Each new fiscal year requires universities and school to set up a refreshed marketing plan. SEO is a critical aspect of this plan, and in case it’s not, you must. You can’t afford to not have search engine ranking when most of the people are searching on desktops, some other devices or mobiles. If you’ve done SEO once, you think that’s enough. SEO isn’t one time. If you think optimizing your website, following best practices once and getting your website to generate leads happens only once, time for a reality check. You have algorithms that are constantly changing and getting smarter.
Let’s see. What do you expect your SEO strategy to do for your website?
- Your students can find you online
- You can make more conversions
There are several aspects to SEO other than just finding the right keywords. You need to address on-page content, meta tags, sitemaps, page speed, URLs, redirects and mobile-friendliness. You need to focus on these aspects and more. The priority on what you need to focus on might change as per the changing algorithms. You or your digital marketing partner may need to keep track of the latest development to see if you need to focus on something new other than what is already taken into account.
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SEO tactics for Schools and Universities must be revisited so that you can prioritize the things that will work as per the current SEO trend. You need to find a Search Engine Optimization expert to perform a Technical SEO Audit for you. List down the areas that are the current SEO gaps in your website and SEO strategy. Some of the gaps might require technical changes to your website. We think, given the current trends, you need to focus on the following areas for a perfect SEO plan for Schools and Universities.
1. Go Mobile-first
Google has implemented the mobile-first indexation, which indicates that universities and school just cannot ignore a mobile-friendly website. Good news if your university or school website is using a content management system. This can be mobile-friendly right away.
2. Review the way you integrate keywords in your website content
It happens often that universities or school have branded course names that may not match with the search keyword or phrase that students are searching. Students and people search in new ways each day so the keywords must be reviewed and revised periodically.
3. Ensure that you have a fast loading website
The loading speed of the website is one of the factors that is critical in rankings. You must optimize the content and images for a fast loading website on all devices. You can even use some online tools to optimize images (without sacrificing the quality of images). You can test your mobile page load speed with Google’s tool.
4. Optimize your links
Broken links are the worst for search engine rankings as they bring down your rankings. Inbound links are great for search engine, for example online press releases, creating content that will people want to share and sharing content with relevant websites can help you with improved search engine rankings.
5. Don’t ignore analytics
SEO addresses several aspects of your website. You need to know if your SEO efforts are yielding positive results. There are several aspects that you need to assess for example, if your organic rankings are boosted with new features on your website. You need to create goals in Google Analytics and track them constantly.
If you need to revisit your SEO strategy for schools and universities or need a new SEO plan for your school and university, you can speak to one of our SEO specialists.
Tags:- digital marketing partnerMeta tagsMobile first indexmobile page load speed tool