Metadata for Your School's Web Site

Five years ago at this time, the marketing tip to schools was, "Get a Web site."  If a school had a Web site, it was "Update it constantly!" There were school administrators at that time that believed that Web-based marketing was a passing fad.  That's understandable, since people in radio thought television was a passing fad when it first came out too.

Today, a Web site for your school is a necessity, since that's how parents of young children are finding out about you - and, maybe more importantly, finding out about what others say about you.  Remember that parents talk to parents - not only in line at the grocery store, but online, on blogs and on Facebook too (both of which weren't around five years ago).

Now, added to "Get a Web Site" and "Update it constantly" is "Make sure it's inviting and interactive."  Many schools are doing this already, since there are companies that are doing great work with schools to ensure an excellent Web presence, and Web designers and enthusiasts have come a long way in their designs in five years.

But, perhaps, even more importantly is "Make sure you're able to be found."  Go to your favorite search engine and type in the name of your school, and see where your school appears.  If it's in the first 10 "hits," that's excellent!  If not, you may need to "optimize" your Web site.

Just as metacognition can be defined as "Learning about learning," metadata is "information about information" contained on your Web site.  It consists of "Keywords" which search engines "spiders" seek out when people type certain "search" words in to Google, Dogpile, Yahoo or Goodsearch.  If you're "All Saints School," since "All Saints School" is somewhere contained on your Web site, the Web site for your school will be pulled into the search results...somewhere.

And that's the bad news.  Your school may be the 395th ranking, and there are few parents that will hunt through all those pages to find your school's Web site.

Of course, the more information a parent puts into a search, the more detailed the results are.  "All Saints School Albany NY" will bring you to All Saints School in Albany, NY first.  However, if parents simply typed "All Saints School Albany," they may get All Saints School in Albany Creek, Australia first.  The Web is, after all, a worldwide thing.

More often than not, however, if parents are looking for a Catholic school for their child, they may just type in "Catholic School" and the city or town in which they are residing.  For instance, if today you type "Catholic School Pittsburgh" into the search bar at http://www.goodsearch.com, the first "hit" your get is a news story about the economic difficulties faced by two Catholic schools in Pittsburgh...which isn't necessarily what you want a prospective parent to see first.

Therefore, you must "Optimize" your Web site by including "Metadata" in the Web site's "Head" area by incorporating "Keywords" that pertain to your school.  And all those words in quotations might be items you're not familiar with - but the person that maintains or manages your Web site NEEDS to be familiar with them.  Just so you know:

• "Optimizing a Web site" means that your school's Web site has information in it that describes your Web site so that it can be the highest possible ranking when someone searches for it on the Web.
• Metadata is information contained on your school's Web site about your school's Web site.
• The "Head" area is data or information that is not viewable by the person looking at your Web site.  Information can be put into the Head area only by someone that has administrative rights to edit your Web site.  If you'd like to view what this information looks like, right click the page and choose "View Source."  This will show you the html code for the site.  The first pieces of information comprise the "Head," while the viewable portion is the "Body" of the code.  In that Head area, you may see "Keywords."
• "Keywords" are words that describe anything and everything about your school.  Some sample "Keywords" you might want to use are "Catholic," "Catholic School," "Faith-based," "Education," etc.  Note you can use words and phrases too.  The more "Keywords," the more your school will appear in search results.

Also, the number of times a Web site is visited plays a big part in where a site appears in a Search ranking.  Sites that are visited most often appear at the top of the list...so if your parents aren't visiting your school's Web site regularly, ask them to visit it at least once a day to increase your "hit count."

In order to be "found" by those parents looking for a Catholic school in their area, you might want to subscribe to a service like Private School Review.  These services ensure that your school will appear in the top results when prospective parents type in general information about what they're looking for.  Their advanced analytics help schools in the area to be readily found by those prospective parents that are in the area of the school.

Indeed - more things you need to be aware of as you attempt to engage more and more parents in order to increase enrollment in your school.

And it's not a passing fad.