The modern corporate training market is filled with vendors and suppliers offering the latest learning solutions for learning and development (L&D) professionals. Training professionals identify solutions compatible with their problems through both word of mouth, as well as searching online.

Good search engine optimization (SEO) is the key to seeing positive results on Google and attracting L&D buyers who are looking for the specific product or service the training company is selling.

What is SEO?

SEO is the process of improving a website’s visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) to increase organic (non-paid) traffic to a website. Improving SEO involves crafting a strategy and using various techniques to make a training company’s website more appealing to search engines (e.g., Google, Yahoo, Bing), like optimizing website content or using relevant keywords, for example.

Despite SEO being a cost-effective way to improve brand awareness, many companies do not have an SEO strategy. Yet, to attract relevant users and convert them into customers, training vendors must rank higher than their competitors in search engine results. According to Google search statistics by Backlinko, only 0.63% of Google searchers click on the second page; and the top three Google search results get 54.4% of all clicks.

This article reviews the four types of SEO that training providers must continuously enhance and how they can improve these types of SEO with best practices to attract new website visitors.

4 Types of SEO for Training Providers to Understand

It’s important for training providers to understand the four types of SEO because they are interconnected and together play a critical role in achieving desired results. Here are the four types of SEO to add to your ongoing SEO strategy:

1.  Technical SEO.

Technical SEO involves improving the back-end of your website, ensuring that it meets technical requirements, like site performance and mobile friendliness. This enhances the user experience (UX), making it easier for L&D buyers to interact with the website.

Here’s what to audit when optimizing technical SEO:

• Website speed and performance. Google data shares that 53% of mobile users abandon a webpage if it takes three seconds or longer to load. Website quality is key to keeping L&D users on the site. To improve website speed and performance: Optimize images by compressing them and ensuring they are the appropriate size, minimize the number of HTTP requests by combining CSS and JavaScript files and use browser HTTP caching to load recently visited webpages more quickly.
• Crawlability and indexability. Web crawlers, or spiders, are bots that use links to crawl website content. Search engines, like Google and Bing, use crawlers to browse and index webpages so they can appear in search results. Steps to improving crawlability: Create a logical site structure, use clear and descriptive URLs, fix broken links, use internal links and prune the site for unnecessary or outdated content.

• Mobile-friendliness. Shopify data indicates that 76% of U.S. adults use their mobile phones for e-commerce. Also, search engines like Google use mobile-first indexing, which means mobile-friendly websites rank higher. To make a site more mobile-friendly, evaluate and improve the pages: responsive design, font sizes and readability, images and page speed.

2.  On-page SEO.

On-page SEO, or on-site SEO, involves optimizing webpages and their content for users and search engines. This includes any content that the user can interact with on the page including images.

When improving on-page SEO, training providers must check:

• Title and meta tags. A title tag, or SEO title, is the header of the page that is displayed in search results. According to a Semrush article, title tags should be 50-60 characters, so the full title appears in Google results. The meta tag is a description of the page, and like the title tag, should include relevant keywords so the search engine

• URL structure. URL structure is the format of the web addresses that direct users to the website. Ensure URLs include relevant keywords, so users know what the page is about and are short and concise so the URL is easy to remember. Minimize the use of URL redirects, and lastly, regularly monitor and maintain URLs to keep them up to date.

3.  Link building.

Link building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to one’s own site — this is referred to as backlinking. These hyperlinks are important for SEO because they are considered votes of confidence from other websites.

To boost link building SEO, training companies should:

• Perform outreach. Engage in manual outreach to relevant websites and influencers for backlink opportunities.
• Network. Participate in industry forums and blogs.
• Partner. Develop partnerships with businesses for mutual link building.
• Create engaging content. Create high-quality content that’s compelling, informative and shareable that addresses the needs of the L&D audience. This can attract natural backlinks from other websites.
• Refresh content. Optimize existing content and identify opportunities to optimize it for link building. Update outdated information, expand on valuable insights and incorporate multimedia elements to make your content more link-worthy.

4.  Keyword search.

Corporate training organizations must identify specific words and phrases significant to L&D so buyers seeking training can find them when searching for information, products or services online.

To improve keyword search, training companies must:

• Research. Training vendors must conduct research to identify relevant keywords related to their offering. Tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush or Moz Keyword Explorer can help with this process.
• Select. Based on the research findings, training vendors select a list of keywords that have high search volume and relevance to their target audience. These keywords should ideally strike a balance between being popular enough to draw traffic to the page and specific enough to attract the right kind of visitors.
• Implement. Once the keywords are chosen, they are strategically integrated into various elements of the website, including page titles, headings, meta descriptions, URL structures, image alt text, and the body content. This helps search engines understand what the website is about and improves its chances of ranking well for those keywords.
• Monitor and optimize. SEO is an ongoing process, so monitoring keyword performance is essential. SEO professionals regularly track how well their chosen keywords are performing in terms of rankings, traffic and conversions. Based on this data, they may adjust their keyword strategy, optimizing existing content or creating new content targeting different keywords to improve results.

“Bop to the Top”: Perfecting Your SEO Strategy

The corporate training market is growing exponentially with a heightened demand for outsourcing training and partnering with third-party training vendors. In 2024, Training Industry, Inc. estimates that companies will spend 29% of their training budget on external (outsourced) suppliers.

Training providers must adopt an SEO strategy that continuously improves their website to keep pace with industry changes and buyer demands. With this comprehensive review of SEO types and best practices, training organizations can create a solid SEO strategy, unlock the full potential of their online presence, and win the race to the “top.”

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