When you are a school of any kind, whether it be a trade school, grad school, or even a community college, we know that there might be times when enrollment is down and you are left scratching your head on how to improve it.
This is where marketing for enrollment comes in! As a marketing agency that has helped a handful of high education institutions over the years boost their enrollment rates, we believe that these five strategies can help your school get more applications.
1. Put Effort into Program Pages
If you want individual program pages to show up better in search results, you’ve got to give them a little bit of love!
While it’s great that you’ve written those pages for potential students, you also should be optimizing them for search engines as well. And any good team of SEO writers knows that both things are possible.
Analyze the keyword positions for your program pages, and see what opportunities there are to sprinkle in more terms in the:
- Headers (h1, h2, and h3)
- Main body copy
- Meta title and description
- Image alt and title tags
Pro-tip: But yourself in the students shoes and search for your offerings just like they would (ex: Online MBA program) and see what competitors are ranking above you, doing an analysis on their program page might just tell you why!
2. Check Your Local Presence
Piggybacking off of the above, you have to figure that students are also looking for things such as “nursing programs near Boston” or “welding schools in PA” and are adding a locational keyword into their search. By adding that small bit to a search, it can trigger different results on search engines through something called local intent.
If your school draws in local students, you may want to consider optimizing (or creating) location pages on your site that can target localized terms on their own! This especially is true if your school has multiple campus locations.
3. Search for Missed Link Opportunities
Over the years, your school has likely been mentioned in various places online. Either it be in news articles, on directories, or by alumni, you could be missing out on high-equity backlinks!
And for enrollment marketing, having a site with a strong backlink profile can be crucial. Try looking for unlinked mentions across the web and reaching out to those websites to see if they can add a link back to your site.
Pro-tip: Try to get links for more than just your homepage, and be as specific as you can when choosing a page on your site to have a link added for.
4. Use Your Expertise Wisely
From responding to reporters looking for experts in your industry, to pitching your advice to various websites, there are many ways you can use your knowledge for your marketing, too.
Signing up for PR tools such as HARO, Qwoted, and Terkel can all help your name (and school) more exposure online. And when it comes to pitching articles on other sites, you can decide what sites you want to work with and ensure you are credited for your work.
Not only do these approaches get you more links pointing to your website, but they make great content to share on social media as well.
5. Go After Long-Tail Keywords
We’ve recently written about the various benefits that targeting long-tail (also known as low-volume) keywords can help any type of business cover all their bases in terms of marketing online. And that is no different when it comes to marketing for enrollment!
One of the easiest ways you can go after these types of terms is through blog content. Let’s say you are a community college trying to get more applicants for your clinical assistant program. You can create a blog that contains articles going after topics such as:
- Top # Reasons to Become a Clinical Assistant
- What Do Clinical Assistants Do?
- How to Become a Clinical Assistant
- Types of Jobs a Clinical Assistant Degree Can Get
And many more just like this!
More Tips for Enrollment Marketing
- Website Conversion Tips for Higher Education Marketers
- How to Take Advantage of Digital Marketing for Colleges and Universities
- Top 6 Student Gripes About College Sites
- 5 Social Media Tactics for Higher Education Marketers
Want Help With Marketing for Enrollment?
If you are looking for a reputable marketing agency to help your school boost enrollment rates online, then we’d be happy to help! Reach out to our team to schedule a call to learn more about our experience helping with enrollment marketing strategies.
