What are the key factors for selling in a language school? Certainly, one of them is a high position in Google search. How to optimize a language school in Google and what can we gain from it? With it, we can attract potential customers genuinely interested in enrolling in a language course. However, promoting a language school requires not only dedication but also knowledge of how to do it in a way that the effort invested pays off in the form of filled classes.
Why is this so important? Simply having an online presence is not enough when potential customers are not even aware of your school’s existence. Considering that competition has significantly increased after the industry moved online, it’s crucial to appear prominently in search results. In reality, the average user doesn’t look beyond the first 2-3 pages of search results displayed by the search engine. How can you ensure that your implemented actions will be effective and tailored to the profile of your language school’s activities? We have a few tips for you 😊
Target Audience
Yes, we know that everyone repeats this to the point of tedium, but it’s truly a key issue for your efforts to make sense. And you can say that your school offers courses for everyone. However, if something is for everyone, it’s not really clear for whom. This doesn’t mean you have to narrow down your business profile, but you need to adjust your tactics a bit. First, think about who, among those searching online for language teaching-related phrases, should land on your website. If you specialize in courses for children, their parents or school and educational institution staff will be looking for them. If you offer courses for adults, this group is also quite diverse: from people wanting to be proficient in a language for work to seniors wanting to chat with their son-in-law from abroad. When undertaking marketing activities and SEO positioning, it should be tailored to each of these groups.
Local and Hyperlocal Positioning
If you want to position yourself well, another thing worth considering is the market you want to target with your offer. When planning positioning, it’s important to determine whether your offer has hyperlocal, local, or national potential, meaning whether you want to focus your promotional efforts on a specific area.
The difference between them is that local focuses on a specific city or region. These are schools that will appear in response to a query like „best language school in Lublin.” On the other hand, hyperlocal positioning concentrates on a narrower area, such as a neighborhood or even a few streets. Your school appearing in search results for such queries can be a deciding factor for someone to enroll in a course because they may have just a 5-minute walk to get to your classes. The biggest advantage of hyperlocal and local positioning? Directing queries straight to your school by concentrating on „near me” type searches.
Website visibility for a local keyword phrase works best for physical language schools, and it’s also essential to consider Google Maps positioning.
What Does Positioning a Language School’s Website Entail?
Just like any strategy, positioning requires a comprehensive approach. Effective SEO (Search Engine Optimization) activities are a central pillar here. To position a website effectively, you need to:
- analyze the actions taken by your competition;
- select content carefully for both your blog and subpages;
- check the visibility of your website for chosen keywords;
- create a suitable title and description.
Title and Description
You’re probably wondering what these terms actually mean. We’re here to explain. The Title appears in three forms:
- In the browser tab – as the name of the page, making it easier to locate the right tab.
- In search engine results – as the link leading to the page.
- On social media – as the title when sharing a link.
How to write a good title? It should be concise and reflect the content of the webpage. You have 60 characters to use; otherwise, it will be automatically shortened by Google.
Description is a summary, an overview of the page’s content, and its advertisement. Properly composed, it should give the reader the sense that what they are looking for is precisely on your page. Theoretically, it’s not a factor in SEO, but a well-chosen description significantly increases the click-through rate. As a result, Google recognizes the page as valuable and boosts its ranking a few notches higher.
How to Know What to Write? SEO Tools
A creative approach to content writing alone is not sufficient to achieve good visibility in the face of competition. Here, tools are essential; they are a treasure trove of knowledge regarding what your potential customers are typing into Google. If you’re wondering whether Semstorm or Senuto is the better choice, there’s no single right answer, as each of these programs offers different capabilities. One might enrich your text with keywords as you write, while the other, based on your blog article’s title, may provide you with ideas for dozens more topics that language learners are searching for.
Latest Google Algorithm Updates
To know how to optimize for Google search, it’s crucial to stay up-to-date with its latest algorithm updates as they dictate trends and reveal how Google’s bots evaluate a website’s value to users. Below, you’ll find the most recent updates.
Helpful Content Update (8/25/2023)
At the moment, this update only applies to English-language searches, but it will soon be implemented in other languages as well. Its purpose is to reward original and useful content. How do the bots know if the content is satisfying? Google assesses how quickly a user exits your site or if they immediately jump to another search result. It likely correlates this time with the click-through rate (CTR) and evaluates whether your site’s content matches the entered query. This is primarily a human and behavioral factor.
If you have a lot of valuable content mixed with content rated as unhelpful, the valuable content will be positioned lower. Therefore, it’s essential to ensure that the content on your site is of the highest quality and satisfying to your customers.
Core Update (9/12/2023)
This change can be viewed as an update and a natural evolution of the algorithm. Ranking criteria are changing, and new factors are emerging, so the algorithm is adjusted accordingly.
SPAM Update (10/12/2023)
This update introduces new guidelines for identifying pages as spam. Stuffing keywords haphazardly, excessively using keywords in every header, compromised pages containing malicious software, links that can manipulate search rankings, consistent content duplication and paraphrasing – these and other undesirable practices will label a page as spam.
The EAT Concept: How Google Evaluates Content
The following three elements illustrate the path Google is currently taking and will continue to follow in the coming years:
- Expertise
- Authoritativeness
- Trustworthiness
These are the fundamental pillars on which a website is evaluated. This approach was part of Google’s efforts to discourage the use of low-quality content that aims to manipulate the algorithm. It encourages the creation of higher-quality content without artificial keyword stuffing and content produced by individuals who are not knowledgeable about the topic. The goal is to create reliable and user-friendly content.
In December 2022, the EAT acronym was enriched by adding an „E” (Experience) and changing the meaning of „T” to Trust. Trust now plays a key role in the new EEAT evaluation key. The main principles for assessing content are:
- Uniqueness: Original content, partly unique with the author’s insights.
- Accuracy: Linguistic and factual accuracy, avoiding the spread of fake news.
- Optimization: SEO optimization.
Protip: You can rank high even without the exact keyword in the title of your content, like a blog, by using its synonym, but it will take a lot more time, potentially up to 11 months.
Can you optimize a language school’s website on your own? Yes, it’s possible because, as you can see, the basic knowledge is readily available. However, you should be prepared to invest time, financial resources (for paid tools), and gain experience. So, the question is, do you have enough free space for this task? Typically, it’s worth considering delegating this task to a marketing department with a good copywriter or to an agency with a team of specialists. The knowledge gathered in the above article will help you evaluate the effectiveness of their work.
We’re still rooting for you! Let us know in the comments if you’ve tried optimizing your school’s website and what the results were!