SEO for Schools
SEO for schools is powerful digital marketing tactic that can elevate your schools online visibility. But what exactly is SEO? And how do you get started?
What is Education SEO?
Education SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of optimizing your school's content. This includes both both on your school website (on-page SEO), and other online platforms (off-page SEO). The goal is to help your school get found on search results pages by your target audience.
SEO ensure the website you've worked so hard on, appears in search engine results pages (SERPs) without paying for ads when your people search for specific keywords. These keywords can include your school name (branded search terms) or what you offer (non-branded search terms).
With our targeted Search engine optimization strategies tailored specifically for educational institutions you can:
✓ enhance your school's visibility,
✓ improve search engine rankings
✓ and drive high-intent organic traffic
✓ and potentially reduce your paid ad spend
This cost-effective marketing tactic can help you generate more traffic and more relevant admissions leads. At The Virtual Marketer, we take the guesswork out of doing SEO for private schools. Transparency is at the heart of what we do.
Whether you're frustrated with your current agency or trying SEO for the first time, our friendly team is here to help. We promise a clear and simple approach without any confusing jargon.
Education SEO Services we Offer:
As a reputable education SEO company, our expert team are here to help improve your private school's SEO. Our comprehensive approach ensures that your website is fully optimised. We ensure your content adheres to the latest seo strategies for schools to generate high quality traffic and valuable leads. Here are some of SEO services for schools we offer:
Keyword Research and SEO Strategy Development
We will work with you to find the most relevant keywords for your school. We'll then develop a robust strategy that focuses on the pages and keywords that matter most. Using our proven strategies will help you rank higher. This will make your website more visible to your ideal customers.
Technical SEO & Website Audit
Technical SEO focusses on any technical and performance issues that could prevent your web pages from ranking. Whether you're looking to improve your existing website, or planning a redesign, we provide thorough audits that review the key elements that search engine spiders assess on your site. This includes mobile friendliness, security, your sites architecture (structure of the pages), it's speed, user experience and more.
These help identify areas for improvement and provide expert guidance every step of the way. This includes areas such as competitor analysis, and practical ways you can improve your Core Web Vitals.
ASK US ABOUT A COMPLIMENTARY AUDIT
Link Building & Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO refers to any search related activity that takes place off your website.
When done right, off-page SEO for private schools helps achieve more visbility, gain trust and credibility, and drives more organic traffic to your site. This can be from review websites, other school websites, social media, community websites, news articles, forums and more.
Win top-tier coverage and back links from reputable, high authority sites, that grows brand awareness while conquering the SERPs.
Local SEO for Education
Local SEO is the practice of optimizing your online presence for specific geographical locations. It's particularly important for schools since most prospective parents will be looking in easily commutable area.
Getting your local SEO right means that Google and other search engines understand your schools location and feature you in appropriate 'near me' searches, as well as maps.
The primary focus is to ensure you Google My Business (GMB) listing is accurately setup and fully complete.
This includes enriching your profile with:
- your Name, Address, and Phone (NAP) and using the correct categories for your school (for example your school could be accurately represented by private school and prep school).
- The latest reviews from high NPS parents
- Recent imagery that showcases your schools best features, aligns with your brand message and social media channles
- And where possible, that you're feeding recent articles into it as a means for added reach.
Ensuring your page is completed as fully as possible will help give your school better visibility in local search results. Having an up to date Google My Business profile will also enable you to leverage location assets in Google Ads, improving your PPC campaign efficacy.
Enrich your Google My Business with relevant imagery of the grounds, students and staff, add school events, tie together your social profiles and more. Pro tip, add in your target keywords wherever it's naturally relevant
Comprehensive on-page SEO for Private Schools
On-page optimisation focusses on ensuring the existing content on your website uses your target keywords in the best way to get your web pages found on search engine results pages.
To get the best out of your on-page SEO, the expert Virtual Marketer team ensure:
- You're using keywords naturally within your page titles, website copy and headings, without keyword stuffing
- Images are optimised with appropriate names and descriptive alt tags
- Meta desctiptions are optimised
- You're using internal links to connect related content acrross your site as well as external links.
- Page urls and the url structures are clear, include keywords and are user friendly
- You're effectively using structured markup where possible.
Measurement and Reporting
As a leading SEO agency for education, we understand the importance of tracking and reporting. Not only to gain valuable insights, but to showcase the value in your SEO efforts to senior leadership. As part of our SEO packages, we ensure:
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Your Google Analytics 4 account is correctly linked and tracking important conversions
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We regularly use Google Search Console to understand how your pages are performing in SERPs (search engine results pages)
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Track keyword rankings for target search terms related to your school
Past that we measure Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for your Schools SEO to gauge the success of your SEO strategy:
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Organic search traffic growth
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Conversion rates (e.g., inquiry form submissions, open day registrations)
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Bounce rate and time on site
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Local search visibility and Google My Business performance
Website migration
Launching a new website? Whether you're a veteran to school website redesigns or it's your first time, there are a lot of moving parts. Take the stress out of your launch process by letting our team guide you through how to mitigate any lost visibility in those hard earned SERPs. We'll ensure you have all the appropriate 301 redirections in place, as well as alerting you to any potential content gaps with the new page structure.
Reach out to us today, and we'll tailor our services to meet your specific school website needs.
An SEO Agency for Education, That You Can Trust |
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✓ Expertise in SEO for Education With years of experience in the education sector, we understand the unique challenges and opportunities schools face in the world of search. |
✓ Data-Driven Strategies Our SEO approach is grounded in data and analytics, ensuring that every decision we make is backed by insights. |
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✓ Personalized Attention We prioritize understanding your school's values, objectives, and audience to deliver customized solutions that resonate authentically.
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✓ Transparent Communication No smoke or mirrors here - we believe in clear, open communication every step of the way. You'll always be empowered to make the best decisions for your school.
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What Private Schools Need To Know About SEO: Frequently Asked Questions
What is SEO for schools? |
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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Schools is the strategic process of enhancing a school's online content to enhance visility when users search for you. By carefully writing, organizing, and structuring the material, as well as well as tactically aligning your activities off the website (e.g. on review sites, social media and more) it aims to elevate the visibility of your school in search engine results pages (SERPs) and gain meaningful website traffi. This optimization targets specific phrases and keywords that are most relevant to your potential users.
On-page SEO refers to everything you do on the specific webpage you're trying to get ranking in SERPs. The biggest component of this is making sure the content is comprehensive, readable, supplemented with rich media and imagery and, where appropriate, well sourced. Past that, it's important to make sure the content is keyword optimized (i.e. it's placed in key areas such as headings and urls where naturally appropriate). This helps search engine crawlers understand what your content is related to alongside other signals. Technical SEO is the last piece to the puzzle. It can make all the difference when competing schools are already performing well in organic search. This practice refers to reviewing how your website performs technically. For example, ensure your site has the right security certificates. Also, make sure loading speeds are as fast as possible. |
Why is SEO important for schools? |
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SEO is crucial for schools because—when executed correctly—it significantly enhance their online visibility and google ranks. This drives an increase in traffic from the right audiences, leading to higher enrollment rates. SEO is often seen as a long-term effort. However, when done correctly and consistently, it can provide great benefits for schools. These benefits include:
This is why it's so important for schools to adopt SEO in house or hire a specialist SEO agency for schools. |
How do you do SEO for schools? |
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Implementing SEO for schools shares similarities with commercial SEO practices but is tailored to meet educational needs. Effective SEO strategy involves several key steps:
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What about SEO for international schools? |
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Whilst we often work closely with private schools in the UK and US, SEO for international schools (espcially those recently established) is essential for driving awareness in the crucial first few years of opening. Competing establishments will often have higher authority websites, brand recognition, and more content! Whether you're starting with a brand new website or not, getting visibi |
How Do Search Engine Algorithms Work? |
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Search engines are designed to give users the most relevant and useful information possible. To do that they use automated programs called bots or spiders to discover and analyze web pages. They then use complex algorithms to determine which pages are most relevant to a user's query. There are various factors and signals that influence how search engines rank your site - so if you're a school marketer, like any business wanting to thrive online, you'll need to give your web pages the best chance of ranking higher in search results by spending a little time on SEO. This means creating content that aligns with what your primary audiences (fee payers, prospective students and parents), and secondary audiences (staff, existing parents and others) are searching for. There are many signals and tactics you can use to improve your SEO such as:
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Ready to Boost SEO for Your School?
Unlock the full potential of your schools website with a specialized SEO company. Reach out today to start a conversation about how we can help you achieve your digital marketing goals.
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