Local SEO for Driving Schools

Let’s say you live in Ohio. You wish to search for a driving school in your neighborhood. How do you do it? An overwhelming majority of people will flip out their mobile phones and start typing out in the search bar, ‘driving school in Ohio’. Google has a tremendously fast search engine. Within no time, you will get more than 56 million searches.

Dou you think anyone has the time and mentality to go through each page of the Google Search engine. Remember, a search engine page will not have more than 15 to 20 entries. Imagine the number of pages you will need to browse in case you have to go through the entire 56 million entries. Hence, people will not search for more than a page. Very rarely do people go beyond the first page of the local search on Google. Hence, people always say, “The best place to hide a dead body is the second page of a Google search.” This implies that no one goes beyond the first page.

Look at the first entry on the page very closely. You find the words AD stacked up on the left corner. What does this signify? This is a paid advertisement, also known as PPC advertising.

This is the organic search results. They are free, but they have earned the right to be there. Our objective is to make your driving school rank somewhere alongside these names. This can improve the number of hits your website gets. Obviously, the higher the position on the SERP, the higher is the number of hits you attract. Automatically, that translates into a higher number of leads and thereby higher conversions.

This is a no-brainer. You pay for your advertisement to be listed on the internet. This concept does not require any kind of hard work from your side. Visibility is the key to performance in SEO. You always have the option of choosing a strong website and pay money to list your advertisements. You can do so on the social media network as well on sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.

This is the most common type of advertising campaign prevalent today. Claiming your listing on the Google My Business Page is simple stuff. Access the official website of GMB and submit the details asked for on the application form. It will not take you more than a minute to complete the application. Furnish the correct information and wait for the Google verification. On receiving the confirmation, you can go ahead with seeing your name of the GMB pages. Prior to 2015, there were five names on the GMB first page. Now, Google has reduced it to a minimum of 3. Of course, you have the option of searching for more places. However, your endeavor is to be in the top 3.

Ensure that you furnish the correct address with zip code and phone number. The name of the city is of utmost importance. It can be a great idea to use a map placeholder. This will help people to concentrate on the exact location.

Adding a couple of landmarks is important. It will help your customers to find you better. Images can say it better than words. A couple of images of your school can help new customers to identify it easily.

Update the information regularly whenever there is any change in the submitted information. Monitor your GMB pages to ensure there is no duplicate listing. Otherwise, you do the hard work and someone else enjoys the fruits of the business.

Maintain consistency. If your street mentions ‘Avenue’, use the word, ‘Avenue’ and not the abbreviated version. Google search engine bots will consider it as a new address and hence rank accordingly.

Invest in a high quality website. Hire a professional to design one of the best looking websites in the business. Remember, this is show business. The first impression is usually the last one as well. Investing a high quality website is always beneficial.

Choose a strong domain like .co.uk, or .co.au, etc instead of the generic .com domains. It pays to have a stronger website.

Your website should have a high quality home page for enticing the customers.The components of a highly successful website design are ‘About us, Contact us, Services page, FAQ pages, and so on.

Using proper and strong keywords is important. It is beneficial to have long-tailed keywords, especially in your line of business. This is because the customers would be making a specific search instead of a generic one. You can always add the name of your immediate neighborhood to the keyword. There may not be many schools in your immediate neighborhood. Hence, you have low competition. Choosing the right keyword is like winning half the battle.

Your services page should explain each service in detail. It is better to have separate pages for each service you offer. Clubbing together many services can have a detrimental effect on your rankings. The search engine bots can get confused.

Hire quality content writers to draft your content. It should be error free and describe all your services in as simple a manner as possible. There should be optimum use of keywords. Ensure that the keyword density does not go beyond 1% to 2%. Google considers anything more than that as spam. Be careful in this regard.

The title and Meta description have a lot to say as well. They have to be crisp and on the dot. It is better to ensure that your Meta descriptions do not consume more than 160 to 200 characters. They should provide the right kind of information enticing your customer to enter your website.

Google gives great importance to both internal and external links. Choose your external links with care. Obtaining backlinks for the sake of doing so will backfire. The recent algorithm released by Google penalizes such practices very heavily and bans such websites forever. Invest in quality backlinks. You can always connect to the regional transport office and mention them in some of your external links. This can help you to seek quality backlinks from .gov websites.

Citations are also very important from local SEO point of view. Updating your NAP information is essential. You can use TribeLocal’s industry wise citations to great effect. They are inexpensive and help you ace the rankings as well.

Positive reviews from your existing and previous customers can help you a lot. You can always ask them to post positive reviews about your website. In fact, satisfying the customer is more important. Automatically, you get good reviews. Never try to buy reviews from spurious websites. The search engine bots are very clever. They can identify such practices with ease. This is a kind of Black Hat SEO. Avoiding such techniques is good for your website.

Who is not into social media today? You can count the number of such people on the fingers of your hand. Hence, it makes great sense to have a presence in social media. The youngsters are happy to engage with you on social media. This is one of the best places to exchange messages and pictures. Connect each page of your website with the social media. Make it easy for people to log in to your website using their social media credentials. It will be easy for them and make you popular as well. This is what you are aiming for.