Being in the business of SEO – Search Engine Optimization, a very good example of an improperly optimized website would be a particular elementary school’s website, that I’m familiar with. Our school district has all the technology in the world to make websites easy for the individual campuses to make available for parents and staff. Instead, teachers use off-site websites which can be difficult to keep up with when you have multiple children in multiple schools. There are the homework sites, the sports sites, the PTO calendar – which is a pain in the rear to update. These things are so important.
Today….during a break from Houston website design, I sat down to see what time my youngest eats his lunch. I was pretty sure I was correct in the time that I had in my head, but I wanted to make sure. I jumped on the district’s website, sifted through all the district’s elementary schools, and there it was…….my school’s site. Now – in the search bar, I should type “lunch schedule.” Nope – nothing. Then I tried, “second grade schedule.” Nah – not good enough. I tried, “2nd Grade bell schedule”. That’s considered a long tail keyword (more specific thus in theory should result in a tighter search of the site. Nope – nothing again. Come on now……..how hard should it be to confirm a bell schedule at an elementary – hmmm?
I searched the website over and over again. Nothing. Picked the phone and called my wonderful next door neighbor. We decided on a time together by backing into the bell schedule. That’s crazy. A simple module on a page appropriately titled (watch those meta-tags), “Bell Schedule.” Easy to change, easy to maintain because it shouldn’t change too much – oh wow – they could have an early release bell schedule there too.
I might be over-thinking this since I work for Bizopia, a company that specializes in this stuff – but seriously, for one of the wealthier school districts in the state? It should be better……..
