Keyword research for preschools and day care: the words parents type

The keywords for child care that bring enquiries are almost never the words on your signboard. Parents in India type play school, day care, creche, nursery and preschool, often meaning the same thing, and they add a locality and an age. So the research starts with how parents in your own town search, not with a national list from a keyword tool. Then you write one page for each real search, and you change the words when the admission season turns.

The keywords for child care that parents actually type

Put your own words aside for ten minutes and look at what gets typed. The pattern is almost always a word for the place, plus an age or a timing, plus where the parent lives or works.

Two patterns run through that table. Parents lead with the place word rather than your brand name. They nearly always attach an age, a timing, or a locality such as a school or a tech park.

The words centres use in their own brochures, early learning space, curriculum-led environment, nurturing ecosystem, are typed by nobody. Keep them for the wall. Write the website in the parent's words.

How to find the words parents in your town use

National keyword tools will tell you that day care is searched more than creche. They will not tell you that in your three-kilometre radius, half the enquiries say creche. Six sources will.

Your own enquiry log. Write down the exact words of the last fifty phone and WhatsApp enquiries. "Do you take fourteen-month-olds?" and "Do you have a van to Sri Chaitanya?" are keywords, already spoken by people who rang you.

Google autocomplete, on a phone, in your locality. Type day care, creche and play school, then your area name, and read what Google finishes for you. Do the same for the "people also ask" box.

Your Google Business Profile performance report. It shows the search terms people used before they found your listing, and almost nobody reads it.

Search Console, once your pages have been live a few months. It shows what you already appear for and at what position, which tells you where a small edit is worth more than a new page.

The parent groups you are already in. Apartment and school WhatsApp groups, and the local mothers' groups on Facebook. Read how the question is asked: "any good creche near Doddanekundi, my baby is 11 months".

The three centres above you on Maps. Read their profile category, their page titles and the services listed. You are not copying them, you are seeing which words Google has already decided this area uses.

One thing the national tools miss entirely. In Hubballi or Mysuru a parent may type in English and then ask in Kannada on the phone. Your pages stay in English, and your receptionist answers in the parent's language.

Admission season changes the words, four times a year

A preschool's search demand is not flat. It moves in a cycle, and the centres that win the season prepare the pages a month before it starts.

• November to February. Nursery and LKG admission searches, plus fee structure, admission form and open house. The word admission appears in nearly every query.
• March to May. Summer camp, holiday day care and activity classes. Parents with school-going children need cover for two months.
• June and July. School reopening. After-school care, pick-up from a named school, and transport. Also the biggest month for infant creche searches, as maternity leave ends.
• Rest of the year. Relocation searches. A family moving to a new area, or a parent changing jobs, searching near an office or a tech park rather than near home.

You do not need four websites. You need a page for each of those needs that exists all year and is updated before the season, so it has time to rank. A summer camp page published in April ranks in June, which is too late.

Turn each search into a page, not a paragraph

The common mistake is one Programmes page that mentions infants, toddlers, preschool, after-school and summer camp in five paragraphs. It competes for everything and wins nothing.

Give each real search its own page: infant care, toddler day care, preschool, after-school care, summer camp, and one page per branch locality. Each page states the ages taken, the timings and what a day looks like. Add the caregiver ratio, the staff verification you do, the food, and a phone number that a person answers. Put real photographs of the actual rooms on it.

Then match your Google Business Profile to those pages, because for most parents the Maps result is the shortlist and your website is the check afterwards. We have written up what that involves in local SEO for day care centres.

For example, take a day care in Marathahalli, Bengaluru, taking children from ten months to six years. The details are illustrative. Its website has a Programmes page and a Contact page. Rewrite it as five: infant care, toddler care, preschool, after-school with pick-up from two named schools, and summer camp. Each one names Marathahalli and the ages it takes. The same centre then has five doors a parent's search can open instead of one.

What better rankings will not fix

Be honest about where the enquiry is actually lost, because for many centres it is not visibility. This is the part of lead generation for a day care that no search work touches.

The phone rings at eleven in the morning, when every adult in the building is with a child, and nobody calls back. The fee is not on the site and not given on the phone, so the parent rings the next centre. There are no photographs of the rooms, only a logo and a stock picture of crayons. A parent comes for a trial day, likes it, says she will confirm next week, and is never followed up.

Fix those first. A centre answering every call within the hour and following up every trial day within two days will fill seats faster than one that has doubled its search traffic. The wider picture of both sides is on our page for day care centres.

What to do next

Open a notebook and write the exact words of your last twenty enquiries, then open your Google Business Profile and read the search terms report beside them. Where the two lists agree, you have your first five pages. Where they differ, you have found what your website is failing to say.