- Reach more people
- Increase your contacts
- Let people know what your academy offers
- List accreditations
- Highlight any awards your academy, current students and graduates receive
- Permit students to enroll online saving them time and you money
- Build a thriving online community
As you can see these are compelling reasons to have a great web page for your business academy. So what does a great website contain that sets it above its competition? The main elements of a site that works great are ease of use and quality content.
Ease of Use
You want to make your website as easy for people to use as you can. There is an unofficial web design rule called the 3-Click Rule. It states that everything on your website should be no more than three clicks away. While sometimes that is not possible because of the structure of your site, it is still good to keep in mind when designing your business academy online presentation. Make your website navigation clear and easy to find. A navigation bar above your main content, side bar navigation and navigation links in the bottom of all your pages are essential. There should be a link to your homepage on each and every one of your web pages.
Periodically check your links to make sure they still work. This is especially important if you link to any external websites since web designers are constantly maintaining websites and may have changed the addresses of their pages. It is recommended that you test all of your links once a month to keep them current.
Quality Content
Quality content is vital to a great website. Your content needs to be original, dynamic and engaging. You can achieve this by taking the time to do keyword research. You can use Google’s AdWord Keyword Tool. It is free and very easy to use. Simply enter the keywords you want to use and you will get related keywords and their popularity based on the most recent searches. Use them in your content and title tags, but don’t stuff your content with keywords. Keep your saturation less than 3% to get the most SEO juice from them and place your most important keywords toward the top of your web pages.
Do not, ever, never, do you hear this – do not ever copy paste content from other websites and use it as your own. For one it is illegal and called plagiarism. For two it kills your SEO. And lastly it really kills your creditability. People and the search engines will figure out quickly that you’ve lifted someone else’s content. If you want to use content, give the original website credit for it, but do this sparingly and place it low on your web pages so that it is not mistaken for lifted content.
Make Use of Videos
Videos can add a great deal to your academy’s website. They can be used to introduce the school, explain classes and introduce the instructors, and as testimonials from successful graduates. When you use YouTube to store your videos you are taking advantage of the second largest search engine. If you take a look at the Chiropractic Business Academy’s website you will see how they combine videos with content to make a well-designed website. Their web page design is clean and you can find the videos easily.
Website Design
One of things that will make your website great is the design. Clean and easy to read pages combined with user friendly navigation will make your website easy to use and one that people will return to time and again. It you take a look at the Chiropractic Business Academy’s website again, you will see how clean and uncluttered it is. The academy has plenty of information on their pages, but it is organized so that you can find what you need easily.
Instead of using a homepage, the website uses a landing page. This is a page that leads you into the site with interesting content and just enough information to make you want to explore it more. Landing pages are becoming more and more popular as opposed to just using a homepage. On the subsequent pages there is a link back to the homepage and to all of the main categories and pages. This is an excellent example of a well-structured website.
Keep these tips in mind and how they will work for you when you are deciding if your business academy needs a website. Recent studies have discovered that only 48% of all small businesses have an online presentation. Don’t miss out on the tremendous amount of people these businesses are missing out on. Create a website that is useful and current and your business academy will reach more people and be successful.
