How do you sell a course? The complete SEO guide for creatives

You have planned and created an online course and now you are wondering what to do next? Most creatives face the same problem. After all, you are experts in your field, but not necessarily online marketing specialists! You have spent months researching ideas, writing scripts, recording and editing the course. Now what? Don't let all that work go to waste! How to attract more visitors to your landing page'a with enrolment and thus increase the number of students? The answer is positioning online course. From today's article, you'll learn how to get a steady stream of leads directly to your course and without paying for advertising!

For the uninitiated - what is SEO and how does it work?

Before we get into the instructions, showing what a properly executed course positioning should look like, it is worth going back to basics. What is SEOor Search Engine Optimisation? It is the practice of optimising the quantity and quality of website traffic (number of visitors) from organic search results. Correctly executed SEO measures provide daily, free traffic directly from Google. As a result, you do not need paid advertising. To put it even more simply, SEO is optimisation your website and its content so that Google likes it and places it high in the search results for phrases relevant to your business. Let us use an example. You are the authors of an Italian language course. SEO helps you to be more visible when people search for "online Italian course" on Google.  

In visualising how SEO works, it will help to imagine search engines as huge digital libraries. However, instead of books, they store websites. Bots called crawlers examine each one, find out what their purpose is, their content, and then index it, i.e. add it to the search engine's inventory. What happens next? When a user searches the web for 'online Italian course', Google's algorithm scans the index and displays what it thinks is the best answer to the query. If you are a website owner, you should be aware that search engines rank websites based on hundreds of factors. These include the content, age and history of the domain, the loading speed of the site or its security. In summary, SEO is about optimising your site to satisfy web users, the algorithm and to demonstrate to Google that you are the best answer to the search term. 

Why is SEO a powerhouse that online course developers should take advantage of?

It's time to dream a little. Imagine a steady stream of interested people visiting your course sign-up page every week. And that's not the end of the vision - imagine all this happening without spending money on advertising and without spending long hours on social media 'soliciting' potential students. This is not a pipe dream. This is the kind of effect that online course positioning brings. Why? Some training-related keywords have several hundred (or even several thousand!) searches per month. And if you are at the top of Google's results, most visitors will come to your website. But let's get down to specifics and return to the sunny example of the Italian course. 

Take a look at the data above. Around 480 people are looking for an online Italian course each month. That's 480 strongly interested customers who are looking for training with the intention of buying it. Going forward, that's roughly 115 potential customers per month, and 16 per day. I don't know about you, but I think 16 interested in the course every day visiting the sales page with no extra effort is a great result! Even if only two of them actually decide to buy, it is still a success. This is precisely the potential of online course positioning.

How do you sell a course? Comparison of SEO with other online promotion methods

Comparing course positioning with other marketing methods makes the choice of promotion obvious.

• Social Media - Social media platforms are a valuable channel for reaching potential learners, but they also require a lot of time, constant presence, monitoring and customer service. 

• advertising on Google or Facebook - are becoming increasingly expensive and their effectiveness is diminishing. Moreover, they require a lot of capital to get off the ground. Positioning, on the other hand, only requires time, patience and knowledge, which can easily be acquired.

• affiliations - finding affiliates is one of the best ways to get sales in the beginning, but remember that you have to pay the affiliate up to 50% (sometimes even more). With SEO, you keep 100% for yourself.

How do you sell a course? SEO for training courses step by step

SEO is both very simple and very complicated at the same time. For the most part, it is enough to do everything a company naturally does to attract potential audiences:

• create value content about the product/service

• be active on social media

• establish relationships with others in the sector

• ensure a good experience for visitors to the site

• ensure that the site is indexed by Google and safe for users

So what is the 'complicated' part? You have to do all these things listed in the right way. Otherwise you will know the destination, but you will be so far off course that it will take an eternity to get back on track.

The basics, i.e. keyword research

Keyword research is the cornerstone of search engine optimisation. If you don't do this step correctly, your efforts will be a waste of time and money. Most people get it wrong at the beginning and waste months going in the wrong direction. The best way to start your research is to brainstorm. You can also use Google auto-complete to help yourself.

Once you have the ideas, use a keyword research toolto find hard data for all phrases related to your course. What should you use? This could be, for example Google Keyword Planner, Keyword Generator whether the plug Keyword Surfer. These are free tools. 

Attention! Here is where most online course creators make a mistake. They think along these lines: "This phrase has the most traffic. I will target it because it will attract the most visitors to my site'. However, the phrases with the highest number of searches also tend to have the most competition. And since Google favours sites with authority, lots of content and links, the chances are that you will simply be crushed by them. So what to do? Target less popular, more specific keywords first (long-tail). They are characterised by more targeted intentions than main phrases and a higher ROI.

Content creation

The best way to plan content is to create so-called clusters (content clusters). This is writing an article on the main topic and several other articles on the subtopic within the main topic. You then link to the individual subtopics in the main article. Why organise content into clusters? This method makes it easier for Google to understand what the site is about, and it is also convenient from the user's point of view.

You know what method of organising content works, but what should the content itself be? Here are some writing tips:

• create content with your chosen phrases in mindwhich are key for potential learners. At the same time, you must not focus solely on "stuffing" them into the text. It must be pleasant to read

• use simple, short sentences and paragraphs. They are easier for readers to digest and for Google robots to scan.

• focus on value. Readers want solutions to their problems. They want to know how the information they have learned will benefit them. They want practical advice that will improve their life (some aspect of it). They also want to be engaged and entertained, not bored to death. Therefore, your content must answer the query, but also bring real, tangible benefits to your readers. Otherwise... they will stop reading.

Natural, strengthening linking

Links are Google's way of assessing the quality of a site. If other sites link to the site, it's a signal that says: "Hey Google, this is a great website!". Your aim is to optimise the quantity and quality of the links pointing to your course page. However, it is not enough to sit and wait for links to magically appear by themselves! What to do then, and where to get them?

• Social Media - Use your profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and other social media platforms. Include in your bio linkwhich directs you to the course page. You can also set up a Google My Business account to promote your course. However, you will need a physical address.

• Forums - Find industry forums and use them to increase traffic. Participate in conversations and share your training link. However, remember not to turn into spammers! 

• Your sector - perhaps you are working with others to promote an online course or you have simply talked about it. Get in touch with them. See if they would be willing to include links to your course in their content. You can also offer to exchange links.

• "manual" searches - Look for people in your niche who review courses and see if they will include yours in the rankings, for example. Some will add it for free, some will do it for a set fee. There are many websites with reviews of all kinds of courses, a quick research is all it takes to find them. 

SEO the answer to how to sell training

Promoting a training course is not an easy task, especially when you are not well established in the market - whether as a company or as a personal brand. However, as you might have seen by reading the article, there are ways to market your training and enjoy growing profits and popularity. SEO is by far one of the most effective. It will drive traffic to the course, and once you start ranking for the phrases that are important to the training, potential participants will come to the site without any additional effort on your part. Remember, however, that whether you plan to SEO a course about business or about making macramé, you need to be patient and knowledgeable. If you're looking for a place to learn both the basics and more advanced SEO and positioning topics, make friends with the SEOSki blog!