Defining the SEO language training keyword search query strategy for your language school

Getting as many people as possible to visit your language training website is as important as ever. Or is it? The following article explores how getting targeted trafic is actually easier and more profitable than going for large numbers.

Huge Google Numbers

• “Learn English” – About 704,000,000 results
• “English classes” – About 598,000,000 results
• “English training” – About 1,370,000,000 results

That’s a combined total of 2,672,000,000 pages with information on English language training. Wow. That’s a lot of data out there. Don’t tell me we work in a niche area!

So the question you should be asking yourself is – how do I compete with all those websites out there?

First of all, in order to have a high ranking in Google, whatever the keyword strategy, you must have by default good trust rank. Pierre, the guy I work with who owns Firebots and is one of Google’s 14 certified Adsense partners, is always going on about it.

SEO is no longer a volume game:

• You don’t need 1000s of links pointing to your site.
• You don’t need 1000s of pages of content.
• You don’t need 1000s of follows, fans and contacts on social media.

But you do need quality – qualified backlinks, qualified content. You need a recognisable brand and you need a positioning that makes you out as the uncontested authority in your specific niche. So once again, I’m maintaining that you should be focussing on a niche, wherever or whatever type of language training you provide.

If you have that, then you will have a good trust rank. Google will be happy to promote your site higher than others with similar SEO strategies and give you a better ranking in its search engine.

Next step are the keyword search queries themselves. Every page you publish really should have an search query that is being promoted. This keyword should be in the page name, title and repeated a few times throughout the content of the page. No need to do it too much because Google is now a true master at seeing over-promoted keywords. Have a look here for a perfect structure of your web page for Google.

A great plugin, if you have a WordPress site, that I use is WordPress SEO by Yoast. It helps you set-up and analyse the SEO of your page or post and when you get the green light, you know you’ve got a good SEO-worthy article.

Keyword queries for your language school

So what kind of keywords should you be focussing on? This is where it gets interesting.

Did you know that 20% of the searches that people make in Google have never been made before? There is a lot of hit and miss out there (as I’m sure you have seen when doing your own searches).

Furthermore, it is now next to impossible to analyse the exact keyword searches that are coming to your site via Google Analytics. You can do it a bit with their other tool Webmaster Tools. The easiest way to analyse the exact search queries going to you website is via Adwords, although obviously Adwords will cost you money. You do this by creating a list of keyword queries that you think are the most targeted for your website, and then you can look at the exact queries that got them there rather than the queries you paid for. I find this a useful exercise because you can adapt your strategy for natural keyword searches by finding out what people are looking for through paid search. These are 2 of 4 ways to get around the famous “not provided” row in Google Analytics.

Searches are also becoming more and more detailed. People are putting more and more information into their enquiries as Google gets ever bigger and more powerful. So this means that you can afford to have longer and more specific keyword searches. These queries are called long-tail key words.

So instead of “learn English”, you might have “learn Business English in Dublin”.

Instead of “English classes”, you might have “Intensive high level English classes in Kensington, London”.

This kind of strategy means that you will have less traffic, but it is far more targeted. Visitors are likely to stay for longer, and convert far easier to into potential students or clients.

CONCLUSION

SEO language training is an intense and difficult process. It takes time and effort but I believe that as long as your website is performing as it should, then it is a very profitable and good way in generating traffic to your site. Just be prepared to put in the hard yards and keep things simple by focussing on the longtail search queries and not putting yourself up against those billions of generic keywords already out there.

Feel free to contact me if you would like some more advice on this topic!