american university in bulgaria (AUBG)
Building A World-Class Website For A 30-Year Academic Legacy
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AUBG’s legacy 2014 website ran on outdated technology that wasn’t suitable for a mobile-first audience. We found duplicate page titles, 65 broken pages, 1,321 broken backlinks and a failing 33/100 page speed score.
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Digital Silk ran a data-driven, five-step process benchmarked against peer university websites, delivering a custom, multilingual and accessible website with CRM integration.
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Since launch, the university has seen a 10.3% increase in Domain Rating, a 197% increase in top-3 keyword rankings and a 79% increase in estimated organic traffic value.
The Challenge
AUBG is the first American-style, English-language liberal arts university in Eastern Europe, serving students from 35+ countries alongside alumni, donors, faculty and accreditation bodies. But its website was falling behind.
Outdated, Inflexible Technology
The legacy site launched in 2014 on the Kohana PHP framework, hosted on internal local servers, technology that was hard to update and not built for a mobile-first audience, even though over 70% of traffic came from mobile devices.
No Conversion Funnel Or Clear Storytelling
The homepage and key subpages lacked any clear communication of AUBG’s value propositions, with non-sticky, poorly organized navigation, accessibility issues, distracting side menus and a chat feature that only redirected visitors to a contact page.
Significant SEO & Technical Issues
Every course page shared the same duplicate title and H1, subheadings weren’t keyword-optimized.
The site carried 65 broken pages and 1,321 broken backlinks, including links from Wikipedia and other universities, while roughly 10.6K organic keywords were trending downward.
Failing Page Speed & Buried Trust Content
A page speed score of 33/100 meant the site was failing Core Web Vitals, a direct ranking and UX liability.
High-value trust content like the virtual tour, video testimonials and key stats wasn’t immediately visibile.
The Solution
We ran a five-step, roughly four-month process spanning digital strategy, messaging and planning,
site architecture and wireframes, creative web design, development, QA and launch.
site architecture and wireframes, creative web design, development, QA and launch.
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Data-Driven Digital Strategy
We benchmarked peer institutions, including Butler, Marshall and the University of Washington, with Ahrefs analysis of each, alongside AUBG’s own SEO audit, to create the strategy. -
UVP-Led Messaging & Conversion Paths
Header messaging and story paths were reworked based on AUBG’s value propositions, with distinct pathways and multiple calls to action. -
Custom, Accessible, Multilingual Architecture
The new site is a custom WordPress site with WPML multilingual support and a region/country selector. We also added an accessibility toolbar for text sizing, contrast modes and readable fonts. -
CRM Integration & Content Ecosystem
We integrated Technolutions Slate for custom forms, newsletter capture and applicant portal personalization.
Our experts added a section for AUBG Today news, a Panitza Library functionality, a virtual tour, a filterable events calendar, video and podcast support as well as RSS/web alerts. -
Rebuilt SEO & Technical Foundation
Our SEO solution introduced a unique H1 and title structure, keyword-mapped headings, redirects to resolve broken pages and links and page speed optimization to address the site’s Core Web Vitals failures.
The Results
The redesigned website delivered measurable gains
in search authority and visibility.
Comparing Ahrefs data from August 2021 to today:
in search authority and visibility.
Comparing Ahrefs data from August 2021 to today:
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10.3%increase in Domain Rating
(peak, 2025 vs. baseline) -
197%increase in top-3 keyword rankings
(past 12 months) -
79%increase in organic traffic value
(peak, October 2024 vs. baseline)
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