content being searched for, and how well we are meeting that demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That framework gives us a legitimate reason to reach into every corner of the organisation. If keyword data or search trends show us that prospective students, potential collaborators, or other stakeholders are asking questions we aren’t answering, we can explore and work across teams to find whether those answers already exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Few organisations can credibly claim expertise across as many subjects as a university. Turning that breadth into visibility, and visibility into reputation,\u00a0is the overarching ambition of Digital Visibility 2030.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Content repurposing in practice <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The practical manifestation of this approach is content repurposing. Rather than generating new content from scratch, we are identifying content that already exists in one part of the organisation and working with the relevant team to adapt and publish it on the web in a search-optimised form. This is a sustainable and scalable way to expand our web visibility, rather than slow and\u00a0resource intensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since August, Digital Visibility 2030 has seen us work with\u00a0our International Student Recruitment team to repurpose non-indexable* entry requirement and agent contact databases into search-optimised by-country landing pages for prospective students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ve also repurposed long-form and blog content from across a range of to-be-decommissioned\u00a0websites\u00a0by conducting pre-decommission SEO audits. One\u00a0such\u00a0piece\u00a0of recovered content\u00a0has since become one of our most visited pages in 2026. Bonus points if you can work out which page it is!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As this strategic framework has become more embedded in our project planning, we\u2019ve begun work on several further content repurposing projects including: <\/p>\n\n\n\n