Let’s start by stating the obvious - your international education clients are human beings and therefore search for language courses, university programs, and education agents just like they’d search for a flight, their next favourite pair of trainers, or the latest news about a new and upcoming TikTok star. So, how do they search? What do they ask their search engines before they come across your business? And what is Google (or any other search engine) doing to show them specific results?

If you’re already putting a lot of effort into SEO and have answers to these three questions, but you still can’t get the search ranking you want, then put your mind at rest that it’s really not you—it’s Google! In 2022, it had more than eight confirmed updates, all of which had some form of impact on search results. But this certainly doesn’t mean that you should give up. We’ve put together a list of questions, specifically for the international education industry, that you should be asking yourself when working on content for your sites. Here it goes:

1. What are international students truly interested in? Is that what the content on your site is about? (Ideally, it would be.)

2. If you asked someone who hadn’t used your site before, would they be able to navigate it easily? Are you taking cultural or language differences into consideration? (If you’re not answering yes, we should have a chat 🙂)

3. Have you become hooked on ChatGPT or other AI tools and automation to produce your content? (Your international clients may not notice, but Google will!)

4. If you are an education provider, do you have specific pages with content to target international students and others to target agents? (In case you’re wondering, the answer should be yes.)

5. Does the page headline and SEO title provide a good, concise description of what the page is about? Did you describe the page content in the meta description as well? Consider using language your readers would normally use. Do they search for English Language Programs or English Courses, for example? (Not sure what we’re talking about? Send us a message or leave a comment!)

6. Is your content written in a relatable and understandable way or is it academic and professional? (Well, academic and professional won’t do the trick for our dear friend Google!)

7. If your audience is viewing your site on mobile, would they be able to find and read it as easily as they would on desktop? (Easy tip: Make mobile your priority!)

To conclude this, our suggestion is to start from the basics, i.e., understanding your audience: Yes, we have said this before but we keep saying it because, as you can see, it’s not just important to us. Google ranks your site based on how useful it is for your viewers, too. In international education, you have to consider that your audiences are likely different; from parents to young adults, and teens, and there’s also an element of B2B when you add education agents to that equation. So, if you’re not sure how to get started or how to implement an SEO strategy that works for the international education industry, let us know. We can help because we love getting into Google’s head and understanding what it wants from us, and you!