Administrators and marketers at schools, colleges, universities, or professional institutions may hear this often from their SEO services for education partners – connecting with parents is possible only if the school website has high search engine rankings on selected keywords.
Your school website may have content that every parent would love to read, but if it does not show up on search engine result pages (SERPs), then what?
Who is reading the content?
What is the point of writing the content?
Why should you spend resources to create content that is not making it to the top SERP?
The answer lies in this blog – the role of content optimization in SEO services for education websites.
Digital marketing experts understand that SEO and content have formed a bond since the inception of the Internet, and with age, the bond continues to become stronger. Content needs SEO to rank on SERP, and SEO needs content to deliver organic results.
The world’s largest search engine, Google, is constantly upgrading its algorithms to deliver results. Now they don’t want any random results. According to Google, “…through hundreds of billions of web pages and other content in our Search Index to present the most relevant, useful results in the fraction of a second.”
You want your education website to be part of the result within a fraction of a second! Whether you hire a content marketing service provider or do it with the help of an in-house team, content optimization is essential.
The burning question is, what role does content optimization play?
Incorporating the most searched keywords
The SEO team can use tools like SEMRush and Ahrefs to determine the keywords parents, students, or professionals use to search for the school. Content optimization is using these keywords in the content without diluting the brand voice.
For example:
You want the Indian diaspora to fill out the admission form at a CBSE school in Dubai. The global search volume of CBSE schools is 31.4 k, while that of CBSE school in Dubai is 5.2k.
Look at the keyword variations, like Indian CBSE schools in Dubai and best CBSE schools in Dubai.
Including these additional keywords or creating content around these keywords will help your content rank higher on SERPs.
Content optimization will also use these keywords in the meta title and alt tags.
Creating the right content to meet search intent
Incorporating the keywords as a part of your content optimization strategy for an educational website is not enough. The content must meet the intent of the search.
Content and SEO need to work together to develop a deep understanding of the information the searcher seeks.
For example
A student in Class/Grade XII or Year 13 is looking for a university in the UK. They may use keywords like ‘how to choose the best institution to study data science’.
Think carefully about what kind of content the student is seeking! They do not want information on your institution or university.
They want to know the steps to follow in choosing an institution that will shape their career and future.
Giving them promotional content will lead to an increase in traffic and bounce rate.
Giving them the information they seek will make your website or blog trustworthy. They are more likely to come back for more information or search for the courses you offer.
When partnered with SEO, content optimization will provide all the information the searcher requires so that they are not seeking information elsewhere.
Making the page or website easily navigable
Educational websites must provide information on subjects, classes, exams, teachers, affiliations, guides, and much more. They are large and are potential webs for a person to get lost.
Optimizing the content with the right internal and external links makes it easier for them to navigate and search for the right information with as few clicks as possible.
For example:
You run an educational institution providing training for leading certifications.
It is important to provide information on the course, answers to technical questions, popular technologies, dates, flexible hours and more on the home page.
Let’s assume a short-on-time professional is searching the website. If they have to keep clicking to get information; they will either get lost or lose patience.
Content optimization can give them the entire list of courses provided by a particular vendor or technology on one page.
You can show them the course duration and cost. Provide links to read more about the course, making the search easy and quick.
In the end, an educational website is the first point of contact for a parent or individual when searching for a school or course online. They will read the content published on the webpages and blogs to try and determine if the institution is worthy of their precious one or precious time.
Author Bio: – Rudra Kumar is an Assistant General Manager of search operations at Techmagnate with more than 10+ years of experience in search engine optimisation. He has helped many businesses in growing revenue via search engines of his strengths.
