SEO for Schools: 11 SEO Tips to Attract More Website Visitors to Your School Site with Search Engine Optimization

SEO for Schools: 11 SEO Tips to Attract More Website Visitors to Your School Site with Search Engine Optimization

1.   Keep Your Content Fresh: One of the most important things you can do to ensure you are bringing back your readers is keeping your content super fresh and different. Your readers crave new information in small bite-sized chunks. Varying the length, format, and other content is a great way to have maximum impact and keep your readers engaged. For extra points add-in video and infographics. A great hack is to make a list of different kinds of content, length, and format, then make that a part of your marketing calendar.
2.  Write ‘Sticky’ Catchy Headlines: Headlines are what get people to follow your school and bring them back time and time again for something different. Your readers will not even click on your posts if they do not have a fun and compelling headline. Do not think that just because you are attracting an academic audience that you need to create content that is boring and stale. You need to draw in everyone. Check your headline carefully and try several variations before you publish your content.
3. Check Your Website SEO: SEO is never going away. You want your website to pop to the top of the list in Google. It is also key to check text for your images, this is something that a lot of websites forget. Using the alt text is a great way to get the attention of students looking for a specific location. Also, make sure you are creating new links to your new content. Google is checking every 24 hours for new content. When you optimize your content, you will bring new people to your site quickly and easily every time.
4. Look for Long Keywords to Bring People into Your School Site: Have you looked at the most popular keywords? You should have them marked and ranked to bring in students who are looking for information about your school. If you are not using those keywords you are missing out on a lot of student and parent traffic.
5. Bring an Educational Influencer to Your Blog: Guest blogging will bring you many new people and ensure that you are going to bring in a lot of curious readers. Who do you know that can share some great advice for students on day one? Do you have a popular professor on campus who is doing amazing and unusual things? Maybe you want to have a student share some hacks as well for what ensures a smooth transition to college. A few catchy bullet point lists will ensure your readers appreciate the advice.
6. Have a Plan for Schema Microdata: When you have a plan and have implemented schema microdata, you are going to make it super easy for search engine bots to find you. You want to do this so that your pages can be indexed as well. It is a great way to have rich snippets and amazing click through rates.
7. Add Some Educational Thought Leaders to Your Site: There is nothing that brings clicks like credibility. If you want to get the best ideas from some serious heavy hitters interview some thought leaders for the education space. People like Steve Wozniak for example, recently launching Woz U brought tons of clicks for those who want to learn about what the Apple co-founder had to say. In addition, you can bring more influence by inviting your interviewee to share all their content.
8. Have an Awesome and Responsive Site: One thing that is important to keep in mind is that no one has time to wait for things to load. What that means is that you need to have a fast and mobile optimized. You do not want to force anyone to have to scroll for what they are looking for. Your site should work on all devices and be easy to find the info you need.
9.  You Need a Site that is Fast: Considering we live in the age of tech, the average student, according to Google Analytics spends 20 seconds looking for what they want. If they have not found what they are looking on, they are onto the next site. That means you should great images, optimized plugins, and the most recent updates.
10. Respond to Student Queries: Have you ever left an important message you are curious about at a university in the comments, and no one responds? That is very frustrating. If you want to have a super-engaged audience of students, you must respond to them. Ensure that you are always responding and be a part of the conversation. You can really drive new people to your comments with some honest and informative responses.
11. Check Your Analytics: When you are looking at your analytics understand what the numbers mean and look for new ways to improve your site. If you see that students are looking for dorms, think of ways that you can create new articles on the dorms. Do a tour of them. Ensure that your bounce rate is low and that students and parents can get the info they need quickly.