You're here because running a registered training organisation is tough work. Complying with ASQA, providing good quality service, and now the new TAFE legislation has thrown another spanner in the works.
Whether you are a short-course RTO selling first-aid and forklift courses, or a B2B RTO selling a Cert III in Business Management, it has never been more important that when students search for your course, you show up.
After working with over 50 RTOs across all niches, it is clear that running an RTO is not just about compliance and quality delivery. It's about allowing potential students to find you when they are looking. You are not just competing with other private RTOs, but also with TAFE, who get to offer their courses for free.
The RTOs we work with have typically relied on referrals or paid ads, but their course pages and Google rankings are invisible. Even when they did SEO, generic blogs don't shift enrolments.
In this blog, we'll teach you how we've helped 50 RTOs transform their course pages and local presence into enrolments, while staying ASQA-compliant.
Before we get started, every RTO website must be compliant with ASQA standards. Compliance shapes your keywords, pages and copy.
Every RTO has dealt with the pain of the ASQA audit. Your website and SEO should work for you, not be a pain at audit time. This means public pages must carry specific, accurate information about each course you deliver. Under the 2025 outcome standards (effective 1 July 2025), students must be able to easily find the training product and title, delivery mode and location, support services and any third-party arrangements.
While keyword strategy and backlinks typically dominate SEO conversations, local SEO is the lowest-lift way of beating out competitors.
Most RTOs offer in-person courses. Online-only subjects account for just 10% of total courses. That means students will be looking for courses that are convenient and close to them.
Here are a few tips:
To rank higher on Google for your RTO courses, you need content for the search queries that people are looking for on Google and AI chatbots. This involves looking at keywords and phrases that have search volume so that you can write content that people can look at.
However, different students will be at different stages of the journey. As such, they will search according to their level of intent. This means you have to create different content for different levels of intent.
Here, people are in the first stage of the customer journey. They do not have intent to purchase. They do not yet know about your company or service offering. Your goal is to inform them about your RTO offering in a general way and push them toward the middle of the funnel.
You can create content like:
This is the consideration phase where prospects have shown interest but are not quite ready to make a purchase.
You can create content like:
Finally, your prospect should move to the bottom of the funnel. This stage is about conversion. They want your product or service, and you have to guide them through the relevant stages to submitting an enquiry or purchasing via the site.
Here, you should list the courses and services you offer. You must also show your identifiers. ASQA expects the RTO code on marketing. When you mention a course, you must include the course code and title. Students look for both course names and course codes.
Some other content that might be helpful here:
Keyword strategy is just one factor of on-page SEO performance for RTOs. There are lots of other factors on your website that influence your SEO.
Every different page on your site should have a title of 55 to 60 characters. This should include the course name and a description of the page you're building.
These should be 150 to 160 characters. They should provide descriptive value and prompt the user to the next action.
It's important you signal to Google the parts of your page that are headings, sub-headings and supporting details. You do this through H1, H2 and H3 text. H1 is the main title, and you only have one per page. H2s break content into clear sections. H3s are used for supporting points under each H2.
Images and infographics are useful to have on your page. Use personalised images specific to your RTO, keep them high quality, and give each image descriptive, non-keyword-stuffed alt text.
Link pages together. If you have a page explaining a course, it should link to the enquiry section so users can easily navigate the site. This provides a better user experience and helps Google index your site.
Google wants users to stay on websites as long as possible. Because the quality of your website determines how much time users spend on your site, it impacts your SEO performance a great deal.
50% of users leave a website if it takes above 3 seconds to load. To check this, insert your website into PageSpeed Insights. Aim for under 3 seconds load speed on mobile, under 2.5 seconds on Largest Contentful Paint, under 100ms on First Input Delay and under 0.1 on Cumulative Layout Shift.
Some tips to fix speed:
A good user experience helps people stay on the site and convert when the timing is right. Keep pivotal content above the fold, including course code, full title, AQF level, RTO code, delivery modes and locations, plus one primary call to action. State who the course is for and the outcomes, including career paths, job titles and licensing notes.
An XML sitemap is a file on your website that lists all the important URLs. It's like a guide for search engines to tell them which pages exist, how often they're updated and how important they are.
Off-page SEO is where other people recommend your site from their own website. This tells Google that you are a trustworthy and reputable RTO.
Backlinks are when another site links to your website. There are 3 important steps:
Yes. RTOs commonly rely on referrals and paid ads. Our team has worked with over 50 RTOs, improving their technical, on-page and off-page SEO. This is a long-term strategy, which means you don't have to spend money on paid ads forever.
Between $1k and $5k per month. We don't hide prices. This investment might not make sense for your RTO. If you provide niche services that do not have lots of search volume, then it probably does not. For other RTOs, it does over the long run.
Feel free to book a call. You'll be connected to a team that has worked with 50-plus other RTOs.
Grab a free 30-minute call with Tommy or Paddy. We'll look at where you rank now, and what it'd take to own your market.
Book a free intro call →