An Introduction to SEO for Tutors SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it’s the art of ensuring that your website ranks well for specific keywords in search engines. Whether you intend on creating your own website or not, it’s important to understand how the tutoring platforms that you advertise on optimize their websites to ensure your listings are found by students and parents. Developing a high ranking website is a creative process that blends art and science in a balanced mix and contains many different elements. This blend has to satisfy both people and search engines, which can be a tricky combination. A well-optimized website should be: • • •
Highly readable by visitors Highly visible to search engines, and therefore Commercially successful for you
One of the most common traps websites owners fall into is ‘keyword-stuffing’ whereby they try to fit as many keywords into their content as possible in the hope that Google will reward them kindly for it. Websites must always have the reader as priority, which makes good SEO sense as well as good business sense. SEO specifically targets the words and phrases people use when searching for a product or service on the internet. It’s every webmaster’s dream to rank number one in Google and with properly targeted, keyword-savvy content, search engines are more likely to index websites generously. Internet search engines are developing new technologies and algorithms all the time in order to make search methodologies smarter and more astute. Following Google’s Penguin and Panda updates, Google robots no longer give significance to the repetition of words throughout a website. Instead, they focus on content which has meaning, makes grammatical sense and provides genuinely useful information. These updates have forced webmasters to improve their website content or suffer the consequences of a dramatic drop in traffic. Here are our top tips for creating highly optimized web pages: Research your Keywords and Phrases Use keyword analysis tools such as Google’s Keyword Planner or paid tools like SEMRush, you can focus on specific keywords you want to rank for. Keyword analysis tools are easy to use and give you a good idea of what search terms people are using to find private tutors in your local area. These tools also tell you how Page 96 83
