Top Five SEO Tips to drive traffic to your Website

Top Five Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tips

	SEO Tip #1 : List your school in Google Places "Google Places" was developed specifically for local business listings (previously called Google Local Business Center) . This will take only 10 minutes of your time and will help you come up when someone searches for your services in your local area. When you are entering information into your Google Places listing profile, always remember to consider how you can add location specific information into your name. For example: "ABC Private School - Toronto, Ontario". Be consistent. It's important to ensure the telephone number and address you enter into Google Places is the same as that displayed on your website. When identifying keywords, try to use location specific keywords but also ensure that these are consistent with the content on your website. Learn how five small businesses use Google Places to grow and succeed in their local communities. Watch these short vidoes.

	SEO Tip #2 : Find the best keywords The words you use to market your school may not be the same words that people are searching for in Google or other search engines such as Bing or Yahoo. For example, for an 'independent school' it is important to use the term 'private school' because this is the term the general public is searching for. (50,000+ monthly searches for 'private' and less than 100 for 'independent') Invest time and resources into finding the best keywords, those that generate leads and turn searches into enrolments. There are many free keyword tools including the Google Keyword Tool that will tell you how many people search (search volume) for those keywords and will suggest other popular terms (related phrases) you may consider developing content for. Know what your competition is doing. Try the free website Spyfu.com. Enter a domain or keyword and see who is bidding on keywords with Google Adwords.

	SEO Tip #3 : Write sharable and linkable keyword specific content Based on your keywords, develop content specific pages that are helpful and useful to your readers and online visitors. Each page of your website should have a unique page title and URL with your keywords included in it. Google only displays 66 characters of your page title, so you may wish to keep to this limit. However, some argue that including more keywords in homepage titles is warranted: eBay, Amazon and other leaders do this. Optimize your metatag descriptions to include as many keywords as possible. For example: ABC Private School is an independent private school in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Offering University Prepratory, boarding, AB and IP it is regarded as one of the best elementary and high schools in the GTA. Here's a simple breakdown: Title: Call to action, keywords, under 66 characters (including spaces). Description: Differently worded call to action, keyword heavy, under 160 characters Keywords: 1 to 5 keywords separated by commas Remember: Content is king! The content that you write should be useful and original and include something fun such as photos, fast facts or video to engage an action.

	SEO Tip #4 : Build backlinks to your site Build backlinks (or hyperlinks) that point to your school website. When an outside website source points to your website, this tells google that you are a relevant website for that particular search team. This can be done in many ways including guest blogging, directory listings and building partnerships. Get listed in as many free and paid directories as possible. Directories are often the top search engine results for broad term keywords. They can drive a considerable amount of traffic to your website, and the backlinks will increase your ranking in Google searches. Work with your school community. Ask students and parents to post links to your school website from their personal websites or blogs. Many companies also have intranet sites that parents may be able to post upcoming open house events and interesting news about your school. Use internal linking within your site where appropriate. Mkae sure that all pages of your site are linked to from other relevant pages. When including links, always use descriptive text as the hyperlink rather then just the website address. (Such as: A guide to leading private schools in Canada rather than www.ourkids.net) When adding hyperlinks, if you are writing about an Open House event or your application process, then point the hyperlink to that specific page of your website. Don't make your users try to navigate through information. Make it as easy as possible. Broken links have a negative impact on your pagerank. You can easily analyze links and images on your site with free tools such as the Google Webmaster Tool, W3C Validator Tool or the Xenu Link Sleuth.

	SEO Tip #5 : Track your success Everyone that owns a website should have an analytics progam such as Google Analytics installed on their website. It is important to know what works and what does not, how visitors to your site are navigating it and what keywords drive the most traffic. Pay attention to traffic sources including your search, referral and direct traffic. Look at your bounce rates and determine if the pages your users are landing on display the information they think they are coming to get. A high bounce rate (more than 60%) means that what you are marketing (in your hyperlink to the page) is different from what you are displaying on the page.

	Additional Tools and Resources for Search Engine Optimization A useful tool is the Google SEO Starter Guide. Read it and implement as much of it as you can on your school website. Browse through Google's Video Tutorial for Webmasters to learn about the free tools that are available. For immediate traffic, try Google Adwords, but use it with caution. Broad terms such as boarding schools or private schools will be costly, up to $5 to $6 per click. If you can narrow your terms to location, you'll decrease the cost you're paying per click. Bookmark the Webinars, Seminars and Resources for Private Schools page and check back for more optimization and marketing tips and tools.