How to Optimize Your Language School’s Website for SEO Success
SEO means Search Engine Optimization, and it is the process of improving the ranking of a website in search engine results. It means that by following some good practices (that we will teach you here 😉) you can get your content high on top on Google (Bing, Yahoo, or other platforms) when someone searches for a language school like yours!
This article covers the basics of SEO – so if you’re a seasoned SEO fighter – you might walk out disappointed. However – if you’re struggling to wrap your head around the whole idea – we’re here to help you out!
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Why SEO is Important for Language Schools
While there are many benefits to having a significant presence on Google search, the costs can be high if done improperly. This is especially true for schools that rely heavily on online advertising as their primary source of enrollments - as they will have limited ways to get more students if they don't appear on search results pages.
You can lower the costs of gaining visibility and showing up as one of the first search options by using smart SEO tactics.
Here are some of the benefits of optimizing your website for search engines:
Directing more traffic to your website without paid ads;
Gaining visibility;
Generating leads (people potentially interested in your courses);
And by generating leads, turning them into students!
Let’s see how you can achieve these goals!
What You Need to Know about Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is not about tricks and abracadabra codes to improve your ranking. Doesn’t matter how much you wish, there is no magic keyword that will make your website explode with visits.
Remember that trying magical solutions from the Internet can be dangerous!
Instead of that, it is important to know what Google aims for. Which is to show people the most relevant websites for their search. So, the best way to rank higher there is by focusing on your ideal student and asking yourself:
“When someone goes to Google, what would they type in to find my school?”
Yep, it’s as simple as that - by asking this one simple question you are halfway through figuring out which keywords to rank for!
Keyword Research: How to Find the Best Keywords for Your Language School?
As mentioned, – by figuring out which phrases your potential students are typing into Google – you’re basically halfway there. The next tip will be to avoid keywords that are too general.
For example, don’t try to rank for “school” or “language school”. Lots of results will appear, from all over the globe – including those giant schools, with their whole marketing teams working on campaigns to make them show up high in the results. Not a crowd you want to compete with. Nor should you, as your ideal students might be completely different than theirs!
Also, it is very likely that your potential student will research for a more specific combination of words*. A good approach can be to use something that relates more directly to you, such as “expat language school” + the name of the city where you are based in.
*By searching for “language school” on Google we get 3.420.000.000 results.
By narrowing down to “language school in Rotterdam”, this number falls to 19.000.000, which is 0.56% of the previous search.
By searching for “Dutch Courses in Rotterdam” we get to 80.400.000 which is less than 2,35% of the first search. 🤓
Don’t compete with three billion four hundred twenty million other search results. Nobody will find you there 😉
A tool that can help you figure out if a keyword will be hard or easy to compete for in search results is Ubersuggest. There you can see the volume of searches that a keyword gets and its SEO difficulty.
Ubersuggest gives you colors for the difficulties (green goes for easy, yellow for medium, and, of course, red for hard). So, try to stay in green – which means that the chance of you appearing high on the research is bigger – but also check the volume of people searching for that specific phrase.
You don’t want to end up making all that effort for a keyword that gets just a tiny number of searches per month. With the right balance between the volume of searches and SEO difficulty, you can get to know whether you should try or not to incorporate a specific keyword on your website.
But, let’s be honest – if you’re a language school for expats most of your keywords will be a combination of:
[CITY] + COURSES + [LANGUAGE]
LEARN + [LANGUAGE] + IN [CITY]
With some possible variations. Here’s an example we got for French courses in Paris from Ubersuggest:
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We‘ve created a tailored SEO to-do list with actionable steps for you to follow in the upcoming two weeks. Created specifically for language schools!
You can access the to-do list library by leaving your email address below:
On-Page SEO Strategies Language Schools Should Consider
After finding which keywords to use, it is time to know where to use them. Proper usage of keywords, anchor texts, and meta descriptions are great ways to get your site ranking higher in organic search results.
Due to that, a lot of people will tell you to write a blog. Yes, blogging is good for your SEO, we know that, but for schools that don't have marketing teams or massive marketing budgets, they're usually not worth the hustle. (We recently wrote an article about it. You can check it here 😊).
What we suggest is that you focus on using those keywords on the 2 or 3 main phrases that are integrated to your website and pay attention to on-page optimization and backlinks.
Here are some on-page SEO strategies for language schools:
Use keywords in the title tag, header tags, and body content of your website;
You can also use those in internal linking structure to get indexed by Google quickly;
Here’s an example of internal links in our article about choosing your niche.
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Make sure that the first two sentences of your metadata description have keywords that relate to your page topic.
Here’s an example of our own metadata descriptions. Clearly – there still are a few improvements to make 😉
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Add a video or image gallery with captions that highlight the benefits of learning that specific language, in this specific location, at your school.
Here’s an example of our own captions. We use Squarespace, which allows us to use the power of SEO in captions while hiding them and having everything look nice and clean 😎
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Do frequent updates on your website (Google loves it).
What Is Off-Page SEO And Why Is It Important To Your Business?
Off-page SEO is a general term for indirect, offsite SEO techniques that help your website rank better on search engines.
So, simplifying it, everything that is happening outside of your page, but still directs traffic from search engines to your page. Sounds like magic? Not really if you take a closer look. 😉
Off-page SEO can last for years and help to continually improve your website’s rank. This is valuable when it comes to things like finding new students or creating new partnerships.
8 Simple Off-Page SEO Strategies to Boost Your Visibility
Besides the on-page strategies, there are other things that you can do to increase the traffic to your website and build your name in the market. A few simpler suggestions are:
Invest some time in email marketing to drive people back to your website (remember – the first time they came over they might’ve not been ready to enroll! And they also might not come back to your page once they’re ready. We write more about that here);
Invest in paid ads that redirect people to well-thought-through landing pages (don’t focus only on Facebook and Instagram ads – use YouTube, Spotify, Google, Pinterest, etc.);
Connect with influencers relevant to your potential students and get backlinks from the content they create for you;
Publish guest posts on websites relevant to your potential students;
Get yourself invited to podcasts that your students listen to and make sure that your website is mentioned in the show notes;
Update your business address, phone number, email addresses when necessary to keep them current;
Leverage the power of Pinterest (including the paid Pins);
Go to Quora.com, find relevant questions, answer them to the best of your abilities and add a link to your website if it’s relevant, OR always add a signature with your website in it at the end of your answers 😉
Get access to our library of free marketing guides, trackers, and templates for expat language schools:
Conclusion: Don’t Overcomplicate It!
Just to sum it all up, the best way to rank higher on Google, is by focusing on your ideal students and creating a helpful, information-rich website that will match their searches. For that, you should use keywords on your website to clearly and accurately describe your language school.
In this article, we talked about SEO, keywords, backlinks, metadata, and a few other terms that can sound a bit overwhelming. We hope we helped you to get more familiar with them, but in case that you need any help, don’t hesitate to contact us! 😊
