admin January 27, 2023The education industry has experienced significant changes in the past few years and is now adapting to the changes in the education system.
It has increased competition, forcing schools to invest more to sustain and gain more students. Now, students have options for online education and can acquire recognised and accredited qualifications from home.
Are you a school or education provider aiming to increase the enrolments in 2023? Suppose your prospect is searching for the courses or schools like yours through Google, but your website does not appear on page #1, so what will happen?
According to backlinko.com, the #1 result in Google’s organic search results has an average CTR of 27.6%. Imagine, if your website is off SERP (search engine results page), how many students are you losing monthly?
We must accept that the current market is competitive, as students & parents have various options. Some disciplines are highly demanded, such as Healthcare, Technology, Life Sciences, Business & Management and many others. If your School offers highly competitive discipline programmes, then Google page #1 ranking is the only solution to increase enrolment.
What is SEO for Schools & Education Providers?
SEO (search engine optimisation) can be described as optimising the website for search engines to determine that your website’s content is the right fit for the user’s search query.
Let’s say!
You are a private school and want your school name & website to appear on the top of SERP when a prospect is searching for a “private school near me”.
Consider it this way:
Search engines ensure that users get relevant and valuable info on your website; otherwise, they cannot retain the users to use their platform.
That’s why! Search engines like Google will show the results according to the user’s search query and make sure their customers are pleased.
If you want to grow your student numbers, SEO must be the top marketing plan.
This article will explain some proven strategies you can apply to achieve Google page #1 ranking with your school keywords and programme names.
How can I bring my school website to the top of Google Results?
It’s a common question for every school website owner and marketer. After months of effort and dedication on the website planning, development, content writing and launch, why is the website not showing on the top of Google with the school keywords? Another scenario is that the website has been up & running for many months and has all the programmes listed with pertinent information. However, still, it needs to rank on Google’s top results.
Before you panic and initiate an unfair practice to see your school website ranking in the top 10 search engines, you should know some crucial SEO factors.
Here we are sharing how to succeed in your School and increase enrolment with the proper SEO practice.
Pick the appropriate keywords for your School
Keyword research is the root of the success of SEO for schools and education providers. Usually, content creation of the website and programme pages comes after the keyword selection.
Suppose you have written the content before the keyword planning. In that case, you have to optimise it and ensure the content follows the SEO for schools guidelines like word count requirements and keyword density.
You should know the high search volume keywords students or parents search on the search engines. If you optimise your website for low-search volume keywords, a high traffic volume and enrolment enquiries cannot be anticipated.
With the help of the Google Keyword Planner tool, schools can find the YoY trend and search volume.
Search console setup for your school website
Suppose your School has an in-house SEO team which includes On-page, Technical, Content and Off-page SEO experts. In that case, the search console part is easily manageable as it has many technical parameters and requires a dedicated school SEO team.
Your Technical SEO for school expert must know the importance of the search console setup and how it helps know and fix the website’s crucial SEO errors. Not only errors, but this search console is also the backbone of SEO and has everything required to succeed in your School’s SEO.
Search console is a free tool offered by Google. It helps with the website’s SEO and traffic performance.
Many schools and education providers must leverage Google Search Console’s full potential. Many customers have never heard of it and rely upon their SEO experts. Our SEO agency ensures complete setup of the Google Search Console, in-depth audit and fixing.
We focus on the crucial areas of the search console which are vital for any school’s SEO better performance. Here are some of the key factors we keep on our top list:
- Find the most popular pages and optimise them for better performance.
- Identify the Type of devices highly used by the prospects and optimise the website.
- Website performance checks on Mobile and fixing the hurdles of better loading speed.
- Ensure websites Core Web Vital issues are fixed if there are any.
- Regular backlinks check and disavow the toxic links for a healthy backlink profile.
- Monthly search console audit and check to resolve all the glitches, such as responsive layout, server downtime and many others.
- Identify the website security glitches and fix them precisely.
On-Page SEO audit and fixing on your School’s website
To rank the School’s website on SERP, whatever optimisation we do on the website is called On-page SEO. For example, it includes the website’s duplicate meta title and description fixing, finding and resolving multiple H1 tags on the targeted pages.
Usually, schools and education providers have many programmes and web pages, including various sub-domains to serve students’ needs and programmes. But, most pages lack the SEO parameters and need attention for better performance on the SERP.
On-page SEO has many tasks that need to be performed to ensure the website is entirely SEO-ready.
Contact us for the Free On-page SEO audit of your website today and a complete SEO plan to bring your School’s website to page #1 of Google in your Local and targeted locations.
Website loading speed audit & fixing
Did you know that if your website is not loading within 0-4 seconds, how badly it will impact your website performance on the search engines? Websites with 0-2 seconds loading speed have better results than slower loading speed websites.
Search engines may not review your website and rank it on its partial view. Lack of proper review by search engines adversely impacts your School’s website ranking and web traffic.
Website loading speed is directly related to UX and conversion rate. In addition, it’s one of the significant parameters for the SEO for the school and the organic ranking of the website.
While auditing and fixing your School website’s On-page and SEO parameters, our team of experts do an in-depth analysis of your website codes, images and script and propose a solution. The slow loading speed is primarily due to poor web hosting and coding structure which can be resolved and optimised.
We have seen significant growth in the School’s SEO after the website loading speed fixing and assure you the same.
Optimise Your School website for mobile users
Half of the user’s searches come from Mobile. YES, the majority of the searches are indeed happening on smartphones.
The 18-30 age group is the top smartphone user and browses search engines from Mobile mainly. This student’s age group tend to spend more time on a mobile than a laptop.
The School’s target audience prefers to settle their doubts on Mobile, like admission requirements, requesting course brochures and making course fee payments online.
Here is one of our School’s SEO project’s analytics screenshots, and it’s seen that most of the traffic and conversions are coming from Mobile.
Our SEO agency has various education websites’ SEO experience with proven records and knows how to optimise the School’s websites for mobile search and increase conversions. Get in touch with us for a free SEO consultation for your School website.
Add proper word count and SEO-friendly Headings
Imagine your prospective student is looking for a Diploma in Business Management programme.
Your website has a dedicated page for this programme where students can complete the application form online or request a brochure.
But, due to inappropriate Heading, the page needs to be prepare according to the SEO guidelines, and the page requires an average word count to compete with the existing top 10 sites of SERP. In short, the programme page lacks SEO-friendly Headings and word count requirements.
What will happen in the above scenario?
Since your School website is not on the top results of SERP, you may lose that student’s enrolment.
Our SEO agency in Singapore listens to your requirements and collects the programmes you want to rank higher on the search engines.
Our SEO of School experts study all the top 10 sites, their Headings and word count and prepare a full-proof plan for your website to ensure your programme pages are SEO friendly and meet Google’s page #1 requirements.
Healthy & legit Backlinks profile of your School website
The website backlink profile includes the quantity of anchor text links redirecting to your website. Backlinks have a direct impact on your School’s website ranking.
Having a healthy backlinks profile of your School helps your website gain better visibility on search engines and saves your website from Google’s poor links algorithm penalty.
At our SEO agency, we run a detailed audit on your School and competitor’s website’s backlinks profile. Once the audit is complete, we pick the education-specific sites to acquire the backlinks.
Whilst obtaining healthy backlinks for your School site, we ensure the website has a below 3% spam score, a high domain rating and good organic traffic. As a result, we bring your website to Google’s top ranking within a few months.
SEO for Schools & Education: Final Words
We all know that SEO is time-consuming, but YES, we must pay attention to its tremendous benefits. Search engines regularly update their algorithms to give better information to their users. It is vital to hire an SEO agency to keep your School website on top of SERP and up to date as per SEO algorithms.
Ranking of your School’s site depends on many factors. For example, domain age, number of indexed pages, website development platform, target keywords competition, backlinks profile and many others.
Contact our SEO agency and let us help your School’s ranking on search engines and enrolment grow drastically.