Higher education
|
USA
|
2026
- Overview
About the project
Istituto Marangoni Miami is the Miami Design District campus of Istituto Marangoni, the fashion and design school founded in Milan in 1935.
We joined as the school’s SEO and AI search partner while the site was still recovering from a hack. The brief: clean up the index, strengthen program pages, move the site from .com to .edu without losing rankings, and get the school into the answers of ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI.
- SEO & GEO
Full-Cycle SEO Process
01Security & Technical Recovery
The site came to us after a hack. Spam URLs sat in Google’s index, bot traffic distorted analytics, and 301 and 404 errors kept piling up. We removed the hacked pages from the index, disavowed spam links, fixed broken redirects and moved the site from Yoast to RankMath PRO with every redirect imported.
From there we took over security monitoring and technical support for the whole engagement: monthly audits, fixes, link checks and GA4 and GTM setup, so the site stayed clean and measurable.
02Program Pages & Content
Program pages drive applications, so they came first. We rewrote H1s, titles and meta descriptions across every degree level, from Associate to Master’s, added FAQ and Course schema, image alt text for AI search and internal links between related programs.
On the blog we refreshed older posts with growth potential, upgraded E-E-A-T signals and published new articles for AI search. Week by week, the average Google position on the new domain climbed from 20 to under 7.
03Local SEO in Four Markets
The school recruits nationally, so we tracked rankings in Miami, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. For the Miami campus we optimized the Google Business Profile, Apple Maps and Bing Places listings, published regular GBP posts and built local citations.
Every month we checked new citations and links for indexing and removed spam links from the profile.
04Migration from .com to .edu
Before the move we built a clean master version of the site and a 1:1 redirect map for every URL. One rule guided the launch: do no harm. No content changes on launch day, no orphaned pages.
The .edu domain went live in May 2026. Within eight weeks, weekly clicks reached 98% of the pre-migration average, and Domain Rating on .edu grew from 3 to 35, above the old .com.
05GEO: Visibility in AI Search
Prospective students now ask ChatGPT and Gemini which school to pick. We set up a fixed panel of 64 prompts across the main AI assistants, audited 773 domains that shape AI answers in the category and published a standalone Wikipedia article for the Miami school.
Next we designed a Career Outcomes hub with structured data from the placement facts the school already publishes, and started restructuring the Media & Press section. Between June and October 2026, AI citations of the site grew 30x.
- Outcome
Results
Istituto Marangoni Miami moved to a new .edu domain without a long traffic dip. Weekly clicks reached 98% of the pre-migration average in eight weeks, average position improved from 9.1 to 7.1, and click-through rate rose by 51%.
The school also became a regular source for AI assistants. Between June and October 2026, citations of the site in AI answers grew 30x, spread across dozens of pages. On our 64-prompt panel, the school appears in about 80% of AI answers.
- Key metrics
Results in Numbers
Baseline: January 2026 on istitutomarangonimiami.com, before the migration. Current figures: September and October 2026 on istitutomarangonimiami.edu. Sources: Google Search Console and Ahrefs.
Citations of the site in AI answers, June vs October 2026. Source: Ahrefs
Weekly clicks on .edu vs the pre-migration weekly average on .com. Source: GSC
Before the migration vs September 2026. Source: GSC
January 2026 on .com vs September 2026 on .edu. Source: GSC
Up from 27 on the old .com domain within five months. Source: Ahrefs
Share of answers that mention the school across a 64-prompt panel in four AI assistants
- Data
Growth Timeline
Weekly Google clicks on the new domain from launch to the end of September, shown against the pre-migration average. Below: growth of AI citations by platform and Domain Rating month by month.
- Deliverables
What the Client Received
We ran the full digital side of the school’s search presence for the whole engagement. That meant site security and technical support, the domain migration, content, local SEO, link building, AI visibility, analytics and a monthly report in Oviond with a plan for the next month.
The school got one team accountable for how the site performs in search and in AI answers, from the server-level cleanup after the hack to the citations that make AI assistants quote it.
- SCOPE OF WORK · JAN – OCT 2026
One team accountable for search and AI visibility
01 / 06
- Cleanup after the hack: malicious pages removed from the index, index sanitized
- Ongoing technical support in line with search engine requirements
- Monthly technical SEO audits with fixes implemented
- Yoast to RankMath PRO switch with full redirect import
- Spanish version deactivated with a relevant redirect map
- Monthly external link checks and spam link disavow
02 / 06
- Pre-migration site crawl, backlink analysis and 1:1 redirect map
- Change of Address, sitemaps and index coverage control in Search Console
- GTM audit, dual tagging and cross-domain tracking in GA4
- Conversion testing and attribution validation
- Daily indexation tracking of the new domain, post-migration audit and fixes
- Every citation and directory listing moved from .com to .edu
03 / 06
- Titles, H1s, header structure and internal linking for every degree level
- FAQ blocks with FAQ schema, Course schema and image alt text for AI search
- Snippet optimization for the highest-impression pages
- Regular refresh of older articles with growth potential
- New articles written for AI search, including Top Fashion Schools in the USA
- E-E-A-T upgrades for blog content and HubSpot landing pages
04 / 06
- Mention tracking in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity
- 64-prompt AI visibility panel with monthly runs
- Audit of 773 domains that shape AI answers in the category
- Wikipedia article for Istituto Marangoni Miami
- Career Outcomes hub design and career blocks for 16 program pages
- Media & Press section restructure into a coverage record
05 / 06
- Google Business Profile audit, monthly posts, photos and video
- Review responses and reply templates
- Apple Maps and Bing Places optimization
- Local citations and NAP consistency
- Monthly link building with anchor lists and briefs
- Backlink gap analysis against competing schools
06 / 06
- GA4 and Google Tag Manager setup and audit
- Rank tracking in Miami, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles
- Competitor analysis, site structure and promotion strategy
- Monthly Oviond dashboard: Search Console, GA4, GBP, AI citations, conversions
- Monthly work plan agreed with the school’s team
- People Behind the Project
Project Team
SEO Strategy: Olga Don
Marketing Strategy & Client Relations: Vladyslav Trusov
SEO & Content: Tetiana Vyshyvana
Link Building: Yana Makhnovska
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