In part 1 of this series , we explained the importance of using the principles of search engine optimization , or SEO , when creating a blog post for your school and provided five such principles. This article provides five more that you should use to optimize all the blog posts for your school.

1) Use Subheadings Liberally

While some people read articles starting at the first word and continuing to the last, others prefer to skim first. They will often scan subheadings as first to decide whether they want to read. It’s a good idea to break up your blog post content by using several subheadings. Ideally, they should be written so that if that is all the reader takes in, they’ll have reasonable summary of the article.

2) Link to “Cornerstone Content” on Your Site

Some content on your site will be more popular than others. Because families have found this content useful, you may want to consider featuring it on your site. One way to do this is to create links to it from other blog posts on your site.

Such featured content is sometimes referred to as cornerstone content and can be on a topic that you want to rank highly in search engines for. Let’s use the example from Part 1 of this series, namely, that your school is in Seoul and regularly hosts a science fair. Now let’s say that you’ve discovered that posts about this fair are some of the most popular on your site.

It makes sense to create a single webpage about your science fair and design it around the appropriate keyword. Then in each blog post that is related to the fair, include a link back to this featured webpage. These internal links help search engines understand that the cornerstone content should be considered an authoritative source on your site and ranked highly.

3) Link Directly to Your Content on Social Media

An important part of optimizing blog posts for your school is to get other sources to link to it. Social media is a great place to promote your new content. But while it’s okay to post a link to your school’s homepage, it’s better to post a link directly to the content that you are promoting.

The SEO value of a link from a social media site varies considerably from site to site. One important – and often neglected -- platform is Pinterest. The links from Pinterest are special in that search engines consider links to your content from Pinterest to be “votes of confidence” in the value of your content

4) Keep Your Eyes on Your Analytics

The only way you’ll know whether your blog posts are being read (or fully read) will be by analyzing measurements. Google and other services provide data called analytics on how many people are reading your blog posts, how long they are reading them for, and so forth.

It’s important to watch these measurements after you publish new content so you can optimize the blog posts for your school. For example, if a new piece of content is not attracting much attention, you may want to modify your post and use more of these tips we’ve presented.

Alternatively, if you find that certain content is much more popular, these could be good candidates for becoming cornerstone content. The bottom line is to never assume what results you’ll get. Always collect data to find out for sure.

5) Enlist the Help of SEO Specialists

As we mentioned in the first part of this series, SEO is a large subject. These techniques should provide you with the ability to do basic optimization of blog posts for your school. But if you want to take your results to the next level, it’s probably a good idea to retain a marketing firm that specializes in SEO.

Optimizing Blog Posts for Your School Is Well Worth It

While performing the techniques listed here (and in Part 1 of the series) does require a little extra effort, you’ll find that they will result in many more families finding your content. Once you’ve used them on a few blog posts, you’ll probably find they come second-nature to you. Start using them today and make sure to send any questions you have to us so we can help!

Learn more about how IMPACT Marketing International can help your school use its content to attract mission appropriate families in our free ebook, Inbound Marketing for International Schools.