Your Thinkfic course is ready to launch! But how are people going to find it online?
Generating organic traffic takes careful thought and attention to the on-page SEO. Therefore, I’ve put together this guide to make the job a little easier for you.
Key Takeaways:
- Thinkific lets you optimize page titles and descriptions and add keywords.
- Include an FAQ section to increase your chances of being found.
- Use rich media to enhance the on-page experience. Engaging pages rank higher.
How to Optimize Your Thinkific Course Pages—Properly
1. Leverage Thinkific’s Built-In SEO Tools
Luckily, Thinkific has made it easy to add SEO to your courses. To find these settings, go to the settings area of your course and click on SEO.
You’ll now be presented with text boxes where you can add an SEO title, description, and any keywords.
Make sure you complete this section properly! This information is key for getting picked up and displayed on search engine results pages (SERP). Without it, your course doesn’t stand a chance of being found.
Given the importance of this section, I’m going to go into each area in more detail…
2. Carefully Craft the Course Title
The name of your course is more important than you think. Its job is to tell your audience—in a few words—what they will learn and to tell potential customers if it is targeted at them.
For example, a title for a cooking course needs to let the audience know if it’s aimed at beginners, intermediates, or experts.
You can afford to be creative with your course title to make it more engaging, but don’t lose the messaging of what the course is for.
So, that’s the actual title of your course. But how does this differ from the SEO title (also known as the meta title)?
Well, this is what shows up on SERP results and tells you what the site is about. It needs to be clear and direct, include targeted keywords, and limit the title to 60 characters.
Here’s how they differ:
- Course title: Master the Basics: Become a Confident Chef in Just 30 Days with SupplyGem!
- SEO title: SupplyGem Beginner Chef Course: Essential Skills in 30 Days
3. Target the Course Description
Next is the description, which is displayed underneath the SEO title in SERP results, as shown in the example above.
The SEO description (also known as the meta description) goes into more detail and briefly summarizes what your course offers. The idea is to provide just enough information that readers feel compelled to click on the link.
Again, Thinkific has thoughtfully provided the character limit for the description, which sits at 320.
When writing your description, think about including important keywords related to your course. Essentially, you’re distilling everything into a couple of sentences, so what are the most important points to relay?
Here’s an example of an SEO description we could use for our cooking course:
Join the SupplyGem Beginner Chef Course and master essential culinary skills in just 30 days! Perfect for aspiring chefs, this course covers foundational techniques and recipes to boost your kitchen confidence.
4. Get Your Keywords On-Point
Now, this part is optional, but I don’t recommend skipping it because this is your chance to boost your course’s SEO by adding a few keywords or key phrases.
These are terms that people typically type into search engines when looking for a course just like yours!
Put yourself in the shoes of the searcher. What terms would you use to find the course?
Doing this will give you a good starting point.
To make the job easier, try using Google Keyword Planner to help you (it’s free!). There are other SEO tools you can use, such as SurferSEO, SemRush, and Ahrefs. However, these will cost you to use.
When picking keywords, here are some best practices to follow:
- Aim for 5-10 high-quality keywords. Prioritize quality over quantity—always.
- Don’t add keywords for the sake of it (even if it’s super-tempting). Doing this will dilute the relevance and make your SEO worse.
- Long-tail keywords are best. These are short phrases that do a better job of capturing search intent. For instance, the phrase “Beginner cooking skills course” is way more specific than “cooking course.”
5. Don’t Forget to Optimize Module Titles
The titles of each of your course modules should be optimized in the same way as your overall course title. Since these can show up in SERP results, a well-crafted module title will increase your chances of being seen.
Be sure to add keywords in the title related to the module that you think people might search for.
For example, our cooking course has a module on kitchen safety. So, a person might not be searching specifically for a course on kitchen basics but wants to know how to cook safely.
If your module title appears in their SERP results, this might inspire them to click through and find out more.
6. Include Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently asked questions (FAQs) are an incredibly valuable resource, both to you and your readers.
First, FAQs tend to be quick to find and contain concise answers to specific (and commonly asked) questions. People love FAQs because they can rapidly get the information they need without having to trawl through an entire web page.
Second, FAQs provide you with an opportunity to include additional keywords and key phrases that might not have made sense for your course titles or descriptions.
If someone types one of your questions into a search engine, your page is more likely to come up if it covers it.
Additionally, you also stand a better chance of appearing as the coveted Google “snippet” (the short paragraph that Google provides at the top of a SERP) or as a Q&A in the “People also ask” section.
7. Make Your URLs Make Sense
Like your course and page titles, your course URL needs to be readable and make sense to search engines so they can categorize it appropriately.
- Good example: supplygemcooking.com/culinary-basics
- Bad example: supplygemcooking.com/?p=12345.
So, think about your course title and use that to create a short, descriptive URL for it.
8. Use and Optimize Rich Media Content
Finally, search engines love user-friendly and engaging page content. Elements such as video, images, infographics, etc., level up the experience and are much more likely to appeal to your audience than a page of text.
The more engaging a page is, the more likely a search engine will display it in SERP.
You should be adding rich media to your course lessons anyway. After all, who wants to take a 100% text-based course? However, you should also add these elements to your course landing pages.
Other Ways to Boost Your Thinkific Course SEO
In addition to what I’ve explained above, here are some other tips that can significantly boost your SEO:
- Submit your Thinkific sitemap to Google: This will enable Google to index all your course pages, which improves your place in SERP.
- Encourage user-generated content: Reviews, comments, discussions, etc., all do a great job of adding fresh content and telling Google that your course is alive and kicking.
- Acquire backlinks: Links to your course from reputable websites act as endorsements for your course, which improves SEO. These can be tricky to get, though, especially if you’re new in the course-building space.
- Connect to a blogging tool: Like user-generated content, blog content introduces fresh keywords onto your site and improves searchability. Unfortunately, Thinkific does not have a blogging feature, but you can connect with a third-party blogging app via the Thinkific App Store.
- Consider using WordPress for your website: WordPress is the undisputed king of website SEO, and it’s hard to beat, especially if you make use of the numerous plugins like Yoast. WordPress has quite a learning curve, though, so that’s something to consider.
- Integrate Thinkific with Google Analytics: This is always worth doing. First, it’s a free tool, so why not? Second, it provides valuable insights into user behavior, which you can use to your advantage and improve SEO.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Thinkific Any Good for SEO?
Thinkific provides decent tools to help you optimize your pages. However, they are only as good as the information you place on them. Therefore, be sure to research appropriate keywords and metadata before adding them to Thinkific.
Does Thinkific Have Analytics for SEO?
Thinkific does not provide analytics specifically related to SEO. However, it does provide analytics on course performance and student engagement that can help improve your SEO.
