Improve your course’s search results

Make your course more discoverable using SEO Keywords

It’s important to ensure that the right people are able to find your course and ultimately, enroll in it.

Optimizing your course landing page (CLP) for search is key to long-term success and it’s not as challenging as it sounds.

It will help you:

• Get your course in front of the right students 
• Improve your course’s search ranking on Google and the Udemy marketplace
• Increase the number of people who will click through to see your course landing page

With more people seeing your course, this may lead to an increase in the number of learners who enroll in your course.

Here are four steps to help you determine the best keywords to include in your course landing page. Write down your keywords in a document or spreadsheet so that you can continue to reference them.

Keyword exercise (15–30 minutes)

1. Identify your audience Think about what your course is about and who will gain the most from taking your course. Brainstorm the search terms that these people would use in order to find your course.
2. Choose your main keyword Pick a keyword that you think is the most relevant to your intended learner.  This is usually your high-level topic (i.e. Python course, Python for Machine Learning, Wedding Photography, etc.)
3. Generate related keyword ideas Search for your main keywords on Google using an SEO tool like the Keyword Surfer Chrome plugin to get a large list of related keywords you can incorporate into your CLP. The plugin does a great job of giving you both keyword ideas and their search volume, which will help you understand what users are interested in learning.
4. Bonus keywords Use our Marketplace Insights tool to search your topic and identify any Udemy-specific keywords and modifiers (complete, beginner’s, ultimate). Jot down some of the keywords used most in Udemy search.

As you perform this exercise, pay attention to the following: 

• What web pages are showing up first?
  Tip: try to find keywords where the top search results are similar to your own course.
• How are the titles/headlines formatted?
• What keywords or modifiers are used?
• What makes you want to click through?
• How does your course compare to similar courses?

Once you’ve gathered a solid list of keywords and notes about the competitive landscape, it’s time to move on to the next exercise, the CLP Checklist 1.