OPTIMISING YOUR WEBSITE FOR MAXIMUM EXPOSURE
SCHOOL WEBSITE
Digital marketing agency with 10+ years dedicated to the
education market
We’re a team of over 50 experts offering website and print
design, multimedia, SEO, PPC and Social Media services
ALTA JUSTUS – HEAD OF MARKETING
17+ years working in marketing, both online and off Bring my corporate experience to the education sector
WHAT IS SEO?
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a webpage in search engines ‘organic’, or unpaid search results.
PPC/Paid Search Ad Organic/SEO/ Natural results News results PPC/Paid Search Ad Localised results Wikipedia Information Google maps/ Localised results
WHY IS SEO SO IMPORTANT?
A website is the
first place
prospective parents and pupils will go to
research your school
A website that is optimised will give you the
best chance
of
appearing on
page one of Google
93%
of visitors won’t go further than the first
page of Google
WHY IS SEO SO IMPORTANT?
66.4%
Baidu
11.2%
Bing
10.3%
Yahoo
9.3%
AOL
0.53%
Ask
0.21%
Lycos
0.01%
Others
2.1%
MARKET SHARE OF SEARCH ENGINES
SOCIAL MEDIA ON-PAGE OPTIMISATION CONTENT KEYWORDS MOBILE USABILITY LINKS
...And Context is Queen!
Google wants to deliver users high quality
content that’s relevant to visitors
Easy to use and flexible CMS is a must Ensure your content is:
o Relevant o Readable o Insightful o Fresh
CONTENT IS KING
TIPS
Know your audience(s) and write for them first
Try to put your keywords in the first few lines of your
content, but don’t keyword stuff
Beef up your content. Top ranking pages now have 25%
more content so don’t be too sparse
Include video in your content to reduce your Bounce rate
and increase your Dwell time
TIPS
Create a content calendar to ensure you have a strategy for
covering topics that is relevant to your audience
Look at your Google Analytics to see the most popular content Include social buttons to share your content
Find out what’s trending on social media and create a blog
around the topic
Google loves fresh content
But less emphasis than before
Use balanced mixture of terms relevant
to your webpages
Don’t repeat where you can avoid Search friendly – what are people
searching on?
STILL IMPORTANT
Access your current situation – does your site contain any
keywords?
Ask yourself ‘Is the keyword relevant to your website’s content?’ Search for the term/phrase in the major engines
o Are your competitors showing up organically? o Are schools showing up as paid ads?
Use Google Webmaster tools to see how people are currently
finding your school website
Set up a Google Adword Account to access the
free Keyword Planner
Enter your parameters: o Keyword phrase
o Location o Your URL
o Your Product Category (education)
Keyword Planner with return suggested keywords Indicates the competition for that keyword as well
– ie Low, Medium or High
Search the keyword phrases
you want to be found on
Look at which schools come up Right click, choosing ‘View
Page Source’ and use ‘Find’
to locate their keywords
Read their content – there’s a
good chance that’s why they’re ranking on that term
Your School Name
The type of school – ie. Boarding, Day, Co-ed
School sector – ie. Primary, Secondary, Independent Curriculum – IB, British
Extra-curricular – Sports, Music, Arts
Localise your keywords by including your location
Create variations of your keywords and group them into categories Decide which pages you’ll optimise with which keywords – start
small
Name Type (Boarding) Sector (Independent)
YourSchoolName Girls Boarding School City Girls Independent School City YourSchoolName City Boys Boarding School City Boys Independent School City Your SchoolName County Co-ed Boarding School City Co-ed Independent School
County Your SchooName City and
Country
Co-ed Boarding School County Independent School Country YourSchoolName variations or
abbreviations
Co-ed Boarding School City, Country
Private School City, Country
Backlinks – links from external
websites pointing to yours
Interlinks – links between pages of
your own school website
Social links – inbound links from social
media
Outbound links – links to other
websites
TYPES OF LINKS
TIPS
Check your backlinks. Disavow spam or low-ranking sites
through Webmaster Tools
Look to have your school listed on high domain authority
ranking sites such as ‘Education UK’ and ‘The Good Schools Guide’
Use your keywords in your internal links, not ‘Click here’ Try to include social links back to your website whenever
possible
Include outbound links to authority sites such as Wikipedia
as this helps Google zero in on your topics
How your website speaks to Google
Important that your website CMS allows
you to easily make changes to: o URL
o Page Headings <H1> o Meta Data
o Image Alt Tags
Check your current Google’s Meta SEO
Checker for Chrome
OPTIMISING YOUR META-TAGS:
The most important 'non-content' part of your page Each meta title should be unique
Google displays the first 50-60 characters of a title tag so keep title under 55 characters Pages that start with your keyword rank higher
Include modifiers like ‘Best’, ‘Leaders’ and ‘Guide’ in your titles to rank for long-tail keywords Include your Title in your H1 (header) tag
EXAMPLE
META TITLE This tag is often used by search engines for the description of your web
page
This currently won’t affect the ranking or indexing of your webpage but
may change very soon
Keep under 160 characters to encourage people to view your page
META DESCRIPTION
DESCRIPTION META TAGS
Use keywords or
keyword phrases that are relevant to that web
page
Include keyword in your
page headers <H1 tags>
Use the keyword in the image’s file name
whenever possible
Create descriptive Alt and Title text
including your keywords
Be sure that your image matches your
content
Like the keywords on your web page, don’t
stuff them
Keep short and sweet – the first 3 to 5 words in a URL are
given the most weight
Include keyword where possible ie:
www.yourschoolname.sch.uk/boarding
Don’t included underscores, symbols or numbers RENAMING YOUR URLS
Be sure to use your CMS to create redirects on the pages that
are high in SEO juice
Your social activity counts Social links are organic
Social results show up in Google so
create content which is:
o Engaging o Useful o Relevant
#B
E
S
OCIAL
TIPS
SOCIAL MEDIA
Grow your followers – but don’t try to cheat
Make your posts searchable – avoid private posts on platforms Google likes Google+, so consider an account
use your #Keywords in your #Hashtags
Include social share buttons on your website – can increase sharing of
content up to 700%
Update your content regularly and share on social media. The more the
content is shared the better domain authority you achieve & move higher up the SEO ranks
Over 50% of all Google searches are now done
on a mobile
Google’s April algorithm update means a
responsive website ranks higher
Update had the biggest effect of all the recent
Google updates – 40% of websites
Social feeds are more viewed on mobiles so
make sure your links take them to a mobile-friendly website
RESPONSIVE MATTERS
GET VISUAL
Over 55% of Google search results now include videos and
over 40% include photos
It’s expected that search engines will continue to increase the
ranking factor of sites with video as their popularity increases
YouTube is owned by Google & the 2nd largest ‘search engine’
so take advantage of putting your keywords on your video descriptions
YouTube is another opportunity for backlinks from a high
authority domain
1. MOBILE DOMINATION
Mobile-friendly websites will continue to rise in
rankings, leaving others behind
Mobile devices have now taken overtaken
laptops as the number one device in the UK
User experience becomes even more
important
Goes hand in hand with Dwell time and
Bounce rate
2. CLICK-THRU RATE (CTR)
The percentage of time a visitor has clicked through to your
search results
Can be tracked in Webmaster Tools/Search Traffic/Search
Analytics
You can see the queries your website has come up on and
the CTR for each page
3. DWELL TIME
Google pays very close attention to Dwell time: how
long people spend on your page when coming from a Google search
If people spend a lot of time on your site, that may
be used as a quality signal
Found via ‘Behaviour’ in Google Analytics
Look to improve that by improving your content –
include videos, links to other pages etc.
OPTIMISED PAGES
May take several days, weeks and even months
to see changes
Give Google an opportunity to re-index your
website
Track your keywords on a monthly basis to see
how they are doing
If you’re not seeing any success ask yourself if a
PPC ad might be better for that search term?
TARGETING OTHER COUNTRIES
Look at your Google Analytics to see where your traffic is coming from Purchase country specific domains: .com (US), .fr (France), .mx (Mexico) Create localised landing pages on your existing site or a sub-domain
within your current site - www.yourschool.com/mx
Use content, keywords and language relevant to that market Consider PPC to direct traffic to your landing pages
until your SEO is up and running
Keyword Tracking Software Google Maps
Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test School Website Responsive Test School Website SEO Articles
Website Authority Checker
Weekly Marketing Newsletter How To Create A Wikipedia Page Google Analytics
Google Webmaster Tools School Website Webinars
WHERE TO FIND US
Address (Head Office)
Rowan House, Field Lane, Teddington, Middlesex, TW11 9BP
