Now this is the million dollar question! There is a whole industry built around making sure websites are listing on Google’s first page and for very good reason. 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results.

For schools, ranking on the first page for branded searches (i.e. your school name) is usually pretty easy if you are following the basic rules of SEO however you also want to rank highly for more generic non branded searches eg “Top private schools in London”, “Independent schools near me”, “girls schools in Surrey”. 

Here’s how you can do that…

Do you regularly Google your school? Do you wonder why your school appears lower down the list than other schools in the area? It’s easy to get lost and be scared of acronyms such as SERP or SEO, but there are some simple steps you could take RIGHT NOW to be on the road to better search rankings.

Let’s start with SERP

SERP is just a fancy acronym for Search Engine Results Page. When you input a keyword or a phrase into a search engine (e.g. Google), the engine searches for the most relevant content that is created just for you, based on your browser history, social setting and location. You will notice two types of content come up; organic and paid results, along with a variety of features such as shopping results, knowledge graphs or reviews.

‘Organic’ results are pages that are shown to you due to the search engine’s algorithm based on your query. On the other hand, paid results are basically advertisements that the website owners have paid for that will only show up if their chosen keywords match your query. The sad reality is that if your school website does not come up on the first page of Google Search, you will receive fewer visitors.

SEO has become a very important part of many school’s marketing strategies. However, there seems to be a lack of basic understanding of how search engines work. In this blog post, we hope to better explain SEO and search engines.

Interesting Facts

Top 5 Search Engines in United Kingdom (Jan 2013 to Jan 2014)

• Google – 90.25%
• Bing – 5.09%
• Yahoo! – 3.19%
• Ask Jeeves – 0.41%
• AOL – 0.33%
• Other - 0.74%

Click Through Rates for Rankings on Google

• #1 position on Google receives 32.5% of all click-through traffic.
• #2 – 17.6%
• #3 – 11.4%
• #4 – 8.1%
• #5 – 6.1%
• #6 – 4.4%
• #7 – 3.5%
• #8 – 3.1%
• #9 – 2.6%
• #10 – 2.4%

All other results receive fewer than 2% each.

What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?

SEO is the process of increasing relevant traffic from search engines. The key is that the search traffic must be relevant. It may look good to rank for ‘independent schools’ but a lot of the traffic will be irrelevant. There will be people looking for schools in Scotland, or for a definition of independent schools. It is much better to target niche, long-tail keywords that are relevant to your school - ‘independent prep school London’.

Why do I need SEO?

Although social media and other types of referrals can generate visits to your website, search engines drive the majority of traffic on the web. This is because they are the primary method of navigation for internet users.

Search engines are so popular because they provide users with exactly what they want to find. They are popular with marketers because they provide targeted traffic – they send people looking for what you offer. 

We typically find that over 70% of school website traffic comes from search engines. And with Google serving over 90% of search traffic, schools are heavily reliant on one company.

How do search engines work?

In order to understand SEO you must first understand the basics of how search engines operate.

Search engines have two primary functions:

Crawling and Indexing - to provide users with fresh, relevant results, search engines must crawl all pages, documents, images, videos, news etc. that the World Wide Web has to offer. They must then decipher and store this information within their huge datacenters ready to serve to searchers.

Answering Queries - inorder to retain users, search engines must provide people with the most relevant content. Through retrieval and ranking algorithms, search engines provide answers to user queries.

How Users Use Search Engines

Whenever we do SEO we always think about the end user and not the search engine. The reason for this is that the overall goal of the website is to convert real person, not a search engine. Also, search engine’s are always changing their algorithm and service to provide a better service to people. If your website is good for the user, then search engines will provide it with ‘brownie points’. 

There are three types of search queries that users usually perform:

Transactional Queries – queries that result in an action such as buying a train ticket or purchasing a song. For a school this could be requesting a prospectus, or arranging a visit.

Informational Queries – when a user is looking for information such as the latest hockey fixtures, or the next open day. 

Navigational Queries – when a user seeks a specific destination online, such as the school website, parent area, or Twitter account.

This should provide you with a good basic understanding of SEO. If you would like more help with your school’s SEO, just get in touch.