11 SEO Marketing Tips for Yoga Schools
Drive organic search traffic to your website for Yoga Teacher training and retreats
SEO for new yoga student and trainee inquiries and booking requests
With paid search traffic seemingly becoming more and more expensive each year for yoga teacher training and retreat specific keyword terms, a strong SEO strategy can help to save you lots of advertising dollars.
Your SEO has a lot of impact on your overall marketing budget and if done properly, can help to lower your paid search click costs on your Google Ads (with an increase in the quality score of your ads from your on-site SEO improvements) while also greatly increasing the amount of your free, organic traffic from Google search results.
Plus, when you optimize your website and landing pages for SEO, you also help to increase your chances of receiving more inquiries and booking requests (from the increase in traffic that you’ll receive from your SEO along) with a better, more user-and-search-engine-friendly experience created on your pages.
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SEO best practices for yoga schools
It is always recommend to launch with as many SEO best practices and additives possible already in place for launch, but you can and should actually always be reviewing and circling back to further optimize and update website pages for both the search engines and your future students and trainees.
There's of course a lot to say about first impressions and, there are a lot of updates and extras that can be added to landing pages to increase the chances of getting a new student/trainee to contact you with an inquiry or booking request during their first actual visit to your website.
Here’s 11 SEO Marketing Tips for Yoga Schools below that can be used to improve your SEO.
And there's a lot more, more meticulous SEO efforts of love and care that can be applied for your overall page and visitor-experience enhancement and we are here to help share some light and perhaps directly provide and implement some light for you and your yoga teacher training and retreats SEO. Stay tuned and please feel free to contact us at anytime.
11 SEO yoga marketing tips with should do’s and should not do’s for yoga schools
1.) Meta Title Tag SEO
The meta title tag is a specific HTML element that defines (and displays) the title of a website page. For search engine purposes, title tags are what search engines read as the “title” of a web page. For your new students and trainees searching online for yoga teacher training and retreats, the title of your web page is the first line of text/information that they read about your teacher training and/or retreat page from the search engine results pages (SERPs).
For both scenarios, properly naming each of the pages of your website can boost your organic search engine rankings while also helping to increase your click-through rates from SERPs (as well as social media posts shared), driving more qualified traffic to your website.
Best Practices
The meta title tag should be as legible as possible while still also adequately describing the content [read services] available on the actual web page. Typically, title tags should be kept to about 50-60 characters in length, with the first 40-50 characters being your prime space for keyword rich descriptive text that tells search engines and new students and trainees what can be found on your page.
Be as concise as possible and as accurate as possible with the your meta title tags.
For an example, let’s say you have a 200 hour flow yoga teacher training that you are providing in Bali. You could use a title tag like the following to title this page for search engines and drive interested students and trainees from SERPs and social channels:
200-Hour Flow Yoga Teacher Training in Bali, Indonesia
*AND, THIS IS A BIG ONE SO WE’LL USE ALL CAPS AND PUT AN ASTERISK BEFORE IT: DON’T DUPLICATE YOUR TITLE TAGS ACROSS PAGES, ONLY USE ONE TITLE TAG PER WEB PAGE.
2.) Meta Description Tag SEO
The meta description tag (similar to the meta title tag) is a specific HTML element that describes your web page for search engines as well as for potential new students and trainees.
Description tags are used to provide a brief overview of the content to be found on your web page, speaking with Google via your HTML and messaging to students and trainees via SERPs and social media channels. When you use proper SEO technique to write your description tag, you make it easier for both search engines and new students and trainees to understand what your page consists of prior to actually showing and/or seeing the page.
Best Practices
Like the meta title tag, the meta description tag should be as legible as humanly possible while accurately and briefly describing the content contained on your web (landing) page. It’s advised to keep your description tags between about 180-200 characters with the first 160 characters most often being displayed on Google search engine pages and representing the most opportunity and space for you to inform students and trainees of your page and/or yoga services while begging their attention and action to click for more information.
Be as thorough (and as accurate) as possible with the text you use for your meta description tags.
For another example using the 200 hour flow yoga teacher training in Bali, you could use a description tag like the following:
Yoga teacher training in Bali with RYT 200 hours Yoga Alliance Certification featuring 28 days of flow yoga teacher training. Join us in Indonesia for our next Bali flow yoga teacher training.
*AND, THIS IS ANOTHER BIG ONE SO WE’LL USE ALL CAPS AND PUT AN ASTERISK BEFORE IT AGAIN: DON’T DUPLICATE YOUR DESCRIPTION TAGS ACROSS PAGES, USE ONLY ONE DESCRIPTION TAG PER PAGE.
3.) H1 Tag SEO
The H1 title tag is the title found listed on your actual web page. Typically, it is the largest sized text on your page and is found at the top of the page, as the first text that a visitor sees when they visit your page. H1 tags, similar to meta title tags, provide you with an opportunity to describe the content of your web page in one line of text.
Best Practices
Try and keep your H1 title tags short and sweet (like your Meta title tags). Using about 6-8 words, create a search engine (and new website visitor) friendly title to each of your web pages.
For an H1 title tag example with the same 200 hour flow yoga teacher training in Bali, you could use a H1 tag on the page like the following:
200-Hour Flow Yoga Teacher Training in Bali
*AND, YET ANOTHER BIG ITEM TO NOTE IN ALL CAPS WITH AN ASTERISK BEFORE IT: DON’T DUPLICATE YOUR H1 TITLE TAGS ACROSS PAGES, USE ONLY ONE H1 TITLE TAG PER PAGE.
4.) H2 Tags SEO
Like H1 title tags, H2 tags are also found on your actual web pages as content. H2 tags provide you with on-page usability enhancements (sectioning off your content by H2 tags), helping your website visitors to more easily read, find specific content and interact with your web pages while talking to Google via the Interwebs with tags (and section titles) defined as H2.
Best Practices
Use H2 tags to further expand upon your page titles while also conveniently breaking your landing pages up into sections for better usability (and conversion percentages) on your website. Keep your H2 tags accurate in describing the content found directly under each H2 tag and use them as frequently as you have a new section that could be displayed on each individual page.
For an H2 tag example with the 200 hour flow yoga teacher training in Bali, you could use some of the following H2 tags on your page:
Flow Yoga Teacher Training Program in Bali, Flow Yoga Teacher Training in Bali Schedule, Flow Yoga Teacher Training in Bali Curriculum, Flow Yoga Teacher Training Accommodations in Bali
5.) H3 Tags SEO
Like H2 tags, the H3 tags are also displayed on your actual web pages. They’re also great in that they provide Google friendly data for search while enhancing the visitor experience on your web pages with H3 tags pointing out certain sections of your page and being used for certain text content.
Best Practices
Use H3 tags for marking up content throughout your pages to highlight certain content/sections and even create Call-to-Action text with.
For an H3 title tag example with 200 hour flow yoga teacher training in Bali, you could use H3 tags like the following:
RYT 200 Hour Flow Yoga Teacher Training in Bali, Indonesia, Flow yoga teacher training with {your yoga school name here}, Learn more about this yoga teacher training, Apply now for this yoga teacher training
6.) Keyword Variations SEO
For SEO purposes, keywords are the main terms that can be used to describe your web page as well as to search for and find your web page.
Best Practices
Mix up the keywords that you use on your web pages with as many variations as possible. This helps to keep Google happy in that you’re not stuffing the same keyword over and over again on one page while also naturally providing more search content for all the many different keyword variations that could be used to search for your yoga offering through Google.
In plain English and/or with an example using the 200 hour flow yoga teacher training in Bali, you could use some of the following variations for your 200 hour flow yoga teacher training in Bali:
200 hour flow yoga teacher training in Bali, Bali flow yoga teacher training, 200Hr flow yoga teacher training in Bali, Indonesia, flow style yoga teacher training in Bali
7.) Image File Type SEO
Images can have a lot of impact on the power of your SEO and there are a lot of different measurements that can be applied to images. For these specific images for SEO tips found here, we’ll keep it direct and to the point of action/measurement but, stay tuned or inquire with us for more image and SEO insights.
That being said, for “image file type SEO” how to, the more preferred, best file types to use for your images are JPG files. Said to be standardized by the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG), JPG files are unique images that are saved in a compressed image format for sharing and viewing.
Best Practices
Moving onward and forward, saving your images as .JPG (or .JPEG) is advised for strengthening your SEO and increasing your search presence.
See example below with tip #8 of how a JPG image file would look (with image title for SEO included).
8.) Image Title SEO
With image file type for SEO noted above, next up for images and SEO, let’s learn how to properly name our images for search engine optimization. The titles you use to save your images with are shown directly to Google and all search result viewers.
Best Practices
Plain and simple here, try and be descriptive with the title that you use for your images. Use a few keyword terms to let Google and the viewer know what the image is of and/or for. There are a lot of missed SEO opportunities created from sloppy image naming and if you take a few moments to title your images more professionally, you can boost your search results all the more with your images.
For an example of how to title your images, still using the 200 hour flow yoga teacher training in Bali, you could title the first image found on your page as follows:
flow-yoga-teacher-training-in-bali.jpg
9.) Image Alt Attributes SEO
Now that you know more about titling your images and what kind of files are best for your images, another powerful attribute that you can add to your images for SEO enforcement is an ALT attribute. Alt attributes consists of “Alternative text” (Alt text) that is used to describe your images, for both the search engines to crawl as well as for the visually impaired to hear. Alt attributes are also rendered and when an image does not load on a web page/search result.
Whether you call it or heard it called alt attributes, alt text, alternative text, alt descriptions or alt tags, Alt attributes are SEO enhancing attributes that be added to your HTML code to better describe and portray your images for the search engines and the visually impaired.
Best Practices
When adding Alt attributes to your images, literally think of it in terms of describing what an image actually is (as if you were telling someone that could not or is not currently seeing the image). Tell someone what the image is of in your Alt attributes while being truthful yet not afraid of adding some keyword rich terms to your description.
For an example of an Alt attribute you could add to the above noted image for the 200 hour flow yoga teacher training in Bali example, you could use a Alt attribute description like the following (if you were using an image of a sunset class with trainees overlooking Bali rice fields):
View of beautiful orange and yellow sunset featuring a yoga class with trainees overlooking green Bali rice fields at a flow yoga teacher training with {insert your school name here} in Bali
10.) Bold (and Italics) Markup SEO
Similar to H2 and H3 (and the various other H tags), using Bold and Italics on your web pages can help to add additional markup while smoothly steering your website visitors throughout your page.
Best Practices
Not to say that you want to (or should ever) over do it here, but try and use bold and italics mark-up’s on all of your pages, choosing a word or two here and there that could be emphasized and/or presented differently with ad bold or italics.
11.) Sitemap SEO
With a whole lot of your on-page SEO and meta data taken care of, you can now make sure that Google (and all other major search engines) can easily read your website content and efficiently receive updates with your website content. To do this, a sitemap is the solution.
Site maps (or sitemaps) are unique website pages that contain a structured list of all of the website pages that your website consists of. A site map is designed to update automatically and regularly with each new page that is created and launched live publicly on your website.
Best Practices
If you have an existing website (and chances are if you’re viewing these SEO tips you do) and do not yet have a Sitemap submitted to Google, get a Sitemap submitted to Google now. If you don’t yet have a website (and you might also need help with getting a website), submit a Sitemap to Google when you launch so that all pages and the building of all of your pages to come can be shared with Google.
How To Add a Sitemap
You can add a sitemap for your website directly through Google Webmasters Tools Search Console (via www.google.com/webmasters) and you can likely use a WordPress plugin if you use WP. For platforms like SquareSpace, you will automatically have a sitemap created with your website and it can be found at yourwebsitename.com/sitemap.xml and, you would submit/add that specific URL with the /sitemap.xml appended to it as your sitemap for Google.
The never ending efforts of SEO and the ever-growing online landscape for yoga teacher training and retreats
Next in SEO marketing for yoga schools, see how booking sites can harm your SEO and the best practices for working with booking sites along with which content to use and how to use it on booking sites.
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Additional online SEO resources
There’s a lot of SEO resources available online both as paid services as well as free services with content available for educational and informative purposes. In addition to what you will find here in our Yoga Marketing series as well as with our Yoga Marketing services provided for yoga schools, some of our most favorite SEO websites that we like to give thanks and praise to and recommend for their continued services and information provided for the online SEO community are Moz.com, SearchEngineWatch.com, and WordStream.com
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