The Right SEM Strategy for Schools. You can use both these strategies to direct traffic to your school's website, blog, or other digital assets you have, e.g. a landing page/microsite promoting a new school program. Where SEO and PPC Differ SEO is about building a strong content foundation that earns you more attention as time goes on. Your PPC campaign will be designed around a keyword strategy, just like your SEO. Off-page SEO Off-page SEO is when high authority sites link back to your awesome content. You want social sharing icons on all your pages, posts, and emails. You can also create pre-fabbed Tweets and Shares in your content for them to use. The more your blogs posts and web pages get out there, the more likely people will start to link back to them. Keep in mind that in this case, you're not looking for people in the attraction stage (top-of-the-funnel). Use this PPC ad calculator to find out if using a PPC campaign makes economic sense for a specific campaign.
Getting your school found online is an ongoing battle that requires different strategies for different goals. Search engine marketing (SEM) is comprised of both search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. You can use both these strategies to direct traffic to your school’s website, blog, or other digital assets you have, e.g. a landing page/microsite promoting a new school program.
While both strategies can drive traffic, they have different virtues. To maximize your spend and get the best return, you want to use the right strategy for the right reasons.
Where SEO and PPC Differ
SEO is about building a strong content foundation that earns you more attention as time goes on. It's a long-term investment that has a lower cost with slower rate of return. Yet there comes a tipping point at which your SEO-optimized digital assets provide exponential returns. Its value doesn't reside in only a few specific high performing pages — the collective value starts boosting newer content as well. The more authority your site builds over time, that authority applies to other content you post on your site. Your SEO-optimized pages create a perpetual flow of traffic.
Infusing all your digital assets with SEO best practices should be part of your standard practice for every piece of digital content your school publishes.
In contrast, a PPC campaign is fixed-time campaign that will have high upfront costs, but can get you quick, valuable returns. Your PPC campaign will be designed around a keyword strategy, just like your SEO. Unlike SEO, the PPC campaign only brings in returns for the time you're paying for the ad space. There's no long term benefit or exponential growth. That doesn't mean PPC doesn't have its role to play in getting your school found. It just means you want to pick your spots.
How and When to Use SEO
Really, the answer to "when" is "always." As mentioned earlier, SEO is the foundation that will push your website and blog higher and higher in the search engine results page (SERP). Virtually all searchers click on a first page link in their search results rather than a PPC ad.
Of course, getting ranked for "culinary school" isn't going to be easy (it's a very competitive term). And the truth is, you don't want to. That's far too broad a keyword. Your SEO strategy will return the most relevant visitors to you if work with long tail keywords (LTKs) that are queries containing the language your ideal students use to search for what they want. So if you're a school with a culinary management program that offers an online learning component, you might find "online culinary management degree program" more effective.
The more relevant your long tail keywords are to your personas, the more interested and qualified an audience you'll attract.
After researching and identifying the most relevant collection of long tail keywords, you need to execute your SEO strategy through on-page and off-page optimization.
On-page SEO
This where you have the most control. On-page SEO uses all the smart ways to embed...
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