Additionally, scholarships can also help promote your business, especially if you are starting a non-profit organization or a company under your name. We can see this happen time and again with many notable people starting their own foundations.
According to Rusty Tweed, you don’t have to build a giant foundation to help you get started. You can start with offering grants of full-on scholarships to help deserving students. Here are some benefits in offering a scholarship to student applicants:
- A chance to give a person a brighter future – this is a rewarding feeling that cannot be bought. If you have the resources to help out, there is nothing more rewarding than giving hope to someone in need.
- Promoting a business or an organization that you’re starting – through your scholarship, you can help spread the news about your business or organization. You can ask applicants to send in their information, or help spread the word about your offers.
- Painting a good image for your brand – scholarships can also help you put a good image on your brand. Some companies go “green” and practice sustainable measures. Others give donations to sister charities. You can also use scholarships to help paint a good image for your business while giving back to your community at the same time.
However, some scholarships may be difficult to find and the information is not readily available for applicants. Search engines may not easily pick up your website, especially if it’s a new post which isn’t from an authority domain yet. In this post, Rusty Tweed highlights some SEO tips that can help you get more applicants for your scholarship.
How SEO Can Help Your Scholarship Get More Applicants
1. Use a keyword planner
Keyword planners are great tools to up your SEO game. All you have to do is search for a free keyword planner, and type the possible search terms that you think people would type in.
For example, if the name of your scholarship is “Rusty Tweed Scholarship”, people won’t necessarily look for that term. You have to think of terms which they would normally look for, such as “College scholarship for nurses” or “2018 scholarship for honor students”. If you use these keywords in your blog posts, you will most likely rank in search engines and potential applicants will land on your website. Make sure to use the suggestions given by the keyword planner.
2. Use location-specific terms
Another helpful tip to rank better in search engines is to use location-specific terms. Usually, websites would not easily rank for terms such as “scholarship 2018”. Although it is possible, it would take a much longer time compared to using keywords such as “scholarship in Illinois 2018”.
Making your keywords location=specific can also help you find targeted applicants in your area. This can be convenient if you need students to send in their documents or appear for an interview.
3. Do not forget your links
Adding backlinks and interlinking parts of your website will also help you rank well in search engines. Backlinks are those websites that point back to your scholarship page, and interlinks are the URLs that you place in your posts to direct to other pages within your domain.
For some reason, search engines favor websites that do these practices. Make it a habit to interlink your website, and find other similar websites and partner with them to promote your scholarship page.
4. Post blogs consistently
The main way for search engines to crawl in your content is through creating consistent blog posts. Blog posts are intended to be searched by people and if you consistently create content, there is a high chance of people coming across your scholarship offers.
You don’t have to necessarily make your topic about the scholarship all the time, but it helps to mention it once in a while in your other posts. This technique is called content marketing, which is the main strategy that helps in improving your scholarship page’s SEO.
5. Guest post on other websites
You can also partner with other pages and ask them if you can make a guest post that links back to your scholarship page. This is very helpful if you know a scholarship network or a school who are offering free resources about financial aid for students.
Ask these companies if you can guest post and offer a backlink to your scholarship page–it’s a win-win situation. Not only will you be a resource for their school’s future applicants, they will also help bring in potential students who are wanting your scholarship offer.