Hello Everyone,

 

I'm trying to improve the SEO on my website @ My site, at the moment we're not showing up very well in Google search results.

 

Can anyone suggest anything that may help or be hindering my progress?

Hi there. What keywords are you trying to rank for? Your keywords tag has these listed: GCSE,common entrance,maths,english,lessons,child, perparation, Bishops Stortford, Bury St Edmands, Newmarket, Cambridge, cambridge,tuition,school,children,learning

which all seem quite vague and are unlikely to get you much direct traffic.

 

One problem could be that you have a very long Title tag for your index page, which is identical on every page. You should keep your title tags short with your keywords contained close to the beginning of the tag. The title tag should be different on every single page of your website.

 

The same goes for descriptions. It's important that you write your description for a human visitor, but include your keywords in it. The description should be longer than your title tag and should not just repeat the title tag or a list of keywords.

 

These are two basic tips that should get you started. Think carefully about your keywords. Try and go for keywords that aren't too competitive, but have enough people searching for them to make them worth optimising for.

 

@digtheweb

Thanks very much for your reply!!!

 

I have made some changes to my tags, hopefully in the right direction.

 

I'm trying to go for maths tuition, english tuition, childrens tuition, and exam preparation.

 

I have also read the adding the title attribute to links etc may help is there any truth in that?

Welcome to WDF!

 

You still have a lot of old pages indexed. These really need to get these redirected properly else your customers will get the wrong perception of you, or think you don't exist any more! See http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&cr=countryUK|countryGB&q=+site:the-learning-centres.co.uk+the-learning-centres.co.uk&ei=rkBnS7TJD8K7jAeZxY2tBw&sa=X&oi=nshc&resnum=1&ct=more-results&ved=0CAwQ2AQ&fp=a844f24e725f0939 and click on a few links.

 

From what I've seen on on your site you're targetting customers in Norfolk/Suffolk, but this isn't obvious in your text copy - eg the town links are buried away and difficult to see, not obvious.

 

A couple of ideas for you:

 

1. Your home page title tag reads

Childrens private tuition for Maths, English and Exam Preparation after school or weekends - The Learning Centres

 

You'd probably do better by crafting something more specific to your service, ie...

 

Maths and English tuition in Norfolk/Suffolk, exam preparation, improve exam results!

 

2. Have a look at your home page main heading and text copy

It's ok but lacking in carewords - I want see words that inspire and interest me, so do people who use search engines.

 

An example, your main heading says...

 

Want to help your children?

 

Of course we do but I already know that fact, that's why I'm on your site!

 

Lead with the need, catch my attention and give me a call to action.

 

3. Add location pages

 

You've got several centres so give them each their own page. Add location specific info to each page, maybe a photo or two and some

well crafted text copy explaining the centres services. This is where you can capture customers searching for "Tuition in Haverhill" and so on.

Remember your home was aimed at a regional level? Now your're targetting at local level.

 

 

Above all, rewriting all your text copy to be more focussed on customer carewords will be the best thing you can do as far as search engines go.

 

BlueDreamer, thank you very much for taking the time to help me, your advice sounds spot on and makes sense. I'll make some changes and post back.

 

Thanks again

I think you need to think carefully about your keywords, and which keywords will work the best for the traffic you want to drive. You should also probably think about targeting different keywords on different pages, to get a good spread across the site.

 

I agree with the above points:

 

• Target local areas more carefully. Definitely give each centre an individual page.
  
• Both Title Tags & META Tags should be targeted for each individual page.
  
• Customer Carewords!!!!
  

 

In addition I would consider the following as areas to improve on:

 

 

Your main heading is an image, not text,

 

"Unlock your childs true potential"

and

"We help children get...."

 

As I dig deeper down into the site -> "Why Choose Us" Your url is

/why.php

you could make this better by adding a keyword instead of "why". (although don't over do it here)

 

The following title on that page is quite long and not that specific.

 

Our specially trained teachers structure lessons around your child's specific learning style and skill level, creating a personalized educational experience - one that is challenging and fun!

 

It just seems that you haven't really considered your keywords, and the importance to the potential customer of what is written. Especially as this is a service to help their children!!

 

Focus on writing really great content for the parents, and informative, you will find that through good content, your SEO will need only small amounts of tweaking to be competitive on search engines. Please remember though SEO isn't a one off thing, you need to build up trust, have links coming into your site and it can take a while to move up the rankings even if your site is fully optimised on competitive terms.

I'm confused! This is an SEO thread and everybody's talking about quality content and no-one has mentioned spamming the net with backlinks or submitting to a directory.

Bloody fantastic advice here - write this down people.

 

 

As we're on the subject of copy:

My advice is to remember you're selling to parents who have all sorts of aspirations for their kids. At the moment you're selling it like a product - listing features and telling benefits, but no aspirational element. Why do people look for tutors? To get better marks? Obviously... but why? They want better futures for them and all that gumph!

 

I've just today finished writing a site like this (aimed at the Eleven Plus) and it's all about tapping into that aspiration - the keywords/ carewords just fall into place (what parents search for is what they think, not some odd keyword phrase).

Be fair wizely, you need good content then the links.

Hi Learning Centres why not have a look at your hubspot reportfor some general ideas to help things along.

I'm confused! This is an SEO thread and everybody's talking about quality content and no-one has mentioned spamming the net with backlinks or submitting to a directory.

 

But I read that:

You must submit to any directory possible and spam the living daylights out of the internet otherwise you are doomed to fail.

 

For the record - all backlinks in directories blog posts and other places should have keywords in the anchor text to be super relevant.

 

 

No... not an elephant.

Links are lovely and no you can't just "build it and they will come" but it's funny how those pushing directories or offshore link-builders would have you believe that running around (preferably paying them to do it of course) is clever SEO and a good use of time/ money. You can market your site/ content and promote it properly which will build those links for you organically but with the bonus that your time is productively spent doing more than trying to game an algorithm.

 

Don't get the elephant thing there fella. But it looks shiny and cool... what am I missing?!

Edited February 2, 201016 yr by wizely

super relevant kinda sounds like elephant. Just me?

 

Wow... and I thought my puns were bad! Very good - and visual too. Playing to the audience I like it.

Edited February 2, 201016 yr by wizely

Hmmm... I think this may have gone a little bit off course. lol. Google does tend to get a bit upset if it sees you suddenly get 300 links within the space of a few days. It's true that a lot of SEOs are spammers or 'black hat SEOs' but not all. And there are genuine SEOs out there who use ethical practices and methods to help people gain better search engine results. It's just a case of finding someone you trust.

 

PS. Super Relevant does indeed sound like Super Elephant. Like some kind of jungle comic book hero

Hmmm... I think this may have gone a little bit off course. lol. Google does tend to get a bit upset if it sees you suddenly get 300 links within the space of a few days. It's true that a lot of SEOs are spammers or 'black hat SEOs' but not all. And there are genuine SEOs out there who use ethical practices and methods to help people gain better search engine results. It's just a case of finding someone you trust.

 

PS. Super Relevant does indeed sound like Super Elephant. Like some kind of jungle comic book hero

 

 

Yes of course you are right, there is the off-site promotion which all companies/websites must work at. Usually I find strategically partnering with other companies is often best. Best results can come from writing an article for your local newspaper as long as they link back. So much more useful for 100 visitors to come from a link, than having 100 links that no one ever clicks.

 

Also non-paid-for PR if written nicely.

First of all thank you to everyone who posted,

 

A have made some changes to my META tags and text content based on the advice given, and also created a contact page for each centre. I guess its just a waiting game now...

 

Learning Centres

you are aware that just because you have

 

"<meta name="keywords" content="tuition,Common Entrance,maths,english,lessons,child,perparation,school,Bishops Stortford, Bury St Edmands, Newmarket, Cambridge,learning,GCSE" />"

 

Doesn't mean you will rank for them?

 

The "meta name=keywords" tag is completely pointless and is ignore by all three major search engines..

 

What you really need to do is:

 

1: Sort out your on-page stuff.

2: Add content (quality) about 500-600 words per page 2-3 times a week - blogs, articles, etc

3: Build links (most important) (Article submission sites with links within the article to your website 2-3 times a week & 10-15 relevant blog and forum posts a day should do, remember to add a variant to your anchor test on those links)

4: Go back to step 2 and repeat...

 

In about 8-10 weeks you should start to see improvements and then just keep on doing it.

It takes a lot of time to do SEO correctly, but then again, you could always hire a professional to have a "rolling" monthly contract to look after your website. If you do that, be careful who you choose, take your time.

Why would google get upset if it found 300 links in a few days? is that not what they advocate - linkbait and build it and they will link to it? They would penalise a lot of decent sites if they were looking this low down the tree. Substitute "300,000" for "300" and you may have a point.