People search for the programme, and land on the institution
Education & Training: web design, development, and search visibility from a team in Mississauga working across Canada and the US.
Nobody searches for a training provider. They search for a certification, a subject, a grade, a career they are trying to move into, or a deadline they have just noticed. Every one of those is a programme-level search, and it should land on a programme page. On most education sites it lands on a homepage, or on a PDF prospectus, and the enquiry never happens.
The problem this sector actually has
Two things make this sector awkward, and neither is technical. The buyer and the user are often different people, so a page has to satisfy a parent and a teenager, or an employer and the person being sent on the course, and copy written for one loses the other. And demand is deadline-shaped rather than steady: intake dates, application windows and term starts concentrate the entire year's decisions into a few weeks, which means the search work has to be finished months before the traffic arrives. The recurring structural failure underneath both is the prospectus. A PDF holds the programme detail, the site holds a summary, and the searchable content is therefore in the file nobody can index.
Who this is for
- Training and vocational providers whose programmes live inside a downloadable prospectus
- Tutoring centres competing on local search against national brands
- Colleges and academies where enrolment concentrates around a few intake dates
- Course businesses whose catalogue is longer than their site can navigate
What we build
- Program and course catalog pages built for search
- Enrollment and application flows
- Content structures staff can update without a developer
What the engagement covers
A page per programme, written for both readers
Outcomes, entry requirements, duration, cost and what the next intake is, on a page of its own. Written so a parent and a student, or an employer and a learner, both find their answer without either being talked past.
The prospectus as content, not as a download
Whatever is in the PDF that people search for belongs on the site as text. Keep the download for the people who want it, and stop it being the only place the detail exists.
Enrolment flows that finish
Applications abandoned halfway are the sector's quiet loss. Shorter forms, saved progress, clear requirements stated before the form rather than inside it, and a path for the enquiry that is not ready to apply yet.
Built around the intake calendar
Search work landing the week applications open is search work that missed. Programme pages and content go live in the quiet months so the rankings exist when the decision window does, and the paid spend during it is topping up rather than carrying the channel.
Content your staff can actually change
Course dates, fees and tutors change constantly, and a site that needs a developer for each is a site that ends up out of date. Structure and editing flow chosen so the people who know the answer can publish it.
Questions this sector asks first
Should each course have its own page, even the small ones?
If somebody searches for it by name, yes. That is the test, and it is not the same as the course being important to you. Where a family of short courses shares an audience and a search, one strong page covering them will outperform six thin ones, so the answer is per catalogue rather than per policy.
We publish a prospectus PDF. Is that a problem?
It is a problem when it is the only place the detail lives. Search engines handle PDFs badly, assistants handle them worse, and neither can send someone to a specific programme inside one. Publish the content as pages and keep the PDF as the thing people print, rather than as the thing people have to open to learn anything.
Do you have education case studies?
Not yet, and we would rather say so than dress up an adjacent project as one. What this work leans on is the same structure the published case studies do use: a page per specific thing somebody searches for, real content instead of a file, and a flow that finishes. The reference material for this sector is on the way rather than behind us.
How far ahead of an intake should we start?
One full cycle earlier than feels comfortable. New pages take weeks to be crawled, indexed and to settle, so work started when applications open is work that arrives for the following intake. The useful way to think about it is that this term's traffic was decided last term.