A website is vital for marketing your school, but it is only useful if people can find it online. You need to make sure that your website appears on the first page of search results when potential parents are looking for a school. This is where SEO tips for schools can help you. In this article, you will discover 8 effective tips you can apply today to boost your school’s SEO rankings.
How Can SEO Strategies Benefit Schools and Educational Institutions?
SEO can help your school achieve higher visibility for relevant search terms. This can increase your website traffic and attract more prospective parents to enroll their children in your school.
Besides improving your ranking, SEO also helps you optimize your website for the user, creating a positive and engaging experience.
What is the Method of Doing SEO for Schools?
SEO is a continuous process that requires regular monitoring of your website’s performance and ranking in search engines. You can do this by performing periodic website audits. Here are some ways to improve your school’s SEO –
1. Begin with Keyword Research
Keyword research is the foundation of any SEO campaign. It will guide you in creating content, optimizing your GMB listing, and other SEO activities.
How Do You Conduct Keyword Research for Schools?
First, you need to consider the user, the parent or student, who is looking for schools and institutions near them.
What are the search terms they will use on Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. to find what they need?
The first step in the process is to write down general keywords that you think potential students and parents might use.
For our example, some of these keywords could be:
- Private school in Boston
- Boston private school
- Best private school in Boston
- Private high school in Boston
Remember, the goal is to not be too specific at this stage because we will refine the keywords later.
The next step of the keyword research process is to find the target keyword that you want to rank for. This target keyword will be based on the general keywords you wrote down earlier.
Take the general keywords and enter them into your preferred keyword research tool.
The tool will give you a list of keyword variations that you can use as your main keyword for the rest of the SEO process.
2. Create Pages Targeting Relevant Keywords
An SEO tips that schools can use is to create pages for different keywords.
Instead of only focusing on the website homepage, school marketers should also make pages that can rank for other related keywords.
This includes pages about the various subjects that students can study at a school or the extra-curricular activities that students can join.
3. Optimize Web Page URLs
A website’s URL is important for two main reasons.
The first is that it tells users and search engines what the page is about.
For example, we can guess that a page with a URL of “best-coffee-machines” is about comparing different coffee machines and giving the best choice.
The second is, that it can improve the user experience and the credibility of the website. For example, compare these two URLs:
- www.myschool.com/academics/mathematics
- www.myschool.com/academics1/mathematics&4wq
Which one of these pages do you trust more? Which one do you think Google will rank higher to give users a better experience?
School marketers need to make sure that all the URLs of their school’s website are clear and easy to understand.
4. Suitably Utilize Headings
Headers are HTML elements that help you organize and structure your content. They are like the chapters of a book, they make the story flow better, give the reader a preview of what is coming next, and improve the readability of the page.
5. Include Keywords in All the Right Places
Using different heading tags is a good practice to make your content more readable and structured. You should also try to include your target keyword in the headings you use if it fits naturally and makes sense. Don’t force your keyword into the headings just for the sake of it.
Other places to include your target keyword are the page title and meta description.
Bonus tip: When you add your target keyword to the page title and meta description, try to put it near the beginning.
One of the oldest SEO tips is to use your target keyword in the first 100 words of your content. This is because search engines give more importance to keywords that appear early on a page.
6. Add Appropriate Alt Tags to Images
To optimize your school website for search engines, you should always include alt text for your images. Alt text is a short description that tells search engines and screen readers what an image shows and why it is relevant.
This way, you can help search engines understand the content and context of your images, and improve your chances of ranking in image search results. You can also make your website more accessible for users who rely on screen readers to browse the web.
7. Link to Relevant Internal Pages
Internal linking, or deep linking, is the technique of creating links from one page of your website to another page on your website.
Internal links have two main benefits:
- They help search engine crawlers, such as Google, to understand how your website is organized and to find new pages. This can boost the traffic and ranking of your newly published pages.
- They guide users to other relevant pages on your website. For example, we linked to our article on “deep linking” above. A reader who clicks on that link can expect to learn more about deep linking from that article.
8. Optimize for Local Searches with Local SEO
One of the most crucial SEO tips for schools is to optimize for local searches. This is because schools and educational institutions are considered as “local businesses” and most of their search traffic comes from parents or students who are looking for schools in a specific area.
To rank higher for local searches, schools need to create and optimize a GMB profile. This is a free tool that lets schools manage their online presence across Google, including Search and Maps. By filling out the profile with relevant information, such as name, address, phone number, website, photos, and reviews, schools can increase their visibility and attract more local customers.
To optimize your Google My Business (GMB) profile, you need to do the following:
- Choose the best Google Business category for your school.
- Make sure your Name, Address, and Phone (NAP) details match with your other online properties, such as your school’s website and other listings.
- Include your target keyword in your business description.
- Fill out all the relevant fields, such as Number of students, Mascot, Hours, Grades, etc.
- Upload images and videos to your GMB profile.
- Get reviews from current and former parents.
The Bottom Line
We hope you enjoyed this article on how to do SEO for schools. With the tips and tricks in this article, you can boost any school’s SEO rankings, which will lead to more online exposure and traffic to your website.
If you are looking for a reliable SEO company to upgrade your school ranking then you can connect to SAG IPL. It is a prominent and leading company that has highly skilled employees who are determined to deliver the best result. They are equipped with traditional marketing techniques to advance marketing techniques. SAG IPL implies unique marketing tactics to run your school ranking on top. For its service, SAG IPL charges economically and delivers the assigned task timely.