For School Websites to gain higher positioning at various search engines, various methods of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) are needed. A successful school marketing plan with carefully incorporate the necessary SEO strategies for this to occur.
Website Viewers
Many school communities may be interested in having their school and their website open worldwide. SEOs would likely suit these schools.
Some schools aren’t really interested in having their website visited from people all over the world. These school communities are more interested in their local communities. For these people SEOs are not needed.
Various school communities might like their website to be easily accessible to people from various parts of their particular country but not necessarily beyond their borders. This allows for people transferring to their school to preview what the school has to offer. A suggestion for these communities would be to select a domain name which ends in their countries code e.g. United Kingdom .uk, for Australia .au, New Zealand .nz etc.
Top Search Engine Page is the Aim
The aim with SEO is to achieve in the top three on the first page of any search engine.
Suggestions for Improvement
Some ways I have found which I believe help with Search Engine Optimization are:
• The Domain name includes the school name and suburb.
• Key Words such as the school name are regularly used throughout the site, particularly in titles / headings, first sentence and last sentence on each webpage.
• Each webpage within the website would highlight something different about the school and hence also include other key words associated both with the school name / suburb and that webpage’s emphasis.
These other Key Words may be: principal, school staff, curriculum, religious education, contact us, priests, open day, prospectus, sporting / arts / welfare etc groups within the school, etc.
The key would for impact could have the school name before it e.g. aquinas college principal. This links the purpose of the webpage specifically with the school.
• Each Blog Post’s title, along with the first and last sentences would include key words associated with that individual blog’s message and that it eventuated from your school.
• The more links coming to your website from other sources, particularly .gov, .edu and .org the better. Having other sites point to your website helps SEO i.e. having other sites have your Domain / URL linked live on their website.
However, it is best not to swap links with others of similar level e.g. .org. That is, if each site has the other’s site linked from their site, this usually causes it to neutralize the impact for both sites.
Yet swapping these links may improve traffic to your site, just not higher SEO.
• Include links within your own site to various other webpages on your site.
• Another way of achieving the links from other sites may be achieved by developing various Blogs elsewhere which include the link to your website. (More on this in Blogs later.)
• Be careful not to overdo all these links and key words as search engines may penalize you for being overambitious in gaining notice for your website.
• Age of the website. Older sites have more credibility. Develop your website as soon as possible.
• Update your site regularly. A fresh, updated site is appealing to both visitors and for SEO.
• Paid Ads will gain you high positioning in the ‘Sponsored’ columns, but at a cost, usually on a pay per click per view system. This may be quite expensive for a school’s needs.
School Websites invariably require high SEO (Search Engine Optimization) - these suggestions above come from the School Marketing Manual for the Digital Age (3rd ed), 2010, by Bryan Foster.
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