I was urged to delve into this topic due to one of my previous post – 5 SYMPTOMS THAT YOUR WEBSITE IS YOUR SECOND SIGNPOST. It is a waste of resources if prospective customers cannot reach your schools on search engines result pages.

However, there are different techniques that can be deployed to facilitate organic reach over search engines. This article is informational for school admins, ICT personnel or consultant in charge of ICT project in schools. I believe this will serve as a guide in engaging SEO expert in your SEO project. I am not a SEO expert myself but i have some degree of experience on SEO strategies and its benefits.

Our first SEO project was in 2012 for our parent company – trisatcom.net. Having benefited from the result of those techniques, we deployed same for nortify.com.ng. The techniques will be basis of this article. SEO broadened our reached and we attracted lots of technical partner for our parent company, it also established the patronage of nortify in 3 different countries across the globe.

Effective SEO can be deployed through the following touch-point:

1. Website Title

Your website must possess certain keywords that are related to your business. E.g Montessori School in Lekki, Secondary School in Yaba. There are listening tools that can help you identified frequently-searched keyword that are related to your school, business or areas. Ensure this is provided in your website creative or as part of the deliverable of your website project.

2. Keyword Build-Up in Meta tags

This is related to my previous point. While website title is limited in number of allowed keyword, meta tags give room for more keywords. Care must be taken to avoid “keyword stuffing” as most search engines will frown at it. E.g. ” Our british curriculum allows ur to produce outstanding student with excellent result in iGSCE, SSCE, WAEC, TOEFL, SAT exams”.

Note that it is more like a sentence with very strong keyword. Choose your keyword creatively.

3. Link Building

Search engine rank website whose link are mentioned on other websites. A clever way for schools to achieve this is to subscribe to as many online school directory as possible. As the directories enlist your weblink, your search ranking is increasing E,g allaboutschoolng.com, vconnect.com

4. Blogging

This is the most potent requirement of SEO. Website whose blog is regularly updated are highly ranked. Blogging gives you the opportunity to utilize as much keyword as possible. Your content strategy should revolve around possible keywords and topics your customers maybe searching for. As a young parent, i wouldn’t mind a blog that will teach me how to engage hyperactive kids. Capitalize on the painpoint of the parent in your content strategy. With 10 -15 posts on your blog, you are bound to appear in first 2 pages of search result.

5. PPC Advertising

Pay Per Click advertising also help in SEO. PPC are the paid advert you see above and side of your search result. It works based on keywords but you must pay whenever prospective customer clicks on it.

This is not a DIY, you need to engage SEO expert or your website designer to achieve efficient SEO for your website. The success of your SEO resides with you. You must pay attention to keywords your customers are asking google. The combination of  #1- 4 will definitely give you good result.

In the next post, i will talk about techniques in identifying related keywords using google listening tools.

See you next week.

Abiola Oseni