SEO Competitor Analysis: Oxford University Vs Cambridge University

You hear about them in the same breath all the time; Oxford and Cambridge. Usually in reference to their rivalry. Whether in the famous annual boat race or on University Challenge.

The annual rowing competition between the Cambridge University Boat Club and the Oxford University Boat Club started in 1829.

Perhaps one of the greatest university rivalries of all time.

But this is actually an offshoot of a much older historic rivalry between the two adversaries. In fact, it’s one that dates back more than 800 years to the 12th century!

In terms of education, this is how Oxford University and Cambridge University rank today. Taken from the QS World University Rankings Top 10 Universities 2021:

However, in case you are curious, the QS World University Rankings Top University 2021 is Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

For our latest report, we are going to study this famous rivalry from an SEO point of view.

So let’s meet our SEO competitors…

In the blue corner we have Oxford University and in the red, is Cambridge University!

So far we can see that both universities were established in the 12th century. However, interestingly, both their website domains were registered in the same month and year; September 2003.

But hold onto your hats….

Bizarrely they were both registered on the same day, of the same month, of the same year. Specifically, Wednesday 17 September 2003!

So this will level the playing field in terms of analysing their websites.

Okay, preliminaries completed. So let’s kick off this report with an analysis of each university’s competing domains.

These will include other websites that rank in the top 10 results for the same keywords.

We expected that they would be in each other’s list of top competing domains. But actually, this is not the case.

Check this out…

Note: Cambridge Uni does not appear in Oxford Uni’s top 50 competing domains

Note: Oxford Uni does not appear in Oxford Uni’s top 50 competing domains

Both universities have very similar domain overviews. With domain ratings that most online businesses can only dream of.

But, Cambridge Uni has almost four times the amount of backlinks (15) from fewer referring domains.

Of course, we’ll dig into the quality of those backlinks in a bit. But next up we will examine each Universities linking metrics:

First, we discovered that Cambridge Uni has a slightly larger website than Oxford Uni.

However, Oxford Uni has a higher percentage of pages that bring traffic to their websites (62% versus 35% Cambridge Uni).

As we saw earlier, Cambridge Uni has almost four times the number of backlinks (15,304,227 backlinks). This is compared to Oxford Uni’s 5,386,977 backlinks.

But Cambridge Uni also has the most number of ‘dofollow’ backlinks (98%).

Both universities have had similar growth in referring domains since March 2013. That is, the total number of unique domains linking to their websites.

However, Oxford Uni wins for the most pronounced growth. With a 126% increase between March 2013 and November 2020. From 22,088 referring domains to 50,043 referring domains.

And the similarities continue when we look at their referring pages since March 2013.

But Cambridge Uni owns the referring pages crown.

Not only do Cambridge Uni currently have the most referring pages (2,796,469). But they also experienced the greatest growth in referring pages between March 2013 and November 2020.

That’s a 274% increase versus Oxford Uni’s 138% increase.

Even though Oxford University had double the amount of traffic in May 2015. It seems that Cambridge University has enjoyed almost four times the amount of growth.

For instance, in November 2020, Cambridge University’s website received 3,639,499 Visits versus Oxford University’s 1,894,290 Visits.

Once again, the overall “shape” of keyword growth is pretty similar between the two universities. However, when we take a closer look at the data, Oxford University once again outperforms Cambridge University.

Of course, this is completely inline with the traffic growth we saw earlier.

In May 2015, Oxford Uni had 169 keywords in the top 3 ranking positions versus Cambridge Uni’s 77.

However, by November 2020, Oxford Uni had increased their top 3 keywords by 32,474% to 55,051 keywords!

Despite this, Cambridge University managed to pip Oxford University to the post with 1,149 more top 3 keywords.

Oxford University’s first five top pages account for 162,085 website visits. In other words, 0.08% of total website traffic.

Cambridge University’s first five top pages account for 248,109 website visits. And that equates to 0.06% of total website traffic.

Naturally, as you may expect, the homepage brings in the most traffic for both universities.

However, Oxford University’s homepage attracts more visitors. With 64,206 versus 63,669 for Cambridge.

However, Cambridge Uni’s homepage ranks for more keywords. With 5,627 versus Oxford Uni’s 1,856)

In other words, Oxford Uni’s homepage attracts more traffic but with far less keywords.

Let’s take a closer look at keywords.

More specifically, we will analyse the Content Gap between the two Universities.

And the overall winner is Cambridge!

The Cambridge University website outperforms Oxford University’s website in 8 out of 12 SEO areas.

Congratulations!

When it comes to outperforming and outranking your competitors, it takes time and resources.

But what if you had a competitive advantage? Our competitor analysis reports do just that.

Learn exactly what your competitors are doing well and how to beat them.

Our team can devise and implement a winning strategy that works for your business. Get in contact with us for an obligation-free chat. Or head to our competitor analysis page to kickstart your business success.

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