Three levers turned an invisible microsite into a search presence
64x
ranking organic keywords, from 2 (Nov 2023) to 129 (Dec 2024)
55
peak monthly organic visits (Feb 2025), up from zero
10.6K
estimated paid visits, Dec 2023 to Aug 2025 (peak 2,817 in Jan 2025)
41%
of all organic traffic value earned after paid ads ended
THE CHALLENGE
Invisible in search, friction on the page
Through November 2023, the microsite had no measurable organic traffic and ranked for 10 or fewer keywords a month. Prospective students researching online law programs were not finding it in search, and paid traffic was a trickle of one visit or less a month.
Visibility was only half the problem. Visitors who did arrive met friction on the page: rage clicks, the rapid repeated clicks that signal a page isn't doing what the visitor expects. A microsite has few pages, so every page has to rank and convert.
THE APPROACH
Buy visibility now, earn it over time, make visits count
December 2023 program kickoff
Increase paid search spend
Apply Semrush SEO fixes
Fix friction found in Microsoft Clarity
A findable, smoother microsite
- Increase paid search spend. Paid budget scaled up in two waves: April to August 2024 (about $1,000 to $3,400 a month in Semrush-estimated cost), then December 2024 to March 2025 (about $10,000 to $11,500 a month).
- Apply Semrush SEO recommendations. SEO changes followed Semrush’s recommendations, so the microsite could rank for the terms prospective law students search.
- Fix friction found in Microsoft Clarity. Heatmaps showed where visitors clicked and how far they scrolled. Session recordings showed where they got stuck. Rage-click hot spots pointed to specific elements and content to remedy.
- Run them together. All three workstreams started in December 2023, so new visitors from paid and organic search landed on pages that were being tuned for them.
Why this matters: Paid search brings visitors in quickly, SEO makes the site findable without paying for every click, and Clarity makes sure both kinds of visitor find what they came for.
THE RESULTS
Search visibility climbed from December 2023
Organic visits (orange, left axis) and Semrush-estimated paid visits (grey bars, right axis), Nov 2023 to Aug 2025. Source: Semrush.
Paid search carried the volume, peaking at 2,817 estimated visits in January 2025. Organic visits are smaller in number, but they held on without spend: 42 to 43 a month in April and May 2025, after the last paid click.
THE RESULTS, CONTINUED
Paid search carried the volume; SEO carried on without it
| After paid ended: $925 (41%) | While paid ran: $1,356 |
| Phase | Months | Paid visits | Paid Costs | Organic visits | Organic value |
| Launch | Dec 2023 – Mar 2024 | 25 | $42 | 5 | $11 |
| Paid wave 1 | Apr – Aug 2024 | 2,637 | $10,850 | 121 | $255 |
| Between waves | Sep – Nov 2024 | 437 | $2,178 | 67 | $181 |
| Paid wave 2 | Dec 2024 – Mar 2025 | 7,514 | $42,737 | 191 | $909 |
| After paid ended | Apr – Aug 2025 | 0 | $0 | 120 | $925 |
| Total | Dec 2023 – Aug 2025 | 10,613 | $55,807 | 504 | $2,281 |
| Month | Organic visits | Organic value | Value per visit |
| November 2024 | 45 | $116 | about $2.60 |
| June 2025 | 30 | $354 | about $11.80 |
Source: Semrush
WHY IT WORKED
Four signals connect the changes to the gains
Timing. The lift starts in December 2023, the month the three workstreams began. Ranking keywords jumped from 2 to 39 that month and kept climbing through 2024.
Organic gains outlasted paid. Paid ads stopped after March 2025, yet organic visits held at 42 to 43 a month in April and May, and organic traffic value peaked at $354 in June 2025.
Higher-value rankings. Value per organic visit climbed from about $2.60 to about $11.80, showing the SEO work reached terms worth paying for.
Less friction on the page. Clarity heatmaps and session recordings pinpointed rage-click hot spots, so paid and organic visitors alike landed on pages that behaved the way they expected.
Taken together, these signals show strong alignment between the December 2023 changes and the microsite’s growth in search visibility, particularly the organic visibility that persisted after paid spend stopped.
LESSONS
What carried, and what to carry forward
Program transition. Organic visibility tapered in June and July 2025, and Semrush tracks no traffic for the subdomain from August 2025. That drop-off reflects a business change, not a performance one: OU Law moved away from Elsmere Education and took marketing operations in-house.
Pair paid with SEO from day one. Paid search delivered most of the volume, but SEO kept the site visible after spend stopped.
Watch real sessions, not just reports. Clarity heatmaps and recordings surfaced rage-click friction that traffic numbers alone would not show.
Treat visibility as ongoing. Rankings slipped within months of the program winding down, so a content and SEO refresh cadence is what protects the gains.
Methodology. Data: Semrush domain overview trend export for lawonline.ou.edu (subdomain, worldwide), exported October 1, 2026. Reporting window: December 2023 to August 2025, with November 2023 shown as a baseline. Traffic, keyword, and cost figures are Semrush estimates, not first-party analytics. Microsoft Clarity findings are described qualitatively. The findings show correlation between the December 2023 changes and the gains, not proven causation; other factors, including search engine algorithm updates, may also contribute.
