101 SEO Guide For Online Course Creators WIth 5 Steps

SEO and marketing are vital for promotion and sales. Without good SEO optimization of the website and marketing strategy, your business or product will most likely fail. 

In this article, we will review everything related to SEO optimization, starting off with the basic concept and moving on to a practical guide on how to SEO optimize your website.   
 

So, if you are ready, let’s start!   
 

Definition, working process, and aim

SEO stands for search engine optimization. SEO is a crucial aspect of your website’s visibility. You can improve your site’s traffic and rankings with good SEO optimization.   
 

Search engines work based on quite complex processes; various search engine algorithms handle those processes. The algorithm must consider various ranking factors, including on and off-site factors, search intent, etc., in order to rank your website accordingly.   
 

The whole process is simply explained in taking three main steps:

• You are publishing the content
• E.g., Google’s bots (spiders) crawl through your site
• Google ultimately indexes your page  
   

If your content is well SEO optimized wee enough and answered the user’s search intent, then it will appear on the first page. An SEO agency has the techniques up their sleeves to rank your site on the engines.   
 

Why is everyone so concerned about SEO? Simply, because of this saying:  
 

“The best place to hide a dead body is Google’s second page.”   
 

So, as you can see, it is vital to rank high on the first page. Now that we are clear on the definition and process, let’s take a look at some other vital aspects of SEO optimization and how Google SEO works in more detail.   
 

Google

In most cases, your focus browser is Google, so let’s look at how it works.   
 

• Crawling your content with bots, to do so, it needs to find pages that link to yours. So the more links a page has to it, the easier this process for Google becomes.
• Indexing - analysis and evaluation of URLs, images, text, and other data to identify the purpose of the content on the page
• Serving/ranking - when the page matches search intent Google accordingly ranks it in SERPs (search engine results page)  
   

It is critical to keep in mind that Google’s algorithm is constantly changing. Therefore there are always new trends and tendencies to follow to rank higher. However, some factors that affect the ranking in Google remain the same, those are:  
 

• User’s search intent and how your content matches it. Basically, the search intent is the target keyword/keyphrase of your content 
• Relevance - which is identified through analysis of on-page SEO
• Quality - factors such as Domain Rating and Domain Authority really matter here. Also, site security, page loading speed, backlinks, and internal and external linking are very important.  
   

What is on and off-site SEO?

Now, let’s take a look at the differences between on-site and off-site SEO. So, basically, on-site SEO is all about SEO optimization of the website content. Meanwhile, off-site SEO is an optimization tactic in web and digital spaces that you do not own.   
 

On-Site SEO must have several elements such as:

• Keywords/keyphrases are a crucial component of search engine optimization. Basically, no matter what content you are writing, be that an about us page, article, or any other page for your website, it has to rank for certain high-intent keywords. Check out the competition first! 
• Internal links are vital, as any quality link helps crawlers find your content faster. Plus, with internal linking, your audience will have a chance to read some of your other materials rather than find similar information out there on the net. 
• Content Quality - make sure to provide high-quality content that is reliable and informative. 
• Readability is one more aspect of SEO optimization; believe me, you do not want to use academic language for website content, especially if you are aiming for wide audiences.   
   

Off-Site SEO examples are:  
 

• Backlinks: when various websites in their content give links to your website accordingly to the link-building strategy, it is an off-site SEO. By the way, backlinks directly affect your DA and contribute to rankings. 
• Social media & influencer marketing   
   

By the way, keep in mind that more links never mean better unless those are trustworthy links from authoritative websites because spam links will negatively influence your website’s rankings.   
 

Ranking Factors 

Search engine algorithms consider several ranking factors before ranking your web page.   
 

• Content quality and relevance
• Keywords. When you are aware of the power of keywords, it becomes easier to rank higher due to efficient keyword stuffing. 
• Page speed. It may be unbelievable, but even 1 second will cost huge losses in sales. 
• Internal/external links and backlinks.  
   

SEO importance for course creators

SEO optimization is extremely important for course creators, especially for those who own their own e-learning websites. SEO optimization will help you differentiate, improve visibility, rank higher, and drive more clients in this competitive industry. 

Why should you SEO Optimize your website?

As an online coach, you need:   
 

• More visibility > more traffic > more opportunities to convert prospects to real-time clients.   
   

In order for search engines to be able to index your website and users to see the content, it has to be highly optimized.   
 

Main steps for rocking SEO

Now I suggest that we take a look at the main steps you have to take in order to rock the SEO of your website and rank higher.   
 

#1 Keyword research

What is keyword research? 

Keyword research is one of the main aspects of SEO optimization. Several keyword research tools will help you to identify popular search terms for specific topics, check out the ranking, and use them for your website’s optimization. 

When a person googles something, your article will rank higher on SERPs if it contains the keywords. If you write articles for news websites and do SEO for news websites, ensure that the articles are timely and reflect current events to maximize SEO performance.   
 

However, there are certain myths and mistakes that you must avoid. For example, people tend to think that the more keywords you use, the better the results will be. Well, it does not work like that in this case; choose QUALITY over QUANTITY. Besides focusing on quality keywords, e.g., 5 to 8, you also must be aware of the niche you are working with.   
 

You may want to narrow down your keywords since people google millions of things in a matter of seconds. According to HubSpot, an average person googles something 3 to 4 times a day, resulting in approximately 5.6 billion searches daily. Narrowing down keywords to niche-specific ones will help you to reach your target audience.   
 

So, simply put:  
 

• Keywords are part of organic SEO 
• It is vital to stuff keywords in all website content, including course descriptions, pages, meta titles, and articles for the blog posts.   
   

How to do keyword research? 

Keyword research is a complicated process that requires analysis, evaluation, and strategic thinking. After all, you want to reach the right people. What’s the point of attracting a lot of website visitors if none of them are interested in buying your products?   
 

So, as we mentioned previously, the first step is choosing your topic. For example, it can be a blog article about Old Hollywood that somehow is connected to your business and can help you generate leads or increase brand awareness in general. The topic is narrow enough to begin the research, and we will explain how to do the finding further ahead. However, do not forget that you have to also evaluate the keywords you found based on results and competition analysis. To ease this process, you can use several tools, which we linked and described down below.   

 

• Google Ads. Google Ads has a Keyword Planner service, which is designed for keyword research. You can see what words are related to your topic and how often they are searched and add them to your ad plan. Keyword Planner is a part of Google Ads, which provides you with a lot of functions. Decide on the budget and further steps before starting out. 
• Semrush. It is a full-featured marketing automation that also has a keyword magic tool. After you enter your topic, you get a bunch of keywords related to your topic that are organized by a certain priority level. You can filter them according to a certain feature for further evaluation. Most of the features of the keyword researching part of Semrush are free, and you can try it and see whether it suits you.
• Ahrefs. Ahrefs ranks number three in our top keyword researcher tool list. The platform, besides other things, allows you to research keywords for Google, Bing, YouTube, and Amazon (and Yahoo, Yandex, and Baidu, too), depending on your goal. You can find keywords that are relevant to your topic, see their SEO value for evaluation, and implement them on your website. Ahrefs provides other features as well, and the basic subscription plan costs $99.

#2 On-page and technical optimization

In order to increase the visibility of your website, consider three main aspects of SEO optimization: on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical optimization.  

Main Elements Of On-Page SEO

On-page search engine optimization refers to everything you can change on your website to make it rank higher. The main elements of that are:  
 

• Internal links
• On-page content
• Image SEO
• Title tags
• HTML in general  
   

Let’s discuss the tags first, as link building and content have separate paragraphs down below. Websites are commonly written in HTML, and when you look up your page HTML, you’ll see these signs <>. Everything that is between those things (tags) appears on your website. So usually, it will look like this words . A title tag is a type of a tag that helps the search engine to identify what kind of information is given and what your website is about:  
 

Online Learning Platform   
 

You will set the right tone for the website by choosing the title tags correctly. Uteach has fields where you can easily add titles.

Technical Optimization

Technical optimization is all about improvements you can make on your website that are not related to the above-mentioned on-page strategies. For example, the speed of your website is crucial. If you create yours via WordPress and use a lot of plugins for literally everything, your website is going to load very slowly, which will, of course, annoy your visitors. So will the lack of design responsiveness: if your website doesn’t look as good on a mobile phone as it does on a desktop, it potentially will decrease conversion rates. 

How To Optimize Correctly

So, what can be done to improve in this area?

• First, you need to secure your website with SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) since Google prioritizes HTTPS websites (websites with SSL) over HTTP (without SSL) in search results. Also, Uteach will automatically provide your website with s free SSL certificate. 
• Make sure that your website looks good on every device; basically, make it responsive to various screen sizes.
• Cut out the speed. There are a few ways to do that, including using DNS providers, compressing your websites, minimizing the code, etc.   
   

Also, do not forget about image optimization, which is equally important.  
 

• The Format. PNG pictures have high quality, but they are large and can slow down your website. JPGs’ size can be regulated, but the quality may not be as good. 
• Weight. Please compress your images! It will speed up your website, especially if you have a bunch of pictures on it.
• Put keywords in the image file name.
• Alternative text. Use alternative texts to describe your images with keywords to increase the relevance of images to the content. 

#3 Content strategy and creation

Content quality is not just about keyword stuffing; it is a whole bunch of complex processes combined called simply - content marketing strategy. 

What Is Content Strategy?

Content strategy means using your content in combination with other search engine optimization tools to market your website. It is essential to know that your website content will strongly influence your visibility on search engines.  
 

Therefore it should not be contradictory. First of all, pay attention to the language you use, and choose simple words to make the content easy to comprehend for a wide range of audiences. So, basically, your context has to be easy to read and grammatically correct. Try to keep this conversational style without getting too informal. Additionally, consider partnering with a SaaS marketing agency to optimize your outreach efforts and target your audience more effectively.

Main Elements Of Content Creation For SEO 

Besides these general rules, you need to look for:

• Content quality. As we previously mentioned, your content must be written very well. Looking at an example of a blog article featured on your website, you need to remember a few things. First, the structure of your article should be well outlined (also, put the content table). Think about your reader’s attention, especially when the article is too long: how are you going to place your paragraphs and keep them engaged? Think about which one is more informative or harder to read, and try not to put two-three hard-to-read paragraphs in a row. Break paragraphs with headlines and subtitles (add HTML tags, too). Remember what Orwell has said: write short sentences, don’t use a long word if a shorter would do, don’t use too many metaphors (especially outdated ones), etc. Keep your content clean, clear, unique, and concise.  
   
• Content frequency. This one is all about consistency. It is quite obvious that consistency is the key to success, so while creating a content strategy, make sure to have certain days every week when you will publish articles for the blog. One article a week won’t do; try to publish at least twice a week.   
   
• Featured snippets. Featured snippets are small chunks of text that appear before the first link in the search engines after the search. They show your website contents shortly and increase your chances of getting more traffic on your website. Those snippets usually include definitions, lists, videos, etc. They help you with visibility. 

#4 Link building

We mentioned in the on-page optimization part the internal link strategy. But link building is not limited just to that. 

What Is Link Building?

Link building generally refers to backlinking. Basically, getting links to your website from other websites. This plays on Google’s strategy of ranking websites higher if they are trustworthy, which is reflected by backlinks. There is even a parameter such as Domain Rating that is purely based on the quality of the website’s backlink profile. The higher your DR, the higher are chances to rank in the first positions.   
 

Once again, if you are aiming to build a powerful backlink profile, quantity is not enough. You should be conducting backlink monitoring to keep the backlinks' quality under control. Your website should be linked to other more authoritative websites operating in the same industry (relevancy factor is vital) because only this way you will have a high-quality profile.   
 

This will create additional traffic to your website not only because it is linked but also due to positive effects on the algorithm evaluations. E.g., if a person reading an article from New York Times will trust the source they are citing and even be interested in that — if they do, they will click on it and get to your website.  
 

By the way, you can attract new visitors to your website through social media platforms as well. Just share the link to your website on your profile’s bio and constantly create content related to the services or products that you provide. 

Link Building Methods

Here are some link types you can use for link building.

• Nofollow links. Nofollow links are links that you put on your website, and the engines are not crawling the linked website. So, you get your recognition but don’t encourage the other website. 
• Sponsored links. You get quality external links and additional money from the advertisement by adding sponsored links (e.g., affiliate links or ads). 
• Links from other websites. Partnering up with other small businesses or independent journalists can help you gain some visibility through backlinks.   
   

How exactly can you use all these and other types of links for your SEO:  
 

• Partnerships. You can manage backlink building by finding websites that gave backlinks to your competitor’s websites. Collect the names of those, and contact them via email. This can be done for free, e.g., they link your website, and you link theirs. However this can be a direct exchange, which will damage rankings. The right partnerships lead to better results, make sure that you know how to choose an SEO agency to work with on this.
• Social media. As we have mentioned already, social media is a handy way of promoting your business. Use every platform you have, and put links on each platform you are on. You can also focus on influencer marketing.   
   

#5 Keeping the pulse on the growth

Search engines update their policies and methods of website visibility quite often. This means that you need to keep up with the news and update the SEO methods you use on your website landing page constantly. SEO optimization is a continuous process of keeping up with the trends, analyzing and fixing mistakes, and creating more relevant strategies.   
 

Do keep in mind all the advice we gave you in this article, and without hesitating, optimize your website!

Create an SEO-optimized website now!

Not all platforms remain SEO-friendly and are customized for course creators. However, luckily for you, Uteach is!   
 

Uteach will allow you to create a professional SEO-optimized e-learning website in less than 2 minutes. Plus, it will allow you to optimize the website in a way that will assist you to get high traffic and sales. How come it can do all of that? Well, it offers:  
 

• Boxes to write meta details in (such as meta titles and tags)
• User-friendly interface & responsiveness: Uteach is not only extremely easy to use, but it is also highly responsive to various screen sizes
• It allows you to put H1-6 tags to structure content way better than ever before
• Offers you an SEO-friendly URL
• Custom source code for the article is one more amazing feature that Uteach provides you with 
• Generated automatic high-quality and accurate sitemaps
• Allows you to add Google Tag Manager tags (for Analytics and Search Console)

So, as you could have noticed, it offers literally every necessary tool to SEO optimize your website in a way that will definitely bring organic traffic and improve visibility.   
 

Start your journey with Uteach right away! We support you during your entire journey with us! 

I want an SEO-optimized teaching website