For the past two years, 454 Creative has partnered with the UCI Paul Merage School of Business to strengthen its technical SEO and website performance.
The university faced a clear challenge: persistent site errors, declining technical health, and inconsistent organic visibility. Our goal was to create a sustainable SEO strategy that would resolve critical issues and build a foundation for lasting organic growth.
SEO Metrics:
Site Health Score: 56 → 83 (+27 points)
Errors Fixed: 9,630
Warnings Fixed: 471,013
Notices Fixed: 35,182
Total Issues Resolved: 515,825
UCI Paul Merage School of Business: Shaping the future of business through technology, innovation, and inclusive excellence
Based in Irvine, California, the UCI Paul Merage School of Business is a globally recognized institution serving students, alumni, and corporate partners. Its mission is to prepare the next generation of leaders through education, research, and innovation in a digitally driven world.
The Challenge: Declining technical performance was impacting site visibility and crawlability.
When UCI Merage approached 454 Creative, their website’s technical SEO health score sat at 56, revealing thousands of unresolved issues that hindered organic performance. Despite a strong brand and valuable content, the site faced:
- A large volume of technical errors and warnings
- Crawl inefficiencies that limited full indexation
- A lack of structured, ongoing SEO maintenance
- Missed optimization opportunities due to backend complexity
The internal team lacked a clear roadmap for managing such a large and complex academic site. They needed a trusted and consistent partner to restore technical health and ensure the site could effectively serve prospective students, faculty, and partners.
Why did UCI Chose 454 Creative?
454 Creative has proven expertise in long-term SEO maintenance and digital transformation. UCI Merage selected 454 Creative for our hands-on technical expertise, strategic audit capabilities, and commitment to consistent execution. They needed more than a one-time optimization. They needed a partner who could deliver measurable improvement through sustained technical maintenance.
The Solution and Our Approach: Systematic weekly maintenance and issue resolution over 24 months.
Audit & Insights:
The engagement began with a full technical SEO audit, providing a detailed view of existing issues and site health. The audit revealed major opportunities across crawlability, link structure, metadata, and on-page performance, with an initial Site Health Score of 56.
Optimization Strategy:
454 Creative developed a structured, long-term optimization plan focused on:
- Fixing crawl errors and broken links
- Optimizing metadata and tag structure
- Improving Core Web Vitals and load speed
- Resolving duplicate content and indexation gaps
- Weekly technical updates allowed for steady progress without disrupting the site’s ongoing operations.
Testing & Iteration:
Rather than a one-time overhaul, 454 Creative followed a continuous improvement model.
Each month, data from Google Search Console and audit tools informed the next round of optimizations, ensuring no technical regressions, steady health score improvements, and sustained crawlability and visibility gains.
The Results and Impact: Site Health Score improved by 27 points, with over 500,000 issues resolved.
Over two years, the UCI Merage website’s Site Health Score increased from 56 to 83 which resulted in a 48% improvement. The project resolved issues, including:
- 9,630 critical errors
- 471,013 warnings
- 35,182 notices
These updates significantly enhanced site crawlability and strengthened the overall SEO foundation, setting UCI Merage up for long-term organic growth. Beyond the numbers, UCI Merage gained:
- A reliable framework for ongoing maintenance
- Improved technical visibility and SEO stability
- A stronger base for future content and marketing efforts
Looking Ahead
With a healthy and stable website in place, UCI Merage is positioned to continue building on this foundation through ongoing SEO enhancements, content optimization, and analytics integration.
This partnership highlights the long-term value of consistent, data-driven SEO focusing on delivering not just higher metrics, but sustainable growth in digital visibility.
Ready to See Similar Results?
If you’re looking to strengthen your site’s technical performance or need a comprehensive SEO audit, 454 Creative can help you turn complex challenges into measurable growth.