Increasing Your School’s Online Presence Through SEO

The online presence of your school is vitally important in order for you to continue to appeal to prospective students and parents, as well as compete and stand out from the growing number of schools with similar offerings.

However, just simply having a website for your school and hoping for the best is not enough. Nearly 80% of website traffic comes from search engines. Without ranking highly on these search engines your target audience will struggle to find your site, even if your school is the most suitable fit for them.

Very few people move off the first page when looking at search results, which is why it is so important to optimise your website properly in order to target keywords that your target audience are using to find what they are looking for. This is known as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and optimising your website will ensure your school ranks well in the organic search engine results, increasing the chances of your school being found online and ultimately driving traffic to your site.

Here are some of the most effective ways SEO could help your school become more successful online:

– Ensure your school ranks well for keywords relevant to your institution. From the name of your school to an award you may have won, when someone is searching for your school they want to be able to find you quickly. Ensuring you rank well for these keywords will allow them to do so.

– Ranking well for relevant keywords will also give you a competitive advantage over other schools both locally and nationwide.

– SEO allows you to target your most specific audience through localised search. If you want to target prospective students in a certain region as opposed to the whole of the UK this is achievable with localised search.

– Ranking well on search engines drives targeted traffic to your site. Optimising your website is important but if this does not drive traffic and conversions it is ineffective, ranking well on search engines will lead to an increase in visitors and enquiries.

– Social media is now a growing tool being used by schools to interact with prospective students. The amount of people now using social media is increasing every day, so joining this online conversation can only be effective in raising the awareness of your school.

The SEO essentials can enhance the online presence of your school. If you want help in achieving online success, contact us on 01707 875 721 or fill out an enquiry form.