12 replies to this topic

[jass_blink]

Hi there

I m looking work on a local school site situated in a suburb. I had a breif a review but really could not understand what pages/keywords should be optimized or targeted apart from home and about us. Any thoughts on what kind of searches can be expected for a school site?

[Deverill]

Think about what people will be looking for when they find your site. Do you have an exceptional performing arts department or something unique? If not then I'd just optimize for the home page and draw people looking for schools in your neighborhood to it and let them explore from there and not worry about the other pages.

If you do have something out of the ordinary and people may be searching for it then focus on that for the page that deals with it and you'll pick up the people looking for that thing.

Nothing says every page on a site has to be keyword targeted for the search engines.

[torka]

At least around here, each teacher at my son's school has an individual page on the school website where they post information about their philosophy of teaching, what's going on in the classroom, information about special projects, etc. As a parent, I have searched on the teachers' names to find their "classroom" page, especially at the beginning of the school year when we find out who our son's new teacher(s) will be for the coming year and I want to learn more about them.

Hope this helps.

--Torka

[jass_blink]

Thanks Torka, Deverill!!

This is surely helpful.

Regards

[Randy]

Is it a public school? A private school? Parochial maybe?

Do you know what users they're targeting? For instance, a public school may be targeting the masses, but may have an exceptional department or two. Or it may have exceptional sports teams that people in the local community follow closely. Or it may simply have exceptional ratings with whatever governmental body that watches over and rates schools.

A private or parochial school on the other hand may target a completely different audience. Private schools can be expensive, so may be geared towards the more affluent people in the community. And you may even be able to do comparisons against the local public school. Grade point average, smaller class sizes, more/better advice in helping the child get accepted into a good college, etc.

Parochial schools may target many of the same things as a private school, but are most often targeting parents of a certain religious faith. Which of course should be mentioned in the copy and is something one should optimize for a bit. After all, people considering moving into a community are usually going to want to know the school options available to them. So your main phrase is probably going to be something like <some city [possible modifier] school> for those out of town folks.

The list of things you might target is basically endless. But first you'll need to get a pretty good handle on what type of school it is, what it excels at and who the target audience is made up of.

[jass_blink]

Hi Randy

It is Porchial School providing Catholic Education, I don't know if I write about the exact location here.

I have had experience of workin on B2B sites.. but this is totally new to me.. So I m practically cluelss on possible strategy should be followed. The site divided into to sections one for school and other for Perish both on separate directories (/school/ & /perish), the home page content is well written and talks about catholic education. From what I see on the site.. the site is well planned n structured having unique page relevant title tags for each of the sections n pages. I will try to figure out what it really excels in.. I understand that we can use the 'what it really excels in' feature to promote the site, but how it can drive traffic from search engines? People searching would be more concerned about what they need rather than searching for what school is really doing well.

In regard to target audience, I feel it would be catholic community which is based in that suburbs where school is situation along-with neighbouring suburbs.

Having mentioned all this, i m still clueless where exactly I/we shold be striking in-terms of on-site SEO.

[Jill]

So I m practically cluelss on possible strategy should be followed.

Then why are you the one in charge of optimizing this site? (I hope you are volunteering and not charging for it.)

[Randy]

In regard to target audience, I feel it would be catholic community which is based in that suburbs where school is situation along-with neighbouring suburbs.

And people who may be moving to the area. Don't forget about them!

Chances are the folks already in the area have at least heard of the school, so are quite likely to be searching for the name of the parish and/or school. But the ones from the surrounding area and those who may be moving into the area are going to be searching in a bit more general way. eg Catholic School (in/near) <some town/some state>

[jass_blink]

Then why are you the one in charge of optimizing this site? (I hope you are volunteering and not charging for it.)

I m still trying to find the possible solutions and take on the job only if I think I have some concrete plan in hand.. but thats is how we learn.. no?

[Jill]

but thats is how we learn.. no?

Yes. But not at the expense of others. If you're doing their work for free as you learn, then that's great. Or at least if they know you're still just learning.

[austk]

seo targeting for a local school site? What for? Most of your users will know how to find the site, what they need is a way to gte the information they need and want. Use the search bar to make sure there are results if people type, school hours, counselors, gym access, parking, usual stuff. i have seen some horrible school sites that insult there is no result for principal's office, cheerleading, or summer school.

If they have to call the school office to find out info that is on the site, the job is not done.

[donp]

Overall, I'm thinking that your keywords are going to be pretty narrow, as in
"My Town, State, Catholic School" and that should not be hard to optimize successfully for. Good descriptive title tags and content (copy) should get you there readily enough as there won't be all that much competition.

The first rule of optimization is to figure out what you are optimizing for and I'm thinking the above keywords would be far and away the most popular search term your potential viewers will be using. Filling out the site with a well rounded series of pages about the curriculum and other offerings will help with the long tail, but the main keywords are most likely as quoted above.

[Deverill]

The first rule of optimization is to figure out what you are optimizing for

Put another way... the question I always ask my clients (web design more than SEO but a little of that too) is "There is a guy sitting in Chicago. He is Mr. Average and wants the things you have to offer. What is he going to type into Google to look for you?"

It helps, sometimes, to get people to understand we don't care about that cool, hip, keyword phrase we can rank highly for. We only care about what the person looking for your services would type to find you and then attack from that angle. It does no good if you optimize (even at #1 in the SERPs) for "World's largest monkey bars" if the guy moving here from Tuscon is going to search for "[city] Catholic school"