Why Search Engine Optimization Is Important For Higher Education Marketing?
Firdosh Khan
🎓Education Marketing Globally 🌐 📈Marketing Tips for Schools & Colleges (SEO, PPC & LinkedIn) 💡Worked with 100+ Education Clients.
Getting first-page Google rankings is the dream of every business owner, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can just make that dream come true.
If you are focused on reaching college students or potential students at your university, then you can do it with the help of SEO.
For Higher Education Institutions, SEO is just not about getting more traffic to your website. It's about driving more qualified leads to your campus, helping to get more prospective students the information they need to choose the right college for them, and ultimately, increasing enrolment.
Higher education marketing is a huge market. With a large number of students looking for future careers and educational institutions looking for new and effective ways to promote their products and services.
In fact, according to the Times Higher Education magazine, US Colleges alone spend more than $9 billion a year on marketing.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important part of any higher education website, and not giving it proper attention can have a dramatic, if not devastating, effect on organic searches.
The Purpose Of SEO For Higher Education Marketing Is Twofold
It makes your website more visible to search engines by adapting and developing your website content to attract search engines.
As a result, your website will appear higher on a search engine results page (SERP) - and more potential students will see and visit you.
SEO also focuses on content creation which, in turn, creates a more fulfilling experience for your prospective students and their families, leading them to a deeper and deeper relationship with your institution.
SEO Is Constantly Evolving
SEO is constantly evolving and today a variety of components play a role in it.
The latest criteria for great SEO require that your content not only matches the user query but demonstrates engagement with your audience and receives social shares for the page.
This is why it's so important to consider your potential students when adding content for student recruitment – better content is more likely to engage them and be shared by them.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines And Future Students
So how can you optimize your site for search engines AND prospective students? Check out our pointers below to figure it out.
Consider Your Potential Students And Their Families
In the early days of digital, SEO meant sprinkling keywords around your site in hopes that search engine crawlers would pick them up and list your site higher in their search engine results pages (SERPs).
The problem with this method was that a site full of keywords did not produce a great user experience. Fortunately, times have changed.
Today, you want to think about your audience and create a useful, easy, and enjoyable experience for them.
Think about what your future students and their families want to accomplish by visiting your site, then make it easy for them.
Think In Terms Of Added Value
You want to create the best experience for your future students. How are you doing that? For every webpage, blog post, or social media update, be sure to add something of value that enriches your users' experience with you.
Even better, if you have great content, people will share it.
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Provide Answers
With Google Hummingbird's 2013 update to its algorithm, searchers became able to search with phrase queries instead of choosing individual words, i.e. "Which colleges offer a B.S. in engineering?" against "College B.S. Engineering".
As a result, search has become much more convenient, and Google wants to provide answers instead of results. Focus on the answers your future students are looking for and you will bring them your way.
Evaluate The Purpose Of Each Page
Make sure each page has only one goal. Think of this goal as a thesis sentence - anything that doesn't contribute to this goal/thesis doesn't belong on the page.
Remember that if you don't learn anything from the page, neither will your future students.
Keep Your Site Dynamic
Keep adding content to your site. A site that never changes looks old and forgotten, and search engines and users will quickly lose interest.
Do Your Due Diligence With Search Engines
Adding quality content to your institution's website is a guideline, but it's still important to do your search engine due diligence. Periodically audit your site.
Here Are Some Key Metrics You Might Want To Consider
Higher Education SEO Pays Long-Term Dividends
Not only does the content you create become a collective asset you own forever, but content developed specifically for prospective students and their families helps guide them deeper into a relationship with your institution.
Plus, a high organic search ranking brings a lot of credibility on its own.
To Conclude
While content is king in the world of search engine optimization, it's important to remember that content alone will not help you achieve higher rankings on search engines like Google.
Search engine optimization (SEO) has become an increasingly important factor in the marketing strategies of higher education institutions.
That's why it's so important to have a solid backlink profile. Our post on search engine optimization for higher education marketing has shown you how to optimize your content and build a strong backlink profile to help you achieve higher rankings.
A strong backlink profile not only helps you rank higher on Google and Bing but also helps you rank higher on the social media channels that your audience uses the most.
When you are able to rank higher on social media channels, you are able to achieve your marketing goals that much quicker.
This is because higher education marketing is a highly competitive area.
Schools are fighting not only for the best applicants but also for the top spots in search engine results.
We hope that you found the information in this blog to be helpful.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact us anytime at [www.firdoshkhan.in]