You might think you have better things to do for your language school business and you may be right for daily operations in providing the best high-quality fun language education environment in your area.
When it comes down to all your Internet marketing efforts and how to communicate better with potential new language students, there is no way around it: you need to understand how to optimize your language business presence in search engines.
Related Article: 5 Myths Language Schools Need To Stop Believing About SEO
Search Engine Optimization, SEO, is the only way to help people to find your offers and services better before they actually go and visit your website.
While it is time-wise impossible for you as a language professional to become a full-time Internet marketing expert, (see also Why Understanding SEO Yourself & Let Others Do Your Language School SEO Is The Key) it is essential that you face the 5 Reasons why you probably HATE dealing with SEO as a language school.
Reason #1 SEO is unavoidable
Search Engine Optimization is hated by most professionals because you can\’t avoid it. If you do ignore SEO strategies, Google and all other search engines will automatically do SEO for you – and usually not beneficially so.
See the point of SEO is how your website and pages show up with matching descriptions and call-to-action sentences to people that are searching exactly for what you have to offer.
If your pages and website are not optimized BY DESIGN from you, the search engines will take random texts from your website that actually worst-case scenario drive potential customers away.
So if you think you do not need SEO and you do not want to deal with it – don\’t complain if Google and others list your language business in an incomplete or even inaccurate way.
Reason #2 SEO is boring and technical
Yes, creating page descriptions and call to action content that makes potential customers know more about your business does not sound too sexy. And yes, to be honest, writing convincing text requires skill and time and patience. If you have hundreds of pages you need … hundreds of SEO optimized content – and no, it can\’t be the same for every page if you want to stand out against your competition.
You probably want to outsource this task to someone else because most people get excited about the task to write text without pictures and doing keyword research to match what search engines should list you for.
Reason #3 SEO is time-consuming
Search engine optimization is not done by writing one compelling description about your website. The whole technical aspect we talked about in Reason 2? You need to apply this to images and video content as well – everything needs to be labeled properly if you want to rank well in search engines.
This is very time-consuming.
It is impossible to do it all on your own and… add the shock effect of Reason 4!
Reason #4 SEO is a long-term strategy
This is the most horrible thing for most language school professionals and any online business to realize. SEO is NEVER done nor completed. It is an ongoing long-term strategy.
First of all, it is nothing that brings you customers \”right\” now. It helps you to help the search engines to bring you customers for the next couple of years – if you updated your content on your website
So SEO only works if you look into the effects that it has for weeks, months and years (!) to come.
If you want customers right away, there is no replacement for paid advertising.
SEO is a work in progress and actually is never completed. Search engines evolve and test how long visitors are on your website, how often your website is updated and how people interact and link with your website.
That is all measured over a period of weeks, months and years. And this needs the quality commitment from you can\’t skip.
Reason #5 SEO is a necessary marketing tool that can\’t be measured with simple ROI evaluations
What language schools and online businesses want to know \”how much money do I get back in return for advertising?\” – and while with paid advertising you know exactly that you paid 80 Euros to Google and got 12 new subscribers and 3 requests for language schools and 1 book and paid course. This ROI is measurable and helps you if it is worth spending more money there.
With SEO there is no such thing where you said you spent €1200 on SEO optimization for this year. It is the overall benefit that makes your website more visible and is actually enhancing all other paid advertising methods.
SEO can rarely calculate ROI. You can ask people how they did find you when they buy something from you and they might say they found you on Google or Bing or other search engines. But it is usually impossible to calculate and know.
So with all those 5 bad SEO reasons in mind… why would you still want to deal with SEO?
Let\’s talk!
This article is also connected to the \”twin brother\” article \”5 Reasons To Love SEO as a Language School\”.