I understand that most businesses can benefit from Local search results, however as a small Bible College, it seems to be hurting us since we are drawing students from across the country. Here's the backdrop:

When we began an SEO campaign in 2010 we quickly moved to the top for key phrases like "bible colleges" and "online bible college." In late 2012 and throughout 2013 we began to see a sharp decline in organic search traffic to the point that we now only see about 12% of the organic search traffic we once had.

It appears that at some point the phrase "bible colleges" began to focus on localized results. I recently ran a simple test by changing my location and testing that phrase in all 50 states. Our college appeared in the top ten in 31 of the locations, while most of our competitors appeared in less than 10 locations. The sites that appeared in all 50 states were of course, wikipedia, and 3 different blogs, one of which hasn't been updated since 2011.

So, my question is, is there anything we can do to improve our site rankings across the U.S. and/or would starting some kind of semi-generic blog be advantageous or does anyone have any other ideas?