You probably have heard the term search engine optimization (SEO) and may even have some knowledge about the topic. However, if you aren’t using all of the tools for your school website, you may be missing out on great opportunities to help your school website be found.
Having a website that is optimized for search engines is crucial to ensure that your school reaches the maximum number of potential students and parents. Basic SEO practices are quite simple through a variety of practices and tools made possible by using WordPress as your content management system.
Below, we explain best practices, keyword research, WordPress tools, and other considerations to make your website more optimized and easier to find.
What is SEO?
SEO is the practice of ensuring your website or a webpage contains all of the elements it needs to rank high when people are searching for words, phrases, questions, or other queries in a search engine.
If you use the proper tools, you can ensure your pages are properly optimized and are competitive against other colleges and universities that are trying to rank for the keywords that you also wish to rank for.
Think about it this way: when someone searches for “best colleges in (insert state or region),” or “most affordable university in (insert your region), you most likely would like to rank for those terms through quality content and SEO optimization that will help you rank for it.
Google vs Other Search Engines
When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), Google is undoubtedly the king. It is the most widely used search engine in the world, with over 90% of all internet searches being conducted on Google. As such, most SEO experts focus their efforts on optimizing websites for Google’s algorithm.
However, there are other search engines out there, such as Bing, Yahoo!, and DuckDuckGo. While they don’t have the same market share as Google, they are still important players in the search engine game. So, how do these search engines compare when it comes to SEO?
Bing, which is owned by Microsoft, is the second most popular search engine after Google. It has a much smaller market share, but it’s still significant, with around 5% of all internet searches.
Bing has its own algorithm, which is similar to Google’s but with some important differences. For example, Bing places more emphasis on social signals, such as likes and shares on social media, than Google does. This means that optimizing your website for Bing may require a slightly different approach than for Google.
As for the rest of the search engines, they have even smaller market shares than Bing. However, they still have their own algorithms and should not be ignored entirely when it comes to SEO.
For example, DuckDuckGo is a privacy-focused search engine that has been gaining popularity in recent years. It uses a combination of its own web crawler and results from other sources, such as Bing, to provide its search results.
It’s always a good idea to keep an eye on the latest developments in the world of search engines and adjust your SEO strategy accordingly.
SEO Tools
Here are some of the common SEO tools that schools can use to optimize their websites:
i) SEO Plugins
Various WordPress SEO plugins can help schools optimize their website content for search engines. SEO plugins analyze content and suggest improvements to ensure that it is easily readable and understandable for users and search engines.
ii) Analytics Plugins
These plugins help schools monitor their website’s traffic and provide detailed information about the number of visitors, sources of traffic, and user behavior. This information can help schools identify areas of improvement and optimize website content accordingly.
iii) Cache Plugins
These plugins help to speed up website loading times by storing frequently accessed data in a cache. By minimizing the time it takes for web pages to load, school websites become more accessible and user-friendly. This improved functionality not only enhances the user experience but also increases the website’s search engine ranking.
iv) Image Optimization Plugins
Images can significantly impact a website’s loading time, which can negatively affect SEO. Image Optimization plugins optimize images on a website, reducing their size without compromising their quality. This can help improve the loading speed of a website, which is an important factor for search engine optimization.
v) Broken Link Checkers
Broken links can negatively impact a website’s SEO and user experience. Using plugins to scan the school’s website and identify broken links, allows schools to fix the broken links quickly.
By using these WordPress SEO tools, schools can optimize their website content, improve website speed, and fix broken links, all of which can help improve their website’s visibility on search engines. This can lead to increased traffic, more inquiries, and ultimately more students enrolling in their schools.