Understanding Keywords for Childcare SEO is Only the Beginning
In the next ten minutes, we’ll describe how to create a presence for your childcare website on Google. Whether you realize it or not, Google already knows your site exists, but they might not know just where you fit in the vast space of the world wide web.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization, also known as SEO, is a common phrase you should always keep in mind when writing for your website. SEO is aligning the elements of your website with the search words people use on search engines, such as Google or Bing so that your website can be found and, hopefully, clicked on by your target audience. Understanding the key aspects of SEO and applying them to your website can drive what is known organic traffic to your childcare website.
Organic traffic, or visitors who come to your site by way of non-paid search engine results, increases the visibility of your brand and ultimately, will increase enrollments. Next, we’ll tell you about the critical SEO make-up, but it’s important to know that while the foundation of search engine optimization stays the same, search engine algorithms are constantly changing.
SEO-friendly Childcare Website
Having a SEO-friendly website is the only way to ensure that the search engines will find your site and show it to potential visitors. While search engines may know your site exists, they may not know how to organize the information on it. Search engines contain what are known as crawlers that scan every website for key details and serve it to a person who may be searching for that particular information or product.
Search engines use an extremely complex algorithm to decide whether or not your webpage is the best match for what someone may be looking for. For example, if someone is searching for preschool activities, a search engine typically will not display links to a college program guide.
Keep reading to learn more about what should be included in your webpages to ensure your childcare website is found!
Keywords for Childcare
Before you start to put the pieces of the puzzle together, you must understand what drives the search engine results and that all begins with the keywords. As mentioned before, search engines use an intricate algorithm that uses the defined keyword or keyword phrase that is used to perform a search. These keywords are what you should use to build your content elements.
Researching Keywords
How will you know what keywords to use? Researching keywords for your childcare website should start with your audience. What are they interested in? What are they talking about? Once you know what is important to your audience, you’ll have the first step of keyword research done!
The next step is building on these topics. Start plugging these topics into your favorite search engine and take note of what terms start to repeat. Additionally, there are both free and paid versions of keyword research tools that can help guide your content in the right direction.
Here are just a few to get you started:
- Google Keyword Planner – Free
- Answerthepublic.com – Free
- Moz.com – Free Trial/Paid
- SEMRush.com – Free Trial/Paid
Using Keywords on Your Childcare Website
Using the keywords and keyword phrases in the key elements of your webpage or blog allows search engines to determine the relevance of that content, and ultimately, serve it up in a search engine results page.
Key Elements on the Search Engine Results Page
There are a few basic elements of your web pages that must be optimized and properly structured in order for search engines to organize the information.
URL: Your URL structure must contain important keywords that relate both to the content of your page as well as the potential visitor’s topic of interest. You will learn more about keywords in this article.
If possible try and keep your url concise with only the most important words, also known as keywords, which you’ll learn more about in this article.
It’s also very important to organize your webpages in folders so that search engines can easily find them. Consider your website like a filing cabinet. Your domain is your filing cabinet, your subfolder is your tab label and your page is the document inside the tab folder.
Title
A page title tells the reader, as well as the search engine, what your page is about. This is also a good place to try and attract a visitor with enticing language.
Meta Description
The meta description for your page does not actually appear on your webpage or blog, but it does appear the in search engine result. This is the body of text that appears directly below your Page Title and URL on the SERP. This element of the search result is used to tell the reader exactly what your webpage is about.
Sum up your entire webpage content in just 160 characters or less for maximum effectiveness and exposure.
Body
The body of your webpage or blog is intended for the meat of your message. This is where the “meat and potatoes” of your content will live. Here are a few things to remember when writing the body of your page:
- Organization is key. Be sure to organize your thoughts so that the reader can easily follow and continue reading.
- It helps if you dig back into your college days archives and compose an outline of what your page will be about. This helps you build a skeleton of content, and then fill in the bulk of the content once you have it finalized.
- Don’t forget to use your keywords! By now, hopefully you’re starting to realize the keywords are a big piece of SEO.
- Call to action (CTA) is critical. What do you want the reader to do next? Make sure you have a link or button on your page that explains the next step you want the reader to take. Example: Start Now, Let’s Go!, Sign Me Up
Local SEO for Childcare Centers
If you are anything like most web users, you’ve searched “places to eat near me”. If not, give it a try. What you’ll find is that the search engine finds restaurants right near your geolocation. How do they know?
Google and other search engines look for restaurants that have optimized their website for Local SEO. So, how do they do it?
Google, Bing and Apple all have their own settings that allow you to specify the criteria for your business that allow your website to be indexed in a local search.
More SEO Elements to Consider
- In every element we’ve talked about in this article, make sure you engage your reader…make them say “yes, tell me more”. Keeping your audience engaged is another way to ensure you’re ranking higher in search engine results.
- Keep an eye out for what your competitors are doing. If your competitor is writing a blog on the top 10 things you should have in a preschool classroom, you should probably look into writing one for your company, only better!
- Backlinks. Take every opportunity to have your preschool affiliates and other reputable sites link back to your website. This builds your domain authority which is just a fancy way to say popularity. Google and other search engines love the popular sites!
PREto3 Can Help
Having good optimization on your website and doing it the right way can lead to hundreds, even thousands, more visits to your childcare website. PREto3 has already helped tons of preschools build a completely optimized website that search engines love. We’re standing by to get started, and ready to begin driving more business to your doors. Start your free trial with PREto3 today!