Drive Scout Blog
A driving school blog will help your business grow
By: Jackie Kass | Posted in: Marketing
May 17, 2019
Did you know that a driving school blog can drive more traffic to your website and increase sales to help your business grow exponentially? It’s absolutely true. It happened to my driving schools and it can happen to yours too.
When we initially launched my driving school website, potential customers could find it only through going through the “front door.” To truly increase web traffic, we needed to open more windows and doors leading into our website. In other words, with only one portal, customers had a hard time finding our website. There was just one road and one front door leading to it.
So, how could we create new portals, roads and doors leading into our website? We created a blog. It wasn’t a magic bullet, but it absolutely worked great in the long run. With a little patience on your part and quality content to drive its success, a driving school blog can increase your website visits by 100% or more. Now, who wouldn’t love that?
Benefits of a driving school blog
Content-driven blogs really do work, but yes – they take time, but the end result is worth the extra effort. However, just don’t take our word about the benefits of blogging.
Business.com uses this analogy to explain how blog posts can increase website traffic and revenue…
Think of blog posts as seeds that you throw out for hungry birds. The more seed you throw, the more birds will come. Every post you publish is another handful of seeds for birds to find.
And the more birds who come, the more birds there are who share what you have written with others; and the more that others post links back to your blog, the more chance there is for your pages to rank for keyword searches that potential customers conduct.
The whole point of having a business is to attract customers and increase profits. Current research shows that 60 percent of businesses that blog acquire more customers than those that do not. It’s a no-brainer.
Starting a driving school blog will accomplish the following:
- Increase your ranking with Google
- Open more portals to your website
- Increase traffic and sales.
My driving school blog success story
My marketing manager was responsible for posting 2-3 blog posts per month. After one year’s worth of blogging, our website traffic increased by 100%. Plus, it increased about the same amount each year.
The key to our driving school blog was to make our content relevant and useful to new teen drivers and their parents. Then, point the readers to your website. When they reach your website through a blog, they are finding it through a back door. These additional portals are essential to growing your website traffic, and ultimately, your sales.
How to start a driving school blog
If you already have a driving school website, you’re more than halfway there. It’s not that tough to add a blog to an existing website.
WordPress websites
If you use WordPress, you can check out this official video on how to set up a blog in five easy steps. Here, you will learn how to do the following:
- Choose a free or premium theme
- Update the title and tag line
- Add a site icon
- Create a custom menu
- Add sharing buttons
Ask your web developer to set up a driving school blog
If you used a web developer and/or designer to set up your website, they will most certainly know how to add a blog to it. Once you have a driving school blog page, make sure people can easily access it on your website by adding a tab at the top or at a minimum, in the footer.
How to find topics for your driving school blog
A great driving school blog provides useful information. In our case, we wrote articles that new teen drivers, plus their nervous parents found helpful.
If you don’t use Trello, I highly recommend it. It’s a task management system that works for your blogging tasks. Simply start a new Trello card called “Blog Posts.” Then, you can create a checklist for “Blog Post Ideas.” Head to the Trello website for more information.
Whenever a customer calls in with a question or concern, add it to your “Blog Idea” list. When you see a well-written and relevant post, add it to your list. Then, write a similar article in your own words and in your own writing style.
Use Google to discover new driving school blog topics
If you hit a wall and can’t think of a new topic for your driving school blog, head to Google. Below are a dozen keyword groups you can type into the Google’s search box to come up with new topic ideas for your driving school blog.
- Teen driving
- Distracted driving
- Driving under the influence
- Teen driver safety
- Drivers Ed
- Best cars for teen drivers
- How to save on teen driver insurance
- Teen driver dangers
- Advice for parents of teen drivers
Personalize your driving school blog
While it’s good to see what other driving schools are blogging about, you have to personalize your own blog. Yes, you can quote an outside source in your blog, but the tone and verbiage must be your own. If Google sees that your article is a cut and paste job, it will penalize your blog. That means your post will never make it to the coveted first page of a Google search.
About 75% of people will never scroll past the first page on a Google search. If your content is not original and relevant, your blog post may be buried on the 2nd or 3rd page or worse. Therefore, it’s important to publish well-written articles that provide useful information.
Use target keywords in your driving school blog
If you write a generalized article about teen drivers and you have a new driving school blog, the chance that your article will show up on page one is slim to none. That’s because the topic is very broad, and many others have written about this topic frequently over time. “Teen drivers” is what marketing experts call short-tail keywords.
If you want a chance to rank on page one in a Google search, consider using long-tail keywords. An example of a blog post that utilizes long-tail keywords is an article titled, “Steps to get a new Illinois drivers license.” Not as many people will type in this long-tail keyword, but those who do will likely find your blog post on the first page.
Marketing guru Neil Patel and long-tail keywords
Neil Patel, an absolute guru in the world of marketing, recommends that small businesses use long-tail keyword strategies. Here’s what he recently said on the topic in one of his own blog posts.
At first, I was skeptical about the power of long-tail keywords. But then I read about how Amazon makes 57% of their sales from long-tail keywords
How? Because long-tail searches are looking for very specific information, whereas short-tail keywords are more general. If you can give the searcher specific information, they’re going to stick around and convert.
Driving school blog: Quantity versus quality
When we started our driving school blog, we posted three new articles per month. Most were in the 600 to 800-word range. Yes, the content answered questions that were relevant to our customers, but it never delved deep into any particular topic or long-tail keyword group.
Although people’s attention spans are generally short, Google appreciates and recognizes long content blog posts. Our first longer format blog post was all about Joshua’s Law. It went into detail about the teen driver law, its history, and how many lives it saves per year.
My marketing director even reached out to the founder of Joshua’s Law and interviewed him on the phone for two hours. She included a ton of quotes from him in the blog post. This particular post generated a huge amount of views and clicks to our website.
According to Search Engine Journal, the average content length for page one results is around 1,900 words. So, be sure to include a detailed, well-researched longer post about once per month.
On the flip side, shorter newsworthy articles are also valuable. Each year, we wrote about National Teen Driver Safety Month. Those articles usually ranged from 500-700 words and have landed on a 1st page Google search.
Enhance your driving school blog
A top-quality blog post is so much more than just words. It also includes meaningful photos or illustrations and purposeful videos.
For example, we posted a follow-up article about Joshua’s Law. We included a video of the founder talking about the loss of his son in a traffic accident and how he wants to help teen drivers avoid the same fate. The addition of the video was powerful, meaningful and relevant. That particular post performed extremely well for us.
How to record videos for your driving school blog
If you have a smartphone, you can create your own videos to include in your blog posts. For example, if you want to publish an article about how to parallel park, don’t just write about it. Record one of your students actually doing it successfully.
After you have recorded your demonstration, upload it to YouTube, where you can edit and post it. You can then include the Youtube video link in your blog, newsletters and more.
Photos for your driving school blog
Inexperienced driving school owners often Google a term like “teen drivers” and then look for images that they use in their blog posts. This can cause a lot of trouble for you down the road. Just because you find a photo in a Google search doesn’t mean that you have permission to use it.
The better choice is to peruse free image websites like the following:
Call-to-actions for your driving school blog
You’ve written quality and relevant content. Plus, you included images that you have permission to use or a video that you created. You’re ready to publish, right? Well, not so fast there, sparky.
The whole purpose of writing a driving school blog is to open up new portals to your website. Be sure to include active links to other relevant blog posts. Finally, make sure you include a call-to-action at the end.
It can be as simple as “For more information about ABC Driving School, click here.” However, most good bloggers use a graphic element and embed the link. Remember, the goal is to drive more potential customers to your website.
In review: Driving School blog advice
- Review the benefits of blogging
- Use WordPress or your web developer to create a driving school blog on your website
- Search Google for potential driving school blog topics
- Use long-tail keyword strategies
- Write a combination of long and short blog posts
- Add photos that you have permission to use and your own videos to enhance a blog post
- Add a call-to-action to direct potential customers to your website
