If you ask marketing professionals what are the top 3 secrets to a successful business, they’ll tell you, “Location, location, location.”<\/p>\n
It’s been the dream of many schools to have a “better” location – closer to the main road for better visibility, closer to the center of the community to encourage business support, and for some, to be within a more densely populated area.<\/p>\n
With the 24-25 school year upon us, you may take comfort in knowing that your school indeed has a new address!\u00a0 No, it’s not a physical brick and mortar location, it’s your URL – your Uniform Resource Locator.\u00a0 You may better know it as your school’s address on the Web.<\/p>\n
If you’re still thinking that your Web site is something nice to have, or wishing that it could be better, it’s time to stop wishing and make it happen.<\/p>\n
Why?<\/p>\n
Your Web site is now the first stop for parents interested in checking out your school.\u00a0 They don’t look in the Yellow Pages anymore (and they haven’t for a number of years now).\u00a0 They go online to a search engine like Google or Bing, type in a few key words (or, keywords, as they’re referred to in Web design), and hopefully, your school pops up as one of the first “hits” they see.<\/p>\n
While much has been written about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) so that your Web site becomes one of the top results that visitors see, along with companies that will assist businesses in optimizing Web sites, it’s very important to realize that your Web site and your Web address are not synonymous.\u00a0 For instance, https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com is the URL for this Web site – one which I purchased about 19 years ago.<\/p>\n
But it was only the “address.”<\/p>\n
I then had to purchase “hosting space” so the site could be created, and the URL would then allow visitors to connect to it.<\/p>\n
Therefore, in a very real sense, your school can be compared to the “space” which your Web site occupies, and your school’s “mailing” address can be likened to the school’s Web site’s URL.<\/p>\n
You may have also noticed that I tend toward making the words “Web” and “site” be separated by a space, and that Web is always capitalized.\u00a0 This was the standard, that is, the “best practice,” of Web design in its early stages.\u00a0 You’ll now routinely see “website” since it’s been accepted into today’s vernacular.\u00a0 Similarly, “Internet” was always capitalized since it was considered to be a proper noun because it referred to a location, in the same way we refer to a structure, city or country.\u00a0\u00a0Today, nearly everyone refers to “the internet” as just another aspect of our lives that’s taken, all too often, for granted.<\/p>\n
If your school’s Web site address is not an easy one to remember, consider buying one that is, and then forwarding it your school’s current Web site address.\u00a0 Rather than singling out a particular school as an example, I’ll use a local non-profit, the Norwin Play It Forward Fund, as an example.\u00a0 The fund’s Web site is built on https:\/\/norwinplayitforwardfund.org.<\/a>\u00a0 However, over the past fifteen years of the fund’s existence, it has also become known by its letters, NPIFF, or NorwinPIFF.<\/p>\n If the organization wanted to use NorwinPIFF.org or NPIFF.org, as long\u00a0 as those URLs were available, it could forward them to the real address, just like you can forward email from one account to another, or paper mail from your house to the location to which you’re moving.\u00a0 The company you purchase the URL from (such as GoDaddy.com, or other provider), will allow you to forward the URL that’s easier to remember or spell to your current site’s URL.<\/p>\n This practice is also very helpful when updating your current Web site for your school.<\/p>\n If you decide to completely overhaul your school’s presence on the Web by building a completely new Web site, you may have to create it on a completely new URL.\u00a0\u00a0You can then take the URL that folks have become accustomed to and forward it to the new site, rather than trying to maintain your current site while building a new one within the existing structure.<\/p>\n Of course, the company you engage to create your new Web site should assist you with this process.\u00a0 Marketing and promoting one URL allows you to reinforce your school’s information to parents of current and prospective students rather than attempting to let them know of your school’s new address when your Web site moves to a new location.<\/p>\n