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Okay TPT sellers ready to see growth in your business? You’re in the right place. Welcome to the Savvy Teacher Seller. I’m Kristen Doyle. And I’m here to give you no fluff tools and strategies that will really make an impact on your sales. Let’s get started y’all.
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Hey, hey, teacher sellers. You know, I know that I talk a whole lot about SEO on TPT. But today’s episode is a little different. Today I want to talk about SEO strategy for your blog posts. See, just like your TPT products, most of us stand to gain more traffic from updating existing posts than we do by cranking out new ones.
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So today, I am laying out a strategy plan that you can use to identify and then update those posts that need a little SEO love. Trust me, it is easier than you think. And you’ll be surprised how much of a difference some small changes can make.
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Quick reality check before we get started. SEO is not the only way to get people to your content. It should be part of your overall marketing strategy alongside things like growing your email list, and improving on your product so that they convert better.
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But with that said, SEO is the most passive way that you can get more of your ideal customers to find your amazing content, and then ultimately find your products. So if you are not taking advantage of SEO, and you’re pouring all of your time into the email marketing, and social media and all of those things, you are really missing out on what could potentially be a lot of passive traffic to your site.
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There’s no need to be an SEO Wizard. You can make some small changes and see a really big increase in traffic to the site. So let’s talk about how you can find those posts, and then what updates you need to make to them.
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If you haven’t already, I would really encourage everyone, no matter what platform your website is on Blogger, Squarespace, WordPress, any website builder, connect your site to Google Search Console. This is the best place to get information about how your posts and other pages on your site are performing in search engines.
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Now, if you are just now setting it up, you will need to wait a month or two for it to gather data before you can follow this process. But hopefully most of you already have Google Search Console connected to your website. So what you would want to do is open up Google Search Console, we’ll drop a link in the show notes for it, make sure you have selected your website from the drop down at the very top left.
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And then you want to go to the Performance tab. Take a look at what is selected at the top, I would recommend you go ahead and check off all four of the metrics that they have there to show you and then scroll down below the graph and look under queries.
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Queries means search terms that people are entering into Google. Take a look at any search terms in there that are super relevant to your niche to your products to your website. But they’re not getting clicks. Those are search terms that maybe you need to update your content for.
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Then check out the pages tab. On here, you want to sort this by low impressions first, and also low clicks. And then take a peek at the click through rate and a position metrics. So position is telling you the average rank that your page appears in search results.
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And the click through rate is showing you what percentage of people who see that search result actually click on it. So anywhere that you have a relatively high position in search, I would say 20 or above, but you’re not ranking in the top couple of positions, you probably could do some updates for SEO purposes to get you ranking a little higher.
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Click on the specific page and take a look at the search queries. Those top terms by impressions are the ones that are getting the most searches for that particular post. And so those are the search terms that you should be optimizing for.
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Now if you have a really high search position, but a low click through rate, that means that what people are seeing in the search results isn’t encouraging them to click through. So check out your post title and your meta description and see if you can improve those to make them more enticing for people to click.
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Stay away from anything that feels like clickbait. We all know what That looks like and feels like. But see how you can rewrite your title and your meta description to encourage people to click through. Now, once you’ve identified some posts that might need a little love, in order to prioritize, because you’ll probably find lots of them that could use attention, take a look at which ones align best with TPT products, products that you are selling.
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And if you need to then also kind of rank those off which ones align with your best selling products, and focus on those best selling products first, and then focus on posts that along with smaller products, products that don’t sell quite as much next.
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And then those posts that maybe don’t align with products, I would save those for third and I would focus on with those on how can I link these to a post that is related to products? Or is there a product I could somehow insert into this post? What can I do to make that post work for me?
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Now once you’ve identified those posts that needs some attention, here are four simple updates that you can make based on the keywords that you’ve identified in Google Search Console. Now, it is very likely that you might have optimized this post for a different keyword in the past. But I would encourage you to look at the queries for that page in Google Search Console. And make sure you’re using the search terms that are getting you the highest rank and that are getting the most impressions.
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Because those are the ones that you really want to focus in on. You want to update your post title with that keyword. Obviously keep it feeling natural and something that reads well. Quick reminder, when you update your title on most platforms, this does not change the URL.
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On some platforms, you have the option to change the URL. If you’re getting any traffic from search to your post, I would not recommend changing the URL. So don’t make those changes. Even if your search plugin like Yoast or rankmath, if they are saying that you need to add your keyword to that URL, I understand that we all want that 100% score or that green dot but do not change the URL of an existing post unless it is literally getting no traffic at all.
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Second thing to update is the body text, make sure that this new keyword you’ve identified is included throughout the text a few times, especially in the first paragraph. Now keep in mind, you always want to think about your readers over the SEO benefits. So don’t cram keywords into weird places, or anything like that make sure it always reads really naturally, and that those keywords feel like they belong.
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The third place you want to drop those keywords in and make some updates is the meta description. This is sometimes called the search description on some platforms, but the official name is meta description. And this is kind of like your blog’s elevator pitch. If you met someone in an elevator and you wanted to get them to go to your blog post, what would you say about it?
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It needs to be something that is click wording. It should include your keyword, primarily because that’s a way that people know that this post is related to the thing they searched for. But you also want to create a sense of curiosity about what’s included in the post. So don’t give away the whole post. But create a sense of curiosity or urgency, something that makes people want to click through.
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The fourth thing you want to update is some links within that post, make a point of adding a link to a relevant blog post or a product that is related to that keyword. And when you do, don’t type click here to see the other blog post. Don’t type click here to go to this product. Or learn more.
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Make that anchor text the linked text descriptive of what we’re going to ideally if it can include the keyword or related words to the keyword, that would be the best case scenario. And once you’ve made these updates, it will take some time to see changes in Google Search Console and to see changes in traffic to your site.
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Search is a long game in most places, especially when it comes to Google. So I would encourage you to wait three months or so to pop back in. After about three months. pop into Google Search Console again. And check out those impressions clicks and click through rate to see if you have improved check to see if that post has moved up in search rankings. And while you’re there, double check to see if there’s any new search terms that your blog is showing up for.
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So there you have it a fairly simple process for going into search console, finding posts that need an update, prioritizing them based on how relevant they are to your TPT products. And then a few quick things that you can update that will make a big difference in the traffic that comes to your post.
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Hopefully, this has reassured you that SEO strategy does not have to be overwhelming. And that little bitty tweaks when you make the right ones can go a long way. I would encourage you for your action step this week to go into Google Search Console and pick just one post that you’re going to update. Give it a little time and then reach out and let me know how it impacts your numbers.
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If you’re enjoying the show and getting a lot out of these episodes, I would really appreciate it if you take a minute to rate and review the show on your favorite podcast app. It helps the show grow and helps us to reach and help more TPT sellers like you. Talk to you soon friends.
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I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. If you did, please share it with another teacher seller who would also find it helpful. For more resources on growing Your TPT business, head to Kristendoyle.co/TPT. Talk to you soon.
