When it comes to colleges and universities, the need to build specific domains for each degree offered by the University becomes important through SEO for educational institutions. But, for high schools, a single domain with essential information is enough. The reasons for conducting a college search online can normally be classified into two categories – finding the best SEO for educational institutions for the specific career choices they offer or narrowing down the search according to the degrees offered by them.
But when it comes to the process of conducting SEO for educational institutions, there are some aspects which need to be studied, which are as follows:
1. Understand The Website
When it comes to building specific content with SEO for educational institutions, the need to understand all essential aspects of the institution is the key ingredient. Hence, before curating the content for the website, a quality amount of time must be spent on studying the website, the degrees, and various other educational programs offered by the institution.
But research is just the first part of the intensive process. An SEO Service Provider further works towards creating a thorough list of guidelines that will implement the best practices across the website uniformly.
For example, there are students who are still unclear about what they want to do after high school and searching for higher-yielding degrees helps them to decide. A dedicated strategy in SEO for educational institutions shall scout out such queries that are popular within the target demographic and help optimise the website accordingly.
2. Perform Site Audit
Before a website floats, an institution needs to opt for SEO Audit Services which will help them identify areas that are the weakest and need a change. The audit conducted for SEO for educational institutions also helps the site with understanding aspects that can make the website easier to access for search engine bots and improve traffic.
For site audits, a website needs to understand its vendors and improve organic traffic to the website (as opposed to paid traffic which is highly unreliable). Industry based specific optimization will enable educational websites to reach out to more of their target audience. That is because the best practices in SEO for the education sector will not be the same as that for an e-Commerce or real estate site. All these are made possible after thorough auditing of the website. If a website wants to rank high within the organic listing via SEO for educational institutions, they need to perform the following activities:
1.Technical SEO Audit
2.On-Page SEO Audit
3.Off-Page SEO Audit
4.Architecture and Code Review
5.Content SEO Audit
During the audit, checks are conducted for any Google penalty and provides SEO Penalty Recovery Services which basically makes the website compliant with Google’s Panda and Penguin updates so that the University website regains a higher rank. This also helps in restoring organic and authentic web traffic to the website.
3. The Site Should Be Mobile Responsive
With the use of smartphones becoming widespread, the readability of the website on the smartphone also plays a vital role in increasing traffic of the site. In fact, Google is planning on making each of its search pages rank as per the content’s readability and the site’s ability to function well on mobile browsers.
Hence, whether the target audience is using the phone browser to search online or not, all indexes are made mobile-friendly as a practice in SEO for Education Domain.This can pose a problem for educational websites that have backlinks to different degrees and programs, all managed under a single domain. Even their CMS (Content Management Systems) are bundled under a single domain. This makes the curated SEO for educational institutions difficult to access or even rank. To do away with this hindrance, a good SEO service provider will ensure that the educational websites are made to be lighter without losing out on content or images.
4. Proper Navigation
In order to make a better and well-structured SEO for educational websites, understanding the navigational method of the site becomes essential. There are various methods to implement the navigation for SEO for educational institutions. But mobile friendliness and ease of accessibility are of paramount importance. Whether the educational domain is being accessed organically or via a backlink from another article, the hierarchy of the navigation should be maintained.
One of the key requirements for any process involving SEO for educational institutions is a dropbox menu which lists all the major sites and their valid content separately. At the same time, using multiple HTML within a single website has grown to be a popular method to make a site lighter and easy to navigate. Furthermore, targeted breaking of the content ensures that students can check out what they want to without feeling burdened with the need to search throughout the page.
For example: A student searches for a bachelor’s degree in chemistry. They will be provided with a list of colleges ranking on a preference basis. Once they select a particular university domain, they would want to understand the application procedure and cut-off marks. If the site has dedicated links for admission procedure, online application, required documents, etc, that are easy to spot, then the student’s search becomes much more convenient.
5. Keyword Research & How To Combine Them With Your Content?
SEO for educational institutions will require specific keywords in the correct combinations that make the university profiling more accurate. For example, many students search for particular long term keywords like ‘best MBA course in the city’ or the ‘future of Zoology Majors’. To rank for these specific searches, the SEO for educational institutions needs to highlight their program and all it has to offer to the student. At the same time, they need to make the article more engaging and less like a marketing gimmick.
In order to curate and incorporate the ideal keywords when it comes to SEO for educational institutions, one needs to delve in detail about the particular degrees offered by the college and the scope and credibility of the course. At the same time, thorough research targeted towards SEO for educational institutions is needed, keeping in mind the analysis of searches made by students for that particular course.
Once the keyword(s) are chosen and confirmed, a team of qualified content writers will work on the keywords to create content that will rank high on Google’s search. They will work towards creating a unique topic that would incorporate these keywords in an ideal density. The keywords could be used to hyperlink to the said university’s profile or have a CTA added to the conclusion for students to explore further.
6. URL Structure
Before content practices come into play in SEO for educational institutions, the URL creates the first impression. Whether it is the target audience, aka the students or Google and other search engines, the correct URL will play a vital role in bringing in the traffic. In fact, URLs are also known to be the building blocks of any website, and one of the most important elements in the process of SEO for educational institutions. Starting from maintaining the site navigational hierarchy to using the keywords in the URL, a proper URL structure requires thorough planning before being finalized. An educational institution often has the scope of widening a particular course.
Hence, the URL also needs to be made in such a way that future additions will be possible.
For example: https://www.xyzcollege.edu/economics/ – this is an example of a college that offers only a bachelor’s in economics subject. In the future, if they plan to add the Master’s degree, then the Navigation URL can simply be made by adding the Master’s keyword after the backslash, for example, https://www.xyzcollege.edu/economics/masters. If possible, avoiding URL strings is recommended as the random numbers and characters make the site less memorable.
7. Page Load Time
Since mobile-friendly websites are the need of the hour, the page load time should be kept in mind when planning SEO for educational institutions. Nobody will wait for minutes for a particular page to load in the age of lightning fast internet.
One thing that drastically affects the load speed is the size and quality of the image. While high-quality images on a website are a must, reducing the numbers will ensure that the page will load faster and better.
8.Measure Your SEO
Once an educational institution decides to go for SEO services for their website, they need to also keep a track of the traffic their website is seeing. This analysis is provided via various SEO tools they are working with. If the university has the option for online enrollment and application processing, then chances are that Google Analytics is not allowed to access the data according to the semantics of SEO for educational institutions. This is addressed by adding a goal that will count in the beginning of the application process.
In the end, if you aim to make your website count and reach potential students then you should contact the best SEO Company to ensure that the site traffic is properly regulated and the content targeted towards SEO for educational institutions brings in the desired queries. Leading the market and addressing all the above requirements is Hygiene Digital. The company provides optimum services at really affordable prices. When it comes to proper utilization of SEO and ranking of the education domain listing, Hygiene Digital is a name you can definitely rely on.
