TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Overview
- What is it?
- Why do it?
- What are the components of SEO?
- Where to Start?
- What are some basic strategies?
- What tools does RediSite offer?
- Summary
Overview
Major search engines like Google and Bing, use bots to crawl websites, index them into a database, and then use many factors to determine rankings. Search engines use thousands of lines of code and complex algorithms that analyze content on websites in order return relevant results. Search engines represent a critical route that many people use to find your school's website, especially prospective families, donors, alumni, etc. Thus, having a website that is easily visible to these search engines is a must. This is how the concept of search engine optimization was born into existence.
What is it?
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO for short, is a term for the methods, practices, and processes of enhancing your website to make it more visible to search engines with the aim that your website appears as high as possible when relevant keywords are searched.
Why do it?
The purpose of SEO is to generate and maximize visitor traffic to your website from search results. Often referred to as "organic search traffic," meaning visitors who arrive on your website from search engine results. Traffic from search is often much higher than traffic from other sources, thus there is a large incentive to implement SEO. More than that, SEO best practices overlap with and lead to a more "accessible" website and one that is just more user friendly.
What are the components of SEO?
- Content - The actual front-end content of your site. This is all the text and images that are able to be seen by visitors.
- Structure & Organization - How your site and individual pages are structured.
- Back-end Information - The stuff that search engines see and use. Items like site and page titles and descriptions, page urls, image alt-text, sitemap, page speed, etc.
- Search Engine Coding & Algorithms - At the end of the day, websites and where/how your site appears in search results are at the sole discretion of the coding and algorithms being deployed by search engines, which are constantly changing.
Where to Start?
A simple way to start delving into SEO is by searching your school's name and see what comes up. Take note of the Titles and Text returned in the search results (these are called meta title and meta description). You may also consider manually submitting an updated sitemap to Google. A sitemap lists all of the URLs for your site. While search engines like Google will eventually crawl your website (especially if it is a new site), it may be a good idea to jump start that. Note that as of December 2023, Google deprecated the ability for sitemaps to be automatically submitted. To ensure prompt indexing, it's advised to manually submit your sitemap using Google Search Console (for more information, please visit Improve your performance on Google Search). This would be a good idea if you recently went live with a new website or made major changes to content on your site.
To access the sitemap.xml and robots.txt files of your website:
- Open your published URL and add the desired file (either sitemap.xml or robots.txt) at the end (e.g., https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml or https://www.example.com/robots.txt).
- Enter the modified URL into your browser.
- Save the file or link as needed.
What are some basic strategies?
To keep it basic, below are some of the rudimentary elements and strategies to consider for your website:
- Keywords and Brand Identity
- Content Creation and Updates
- Link Building
- Review and Maintain
Research Keywords and Brand Identity
You should start with knowing your school community (identity, goals, values, etc.) and knowing your target audience. Typically, if you ask your principal or head of school "who are we?" they will say some keywords. For example, a Catholic School would likely identify themselves with keywords like "Catholic," "Faith Based," etc. Often your school board or development team has come up with 3-5 words that represent your values, those are keywords too. If you are a school that already uses Google (GMail etc), look into tools like Google Suggest and Google Keyword Planner. It may help to search your school as well as your competitors. Be sure to research, select, and use such keywords throughout your page content and especially in your Headers and Meta Titles and Descriptions (more on those later). However, avoid overusing or stuffing/forcing such words, as overuse can cause penalties in search engines.
Content Creation and Updates
Content creation and the maintenance of that content on your site is a big part of SEO. Keep it simple. Making your site small with fewer pages leads to a better website. This helps with SEO, Accessibility, Mobile friendliness, and just a better user experience (the less is more approach). A simple easy to follow logical site structure (AKA main menu, navigation, page structure) and simple short page names, make for very easy to remember and logical URLs (links) for your visitors. Be sure that page content contains keywords mentioned earlier, and that your content is also structured with Headings (H1, H2, etc). Ensure that your page content is kept up to date. Freshness is used as a part of SEO. Too many pages become hard to maintain, thus outdated, as well as causes clutter. Not to mention too many pages likely means junk pages, or tons of pages with not much valuable content on them. SEO also prioritizes quality over quantity. The bots used to crawl your site will only crawl ones deemed important. Focus on creating valuable engaging pages and not just creating pages to create pages. Again, this makes for an easier to maintain site (less work to update it), a better overall user experience, and helps with your SEO journey.
Link Building
Known as "backlinks" are links to your website from other places. Again, like quality content, high-quality back links are better than pure quantity. You most likely already do this naturally as part of your school's existence. For example, having Social Media accounts for your school that also display and link to your website counts as backlinks. Additionally, being listed and or reviewed on platforms will also build backlinks. For example, sites like Niche, or reviews in Yelp or Google. You can also ask feeder or partner schools to place a link to your website on their site. You may also look for paid opportunities to have your site link posted somewhere. There are other methods, and many more aspects to this, but let's stick with basics for this guide.
Review and Maintain
SEO is not a "one and done" process, it is an on-going effort; it requires review and maintenance. You should search for your school in multiple search engines on some sort of regular basis. Also look into using tools like Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and Google Search Console. Be sure to make updates to your site and content as needed. This does not need to be a full-time job, but it should still be something that school takes note of even if on an annual review basis.
What tools does RediSite offer?
To help better manage your SEO you can use several built-in tools on your RediSite for DIY assistance as well as third-party tools. Most of these can be accessed right from your site's dashboard before you even enter the editor! When you log in look at left side panel, you can choose Stats or SEO. Under SEO you can access SEO Overview, Page SEO, and more.
- Statistics- RediSites offer built-in statistics. This allows your school to do a basic review of site and page statistics including traffic sources. See separate article.
- SEO Overview- This tool lets you review and fix potential issues. It will flag and recommend items for review. The tool can also help not only update page meta data but can offer suggestions.
- Page SEO- While you can edit individual page's meta title and description right from the Pages panel. Just click the 3-dots to access the page settings and choose Edit Page SEO. It is far more efficient to use the Page SEO option from the dashboard. It will allow you to review pages with Missing Meta Tags, All Pages, or items that Needs Attention.
- AI Tool- Using the AI Assistant and the SEO Overview tools together can help you achieve better SEO. The AI tool can not only help with content writing it can generate your Page Meta Titles and Descriptions, as well as fill in image alt-text.
- Google Analytics/Google Tag Manager- If your school uses these tools you can easily hook it up to your Redisite. Just place your GA ID right into the dashboard to connect with your Google Analytics/Google Tag Manager account(s). Go to SEO & Settings, then choose Google Tools.
- Business Profile- Be sure to fill in the items like About us, Company Overview, etc. Access these items under Content. These are also used by search engines and AI tools.
- Sitemap- Access and review your sitemap (https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml). You can use that link to submit your sitemap directly to Google if you need to.
- Draft Pages/No Index- If there are pages you don't want search engines to index be sure to use the "Set as Draft" and or the set page to "no index" in the page settings.
Additionally, Rediker offers professional services like site design (or redesign), content organization, and user training! When you pay to have your site designed or redesigned by our team, we pay attention to SEO elements and strategies. Having your main content editors trained in best-practices also helps to keep your site in good shape.
Summary
While SEO can be very complex, the best advice is to keep it simple. Please keep in mind that ultimately there is no 100% perfect answer to SEO, and that the search engines owned by Google or Micrsoft are comprised of enterprise coding and algorithms, which are very complex as well as secretive and ever advancing. SEO originated as a way for people to attempt to take advantage of search engines (if not exploit) and ensure their sites came out on top. While having a RediSite cannot change how those engines operate or where your site may fall in those searches, hosting your school site with a RediSite offers you the tools to review and easily manage the basics of SEO!