Working for Findcourses.com, we get to see a broad range of professional training Websites. Our job is to match up people looking for professional development with training companies large and small. One of our most important tools is Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which is essentially earning one’s place on search engines to connect with users.
Here are some standard SEO rules we follow to market training:
1. Make sure your training Website has a great, consistent structure. Search engines love Websites that make sense. Have a plan for your professional training Website and be consistent with your image sizes, headers, fonts, and the way you divide up information about your training services.
2. Have a separate page for each course. If your training company is not yet a household name, users probably won’t find you by searching for your company name. Instead, they might search for the type of course they’re looking for: “Time Management Course” or “Lean Six Sigma Certification” and perhaps the city they would like to take it in. Make sure the URL includes your course title for added visibility.
3. Don’t change your course URLs too often. Search engines appreciate updated content. They do not appreciate constantly changing URLs that they have to learn the content of time and again—so pick a good URL and stick with it. The most common issue we see with this is training providers who make a separate page for each course date. Each time the URL is deleted and a new one created, these training providers have to work their way back up the search results page on Google.
4. Use keywords to get into the mind-set of your potential participants. Keywording used to be given more weight by search engines than it is these days, but why neglect anything that can be a potential win for your training company? Think carefully about how users search for professional training and make sure to include those words and phrases in your course descriptions along with a keyword list. Some helpful keywords we’ve found do well include the name of your course, job titles associated with the course, and your city.
5. Harness the power of links to improve your traffic. Government, educational, and any well-respected Website linking to your professional development training will do great things for marketing your training courses online. In addition to getting potential training participants or perhaps HR directors looking for your training, your Website will be climbing search engine rankings through links from great Websites that recommend your site.
6. Be big—or list your courses on a Website that is. “Piggybacking” onto a Website that fights for its rank on search engines and otherwise attracts users interested in buying your type of services is an SEO strategy to consider. That said, training providers should be selective about sharing their content with this type of Website. Insist on these pages being rewritten to avoid duplicate content that can get your Website de-indexed and undo all of the hard work you’ve put into your SEO. Also, keep in mind how strong this Website is in your type of training. If your organization specializes in company-specific leadership courses, a Website promoting free online hobby courses will be of little benefit to you. On the other hand, if your competitors are there, maybe you should be, too.
Abby Guthrie is content editor at Findcourses.com, a search engine dedicated to helping professionals find corporate training in North America and beyond. If you’re interested in how it can help you market your professional training, visit http://www.findcourses.com/advertising.
