There’s no point in having a fantastic website for your RTO if it is not visible to your target audience when they need to see it. While online ads are a great way to boost your visibility online, organic reach is very important – meaning people will easily find you when they search for what you offer on Google or another search engine. This is where SEO or search engine optimisation is so important.
SEO is a complex undertaking with many moving parts. There are, however, some quick and relatively simple ways you can enhance your website for better organic search engine ranks.
Quick Ways to Improve Your SEO Results
- Determine your Target Keywords
To do this properly will require professional keyword analysis, but you can predict which words or phrases your target audience will most likely type into search engines to find you online. Choose relevant words/phrases and try to avoid any that are too generic, as competition to rank these are likely too high. If you are a location-based RTO, incorporate location keywords to narrow the search volume to a more manageable level. Base your content around these words and phrases at a rate of around 2-3%. - Make Your Site Content More Dynamic
A dynamic website will perform much better with the Google algorithm than a static one – after all, you need to prove to search engines that you are active and care about your website (otherwise, why would they?). This means potentially tweaking your onsite content and updating it periodically. By far the simplest way to offer dynamic content which ranks well is to publish an onsite blog. Update it regularly (once a month at the very least; once weekly or fortnightly is better) with high-quality content that is relevant to your niche, informative, entertaining, and highly shareable. Include relevant links to your landing pages and high-authority external links that open to a new tab (but not to your competitor’s sites!). You can also add FAQs to the end of old posts to update and re-rank these. - Add Internal Links
Using your chosen target keywords, which have been incorporated into your content via the home page and landing pages, ensure you link between the pages on your website via these keywords and phrases. You should also link to relevant landing pages via your blog offerings, email newsletter, and social media posts. - Add High-Quality External Links
Google and other search engines look favourably upon websites that link high-quality content to a high authority external website. It’s a great idea to select one or two external links to relevant pages on the internet for reputable sources or reference information. This could include links to partner websites, legislation, or other sources of further information that support or expand on your onsite content. Don’t link to your competitors and always make sure links outside your website open in a new tab or window so as not to take visitors away from your site. - Quick Design Improvements
– Focus on improved user experience (UX)
– Use appropriate headings
– Simplify navigation with more concise menus and search boxes
– Optimise image quality and include ALT and TITLE tags
– Increase the size of your headlines and use readable fonts
– Ensure text is easy to read and doesn’t blend into the background – colour scheme is critical here
– Make your keywords and links stand out by using bold, underline, and italics
– Have a clear, obvious, simple call to action button
– Reduce the use of plugins
– Compress images to minimise file sizes
– Implement a caching solution - Update Your Titles
Go through your past blog posts and YouTube videos. Use a Headline Analyzer to improve the clickability of your titles and/or incorporate focus keywords into your titles. Update content in this way simply by adding the year (e.g. Top RTO Courses for 2022), a number (5 Ways to Improve Your Study Outcomes) or an addition in brackets (How to Build a Treehouse (in 6 easy steps). - Add Metas
For all of your landing pages, and your blog, add metas when uploading them for publication online. This includes a keyword-rich meta title of 50-60 characters and a keyword-rich meta description of 140-160 characters. You must also include an H1 tag on every page – this must include a primary keyword. - Google Analytics/Webmaster Console
Use these free online tools to understand how people arrive at and interact with your site and how Google views the site organically. This may include determining your bounce rate, average session duration, and other important metrics. - Become Active on Social Media
An active, predictable presence on social media will drive traffic to your website and support your SEO efforts. Choose social channels that are relevant to your audience – for an RTO, Facebook and LinkedIn are highly suitable; Instagram is also an effective option. Create and publish regular high-quality posts and link back to your website. Include calls to action, publish your blog articles, share events and updates, and invite your followers to share and otherwise interact with you.
While it’s true that SEO is a marathon rather than a sprint, and a comprehensive, ongoing professional strategy executed by an SEO expert will get you the best possible results, the simple tactics and quick fixes mentioned above that you can apply to your website will vastly improve your search engine ranks and boost your visibility online for your target audience. They will pay dividends for your RTO both quickly and in the longer term.
RTOWeb can help! We are RTO website design and development experts and we have the knowledge and experience to help you boost your website for higher search engine ranking results – getting you more website traffic and building your RTO business. Give us a call today to explore how we can help you.
