As both parents and students spend more time online, it only makes sense to craft a marketing strategy that is digitally focused.
To connect with and inform your target audience, why not start a blog for your school? It’s a great way to attract new visitors to your website and increase awareness around your learning institution.
Whether you’re new to blogging and want to avoid content marketing mistakes or your current blog is lacking and you need education marketing ideas to freshen it up, you’ve come to the right (online) classroom.
Keep reading for education blog topics that will help you reach the top of the class.
Why is blogging important for schools?
When it comes to marketing your school, blogging brings serious benefits. One that is hard to overstate is the search engine optimization (SEO) boost that blogging imparts.
Every time someone looks up a term in a search engine, a results page appears with 10 or so links to articles or videos that address the search. But with an endless number of posts online, how do those 10 make it to the front page of results? That is where SEO comes in. Websites that optimize for a great user experience rank higher than those that neglect SEO.
Blogging is great for SEO because it brings more opportunities to rank on the search engine results page (SERP). As you write posts that address specific user questions, you fill your website with rich content that appears on the results pages.
Furthermore, a great blog means that other websites will link back to your site. For example, this blog post by Great Schools links to a post on the American Montessori Society’s website.
Why does this matter? Well, search engines use links to determine the authority of a website. As more quality websites link back to your site, it becomes easier for your website to rank for relevant search terms.
Another advantage of blogging is its ability to generate leads.
Picture Heather, a mother of three who is not satisfied with her kid’s current school. She types in “how to pick a great school for my fifth grader” on her computer.
Earlier this year, your school wrote a post about this. The post shows up on the results page (thanks to your SEO focus) and Heather clicks. She is directed to your school’s website and reads the blog post. From there she begins exploring what your school website has to offer and adds it to her list of potential picks.
Examples like the one above are not wishful thinking. They are a result of a carefully crafted blog content. In fact, 60% of all marketers cite blog creation as their top inbound marketing tactic for lead generation.
The list of benefits goes on but let’s move to the next item on our lesson plan—blog topics for education.
5 blog topics for schools
You understand why you should blog. But what should you blog about?
Explore some of the best and brightest education blog topics for your school’s blog below.
1. School type
There are charter schools, private schools, all-girls/all-boys schools, boarding schools, and so many other niche school types. What common questions do people ask about your school type? Address these in blog posts to attract readers to your website.
Berkshire County Day School turned a popular question into a blog post that now ranks at the top of google for the term “what is a country day school?”
You’re not confined to writing about your school type either. You can create articles that compare and contrast different school types. For instance, a private school can write a piece on private vs. charter schools to attract parents that are debating between them to its school website.
2. Helpful guides
“How to” searches on Google have been rapidly increasing over the years. Why not capitalize on this by creating articles that instruct individuals in an area they need assistance in?
To determine what the guide topic should be, keep a couple of factors in mind. First, consider your target audience and the information they are lacking. This is where the demand is. Then, examine your core skillsets and area of expertise. This is the supply of information that you possess. Where do the supply and demand overlap? That is the area to create your guide in.
So a private school with a special focus on math and science is in a prime position to write an article on “how-to encourage my child in STEM pursuits”. Your blog can feature multiple guides in an array of topics related to your institution that each target a specific keyword.
3. Myth buster articles
Dispel common misconceptions about your school with myth-busting articles. This style of article strikes a great balance between engaging and informative content. To write on this topic, think about beliefs that might be holding people back from enrolling in your school. What do people get wrong about your school or about a broader topic in education?
The founder of Empower Charter School wrote a post addressing a false view that many have of charter schools.
There are many offshoots of this topic that your blog can incorporate. If your school utilizes a specific technology in the classroom, write a piece addressing the doubts people have about this or false beliefs surrounding it.
4. Locally focused posts
Since your school serves students in a specific area, consider the benefits of content targeting people in your vicinity.
In a consumer behavior study by Google, 72% of computer or tablet users indicated they prefer ads that are customized to their city or zip code. This is not shocking.
People look for personalized experiences both online and off. Apply this line of thinking to your school blog. If you’re targeting families in Chicago, then make this clear in your posts. This signals to and to search engines and web visitors that you are targeting people in a specific area.
You can incorporate the city name into titles of blog posts and throughout articles. Think: How to Find the Best Chicago Charter School or 5 Educational Opportunities for Chicago Students.
Take time to improve local SEO through things like locally focused posts and listings in school directories to boost enrollment.
5. Student and faculty spotlight
Add a personal touch to your institution’s blog by featuring students and teachers who embody the school’s values. Prospective parents who view these profiles will have a clearer idea of who will be interacting with their children daily. Showcasing outstanding members of your school is a great way to forge a connection with blog readers and make a good first impression.
Belmont Charter Network has a section of its website dedicated to highlighting faculty members that go above and beyond for their students.
Brainstorming tip: Finding educational blog topics using Google Trends
It’s been said that a good teacher doesn’t simply tell students what to think, but how to think. That’s why we are going to teach you how to uncover education blog topics. Read on for a valuable lesson about using Google Trends.
Google Trends provides information on what people are searching for online. You can type in a term and see the term interest based on a time frame that you select. It is an incredibly useful tool for determining what topics are worth writing about.
The grand total required to use Google Trends is $0.00. Let’s walk through using it together.
Type in a general search term related to your school
Google Trends works best with broad terms. So let’s type “classroom technology”. Google Trends then displays the popularity of this term over the past 12 months. You can set this to a shorter time frame but seeing the pattern over a year gives a clear idea of the trajectory of this term.
The interest climbed at the start of the year then plummeted in the winter. But the chart indicates that interest in the term rose again and looks to be heading for another increase, so this may be a topic worth pursuing.
Use the ‘Related Queries’ box for specific terms to write about
Underneath the chart displaying interest over time, there are more specific insights related to the term. The box labeled ‘Related Queries’ is a great place to find long-tail keywords to target in your articles.
The numbers next to these keywords indicate a rise in the number of searches for the specific term. You can use this information to inform your content topic decisions.
There you have it! As you can see, utilizing Google Trends is a straightforward process. Since this is not time-consuming, you can repeat these steps often to uncover potential new blog education blog topics.
Brainstorming tip: Find blog topics using Google Suggest and People also Ask
If you thought Google Trends was quick to use, you’ll love the next method we’re covering. Here’s are two fast and super simple ways to find education blog topics:
Can’t think of a full idea? Let Google Suggest guide you
Open Google and type the start of your idea in the search bar. Don’t hit enter. Instead, let the flow of potential ideas spring out underneath your topic. Here, we’ll type in “are prep schools” and let Google do the rest.
Just like that, there is a list of common searches surrounding this topic. You can pick a topic to address that fits your target audience or you can delete the search and try again to find one that fits better.
Turn to ‘People Also Ask’ for topic guidance
This time, type in a full search and press enter. Let’s select “are prep schools better than public”. When the page of results loads, look for a box near the top with the heading ‘People Also Ask’.
As the name suggests, this is a trove of questions similar to yours that people are also looking for answers to. You can sift through these questions to find practical topics for your blog.
Best practices for using educational blogs as a marketing tool
You’re almost finished with this course on blogging for educational institutions. To wrap up, we are sharing some crucial information on blogging best practices.
This last lesson is key. Implement the following practices in order to maximize the effectiveness of your blog.
- Have clear goals in mind. Before you whip up your first blog post, determine the purpose of your blog. If you understand what you hope to accomplish with the blog, then you can align all the little efforts to support the overarching goal. Is the main purpose to attract more students to the school via their parents? Is your school trying to build brand awareness? Whatever the underlying mission is, make it clear from the start.
- Write posts that are long enough to be valuable. No, you don’t have to write a dissertation length blog post in order to rank on the SERPs. But long-form content (1,500+ words) does tend to gain an edge over shorter pieces. Remember, the underlying element of SEO is user experience. If your page provides a lot of value, it’s likely going to be longer. You can write a mix of shorter and longer pieces of content but make sure that each piece fully addresses the topic at hand.
- Keep your URL simple and sweet. The letters and characters in the address bar of your browser form what’s called a URL. Every page on your website has a unique URL. Search engines scan URLs to determine what a specific page is about. Keeping your URL understandable makes other people more likely to share it. Including your target keyword in the URL translates to more clicks through to your website.
- Format your blog for optimal user experience. A blog that is clean, attractive, and easy to navigate is one that people will stay on longer and may return to in the future. Since user experience is so important, determine a layout for your blog that is user friendly. Format posts using clear headings and avoid huge blocks of text. Creating an engaging blog format is not just a nice detail — it’s a necessity.
Learn more about URLs in this DIY SEO Beginner Checklist.
Want your blog to be the best in class?
We hope these education blog topics inspired you. Blogging is an effective strategy but it’s also one that requires continual effort to experience benefits. There are more complex aspects of blogging that can increase results but require technical SEO knowledge. Luckily, you don’t need to become a star student in education SEO to have a great digital presence.
Partnering with an experienced agency allows you to skip the beginner mistakes that keep your blog from garnering attention. You can set your focus on your areas of expertise while our skilled team of content writers and technical SEO experts work to bring your blog to the front page. Ready to get started? For a diagnosis of your current school website, get a free SEO audit report.
