5 SEO Tips For Upper Position Of Your Educational Website

Here is your guide to the most effective SEO strategies for higher positions on search engines.

• On-Page Optimization

This is about designing your content, navigation, technical quality, and how you tag the content. You need to make your blog easy-to-crawl for the search engines with great user experience, easy navigation, sitemap, and breadcrumbs. To get on top of SERPs, there are 4 principles you must adhere to:

• Technical optimization
• Improved user experience
• Informative content
• Tagging your content

An SEO site is all about user experience. Search engines are very smart and they know what information is on your educational website. Before you focus on SEO website optimization why don’t you focus on the content first? No way can you get on top without great content. Think about providing the most relevant content. Suppose your site addresses university students. Your SEO will be about students researching academic information so you must deliver the most appropriate results to their searches. It is about what those students want.

You might still be wondering, “What information does your site need to rank high on Google search?” In a nutshell, your audience is looking for 3 things:

• Information: you should answer their questions effectively
• Places: give directions
• Products: suggest potential suppliers and the prices

To optimize user experience, here are a few rules of thumb.

• Site navigation: breadcrumbs make easier for the readers to navigate. It also gives a structure to your educational website, improves engine crawling, and indexation. Sitemaps will also help your visitors to locate content easily thereby improving search engine crawling.
• Relevant content: you already know that content is the king. The right content draws internet users to your blog. The content must be interesting if you want it to get to the top of Google Search. It is pointless to hire a website optimization company if what you have published is irrelevant to your target audience. Your site will not fly. The best way to start is by publishing interesting and valuable information. It is true that the technical side of SEO is vital but offering information that users are searching for is more important. Of course, you want to have both- great SEO and relevant content. Start by asking yourself the type of content your typical visitor is looking for.
• Content tagging: A title tag is an element of HTML that is apparent in Google search results. It is the most important tag search engines look for when crawling and indexing your educational website. Make your title tags as catchy as possible. A good title tag represents the content on the web page; it used a primary and secondary keyword, and it stays below 55 characters or a maximum of eight words. You should tag the images as well and avoid keyword stuffing because you might be penalized.

• Technical optimization: your visitors are looking for a happy experience which can be facilitated by high responsiveness and speed. How is the load time? Is your site mobile-ready? How about the images? They should be optimized for speed as well.

• RankBrain Optimization

You must have come across RankBrain – the third most important signal that Google uses to rank websites. It is a machine learning artificial intelligence system of Google. It handles unique or ambiguous queries that no internet user has ever asked before. Every day, Google receives new questions which contribute to about 15% of all searches. Since three billion searches are processed every day, it means that the unique entries reach up to 450M. This is where machine learning comes in to handle the demand. Digital marketing websites might find it hard to truly optimize for RankBrain. But there are a number of ways you can do so.

• Irresistible SERP snippets

Organic click-through rates increase the success rate of your blog. RankBrain’s relevance score is synonymous with the quality score of AdWords. Note that this RankBrain is a derivative of G-350 technology or Google AdWord’s quality score. The smart technology doesn’t require external signals like inbound links to rank ads. SEO is not about competing with similar websites in terms of word count, keyword density, number of backlinks, or social metrics. High organic search visibility results from beating the competitors with higher click-through rate. So, if your click-through rate is not satisfactory, you should focus on creating irresistible snippets. Ensure that your meta descriptions and page titles echo the needs of the visitors to lure them to click for more. Additionally, try to simplify the web addresses so they can foster value to the search engines and the users. If possible, create content targeting featured snippet position in Google search results.

• Emulate the pros

This is about modeling your educational site after authoritative sites. A good example of an authoritative site is essay writing service by Edubirdie.com. Google knows that any site that mimics the structure of TypeMyEssay has a good camp and is likely to reach the top of the searchable index. 

Other tips to optimize for RankBrain include efficient use of keywords, conversational writing, figured ranking factor priorities, and refined existing content. RankBrain gives you an incentive to understand better your target audience and refine your content. Make sure that your content had a deep value and a clear purpose for which it is created in the first place. Once you are set to optimize for RankBrain, consider who you are addressing and why it matters. 

Source: https://cdn.searchenginejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/google-rankbrain-algorithm-guide.png

• The Use Of Social Media

Today, internet users are also looking for information on social media channels besides socializing. Social media is one of the greatest SEO optimization tools. Don’t forget that social media networks have search engines too. It can work for you in a number of ways. Let’s say you are very active on Facebook. Many people will discover your educational website app by searching for marketing-related posts via Facebook’s search engine. Similarly, you can make your content visible on Instagram, Pinterest, etc., by proper use of hashtags and categorization of your pins. Furthermore, if students and tutors want to check out your academic writing site, they are more likely to open their social media pages, do a quick search, and see the type of presence you command on every channel. Would you like to learn more about social media practices to boost SEO? Follow the guidelines below.

• Locally optimize your posts: to engage with the local community update your posts any time you’re involved in local events, e.g., tradeshows, festivals. Take photos, post them, so that the local residents can comment or like them. It’s also good to interact with other local companies on social media but you need to do some research.
• Grow your following: the number of followers on your social sites has a greater effect on your ranking. However, your following must be organic, which could take a long time to accomplish.
• Increase brand awareness: you can improve your social media reputation by providing quality content and increased engagement. An improved brand presence will contribute to more branded searches on search engines, hence a higher likelihood of ranking for non-branded keywords.
• Influence social sharing: just like the internal links, social sharing contributes positively to your website’s authority. All that Google needs to increase your domain authority is a signal of an authentic external source that validates your company. So, it would be good to have 5 people sharing your LinkedIn posts and even better to get 500 people sharing, liking, or replying to your posts.
• Optimize your Twitter presence: Google and Twitter stroke deal that allows indexing of tweets on SERPs. Today, if you search a particular company on Google, you will see their tweets streaming. What does this tell you? You need to tweet regularly and get a significant number of followers and make sure that your tweets are relevant. Twitter is a very busy platform so you must use the right techniques to grab the attention of the many users. So, how do you do it? There is no magic bullet for optimizing your Twitter presence. Use the following 3 guidelines.

• Use tweet buttons on your blog
• Track tweets linking to your site
• React and engage your tweets

4)  Smart link building

Backlinks are critical to website marketing. Your URL would be lost anywhere between page number 10 and 20 if it lacks good backlinks. You need to employ the best practices of link building that guarantee top positions on Google. Stop wasting time on bad backlinks from article submission articles or directory. Rather, build your backlinks from authoritative sites. Look for reputable websites within your niche, in this case, educational sites. This relevancy is extremely important. When building the links, focus on quality as opposed to quantity. There are some things you need to keep in mind when using backlinks to improve search engine positioning SEO.

• Keep track of those links: monitoring the backlinks is equally important in building them. To know when the status of your backlinks changes, use Monitor Backlink tool. The tool helps you to determine when a webmaster unfollows or removes the backlink. Don’t make a mistake of forgetting to check the status of your backlinks.
• The anchor text must be a relevant keyword: the visible link must be backed by a strong keyword in order to project relevance to the users. The anchor text must indicate what the inbound link is about. Think of a descriptive link text.
• Include the backlink on a page with the most relevant content: there is no point in adding links to pages which are not relevant to your educational blog. This will be considered a spam by Google and you will be penalized for it.
• Improve navigation on your website: strong inbound links are useless if your web pages are not useful to the internet users who land on them. Make sure that your blog is simple to navigate and full of relevant content.

If you want to succeed in website SEO marketing, the appearance of your site in other places matters a lot. Search engines consider the quality of links to your blog on social media channels as well as the visitor count when positioning your site on SERPs. Backlinks are thus a good sign that your site is popular. It means that other website users think that your site is worth exploring. Learn how to use backlinks to gain high visibility in search engines.

• Optimizing For ‘Near Me’ Search Questions

According to SEO search engine, the important touch points of the consumer’s journey are the micro-moments which when combined, they determine the final decision of the consumer. What does this tell you? Mobile is the key driver of local search. That’s why you must optimize for micro-moments of mobile searches. Don’t be like most sites which are lagging behind because of limited mobile user experience. The main agenda here is to make your blog easy to use and highly relevant. 

It is very important for your URLs to be found by the local audience. Here are some steps to follow.

• Update local page listing

The local business pages of Google provide useful information regarding your company. To update your local page listing, go to https://www.google.com/business and click Start. This link is external. You will be taken to Google Maps whereby you will be asked about your company, including its address and contact details. Take time to upload quality information and avoid mistakes such as non capitalized characters, use of custom profile photo instead of stock images, omitting legal terms, leaving out your physical address, etc. Your local business listing will be revealed on Google Maps.

• Show client feedback and their reviews

Customer testimonials are very important elements of ‘near me’ search results. Google allows customers to review your services using an external link. When customers open Google Maps, they will find your website and choose to write a review. Then they give a rating out of five stars. Positive reviews have dramatic effects on your local SEO marketing, especially on Google. Take your time to reply to the comments so you can boost your local search rank. Responding to replies and queries shows how much you value your clients and that you are committed to improving their experience. If you have a compelling testimonial from a client, use the Schema tool to show SERPs that your site has a non-Google review.

• Show your company’s name, contact details, and address

These important details are critical to local search. Ensure that they are displayed throughout your web pages especially at the end of every landing page. You can use Schema markup for this purpose as well.

• Information consistency

The information you share must be consistent. This allows a search engine to display accurate data for your target audience. Don’t include wrong postal codes or phone codes on local directory because you will be confusing Google. But this is a mess you can clean up manually through paid services.