Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) plays a key role in ensuring that your school website is found by parents and community members locally to improve admissions. Good SEO can also help to lift your school onto a more national or global platform if you have specialisms of interest to schools in a wider area. You may want to shout about these and invite visitors or form partnerships in a larger geographical area! SEO is the process of optimising your school’s website so it ranks higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) like Google. For schools, SEO is not just about visibility; it’s about reaching the right audience—parents, students, and even staff—when they are searching for information that will help them make important decisions.

SEO for school websites

SEO can seem complicated, but it’s really just about ensuring your website is structured and filled with content that search engines understand and deem valuable to users – these values feed into people’s search terms and help you to come up higher on the Google search. For schools, there are a few fundamental aspects of SEO that must be prioritised:

1. On-page SEO – This refers to the content and structure of your web pages. Search engines, such as Google, use algorithms to rank pages based on several factors. These include the presence of relevant keywords, the quality of content, the structure of your website (including its speed and user-friendliness which we can definitely ensure we help with!), and internal linking. For schools, it’s important to include keywords like “top schools in [city]” or “best schools near me” within the content of pages, headings, and meta tags. This may seem a bit boastful to some and outside of the usual humble nature of school staff, but these can be hidden away within the site but help to point people your way! For example if we now say “best school website company” here then this will provide us with some great on-page SEO! 

2. Off-page SEO – This refers to actions taken outside of your website to boost its ranking. This includes backlinks (links from other websites to yours – such as appearing in a local newspaper and having a link from their website to yours, or writing a blog for a national company and asking them to link back to your school within the blog) and social signals from platforms like Facebook or Twitter. For schools, backlinks from local education authorities, academic institutions, and community organisations can significantly boost credibility and SEO. Be sure to check all these links are working correctly!

3. Technical SEO – This involves the more behind-the-scenes aspects like website speed, mobile-friendliness, and proper use of HTML tags. Search engines favour websites that load quickly, are free from technical errors, and are easy to navigate on mobile devices – especially considering how many parents use their phones to look up school-related information. Luckily, for all Greenhouse School Website customers, we look after all of these things for you! All you need to do is keep on top of your website pages through our easy-to-use CMS. 

When these elements of SEO are correctly implemented, they increase the chances of your school’s website appearing at the top of search results, ensuring that prospective families find you easily when researching schools online.

Families might search for terms like “best primary schools in [city]” or “independent schools near me.” Without a strong SEO strategy, your school’s website may not appear in these search results, meaning you could miss out on connecting with prospective parents. You may also miss out on businesses or charities wanting to help you out with things if you have no SEO strategy. They may look for schools who are reaching out for things so if you are running a fundraiser or needing some playground equipment it never hurts to add something to your website about it!

SEO works by positioning your website to match the search intent of parents at different stages of their research. Some parents may be at the start of their search and are simply gathering general information. Others may be closer to making a decision and are looking for specific details like Ofsted ratings, extracurricular activities, or admissions policies.

Whether parents are searching for the best school in your area or looking for specific services like special education support, a well-optimised website helps ensure your school ranks high in search engine results. This increases the likelihood of parents visiting your website, learning about your school’s offerings, and ultimately, choosing to enrol their child. 

It is worth sitting down as a team to discuss which searches you would like to come up in. Do you have a fantastic wraparound care programme that may entice parents? Be sure to mention that in your website and see if any local websites and organisations can also link to your website page about what you offer. 

Maybe you have a fantastic sports offering and want to appeal to parents who want to raise the next Olympians? Whatever it is you want to offer, be sure to talk about those things in a way which helps SEO to find your website when a parent is searching for it. 

You may want to find out from parents what they searched to find schools – maybe a question for current parents looking around at Open Days so that you can best optimise your SEO for future parents who will be looking as well.