Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT) is the go-to platform for teachers looking for high quality classroom resources. With the increasing popularity of TPT, there is also an increasing number of sellers on the platform. This makes standing out in this crowded marketplace more difficult. You can make amazing products, but that alone won’t get more eyeballs on your products. With TPT SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategies you can boost the visibility of your store. In this post, we’ll explore effective ways to increase your product views using SEO for TPT.
Understanding the Basics of SEO for TPT
What is TPT SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. When we say TPT SEO, we are talking about a very specific search engine – the TPT search engine. Users search for products and TPT gives a list of products they think you would like. SEO is all about choosing the right words in your product listings so your products appear on TPT results pages. When you “optimize” your listing, you are simply choosing the best combination of relevant keywords. And you are placing those keywords in the necessary locations to tell TPT what your product is about.
But how do you optimize your product listings? It’s not as hard as it sounds.
You use relevant, low-competition keywords in your titles and descriptions.
Why is SEO for TPT Important?
The TPT Search Algorithm
Just like Google, TPT is a search engine. But instead of crawling the internet and serving you the best website result, it gives you the best products related to your keyword.
There have been some changes to the TPT algorithm in the last few years. Some good, some bad. And while we may never know exactly the factors that help you rank on TPT, the teacher-author community has collectively agreed that the below may play a role in how you get seen:
- Title
- Description
- Sales Volume/Conversion
- Ratings
More sales and better ratings are our goals. But you can’t make a sale and customers can’t rate your product if they can’t FIND your product. Right?
So how do we get more people to find our products? In this post, we’ll focus on the steps to get more eyeballs on your products.
Three Steps to an Optimized Product Title
Step 1: Brainstorm and Create a List of Keywords
Keywords are what helps TPT understand your product. If you had a worksheet for kindergarteners to practice sight words, you wouldn’t add a title of “Math fluency facts”. You also want to avoid personal cutesy names for your products. You may call them “fun words” in your classroom, but you should avoid those as well.
Why?
Because you want to put yourself in the mind of your customer. You want to use the word or phrase the majority of teachers would use to find your worksheet.
TAKE ACTION: Make a list of all the keywords you could use to describe your product. These would be one- to three-word phrases. Think about resource type, grade level, subject, and other descriptors. If you get stuck, try using an AI tool to give you some ideas or look on TPT to see what others are using in their products. Ideally you’ll want a list of 5-10 different phrases you could use.
Step 2: Narrow Down Which Keywords to Use
Now that we have a list of terms, we need to see how competitive and popular each of them are.
The keywords you target should be:
Relevant
Choose keywords that reflect the content and purpose of your product(s). This ensures TPT shows your products to people interested in what you offer. The last thing we want to do is target a keyword that is not related to your product. This could result in unsatisfied customers and poor reviews. This will then negatively impact your ranking.
Not too competitive
For each keyword on your list, assess the level of competition. You can do this by looking at how many results appear in the TPT search results for that keyword.
The more results for a keyword, the more competitive it will be. Typically, an easier keyword will have fewer than 2,500 products shown in the results.
In this situation, it will take a while for a brand new product to climb the ranks and appear on the first page, if ever.
Moderately popular
Lastly, for each keyword analyze the search volume and popularity using keyword research tools. The easiest way to see if teachers are searching for this term is to put it in the TPT search bar. If it shows up as a suggestion, that means it has some popularity with teachers. For a more in depth view into keyword popularity, you can use a generic tool like Keywords Everywhere or a TPT-specific tool such as SellerSpy.
Keywords with high search volume indicate a higher demand from users.
Remember, the goal is to rank for keywords that teachers are actually searching for. You may be able to rank for a very niche keywords. But if they keyword is not being searched for by users at all, you won’t get views or sales.
Analyze the keyword and write down if it’s not popular, somewhat popular, or extremely popular.
TAKE ACTION: Take your main list of keywords that you brainstormed and create a table. The columns should be:
Keyword | Relevant | Competition | Popularity
For each keyword, you’ll mark down whether the keyword is relevant, how competitive it is, and how popular it seems.
Step 3: Crafting the Best TPT Title and Description for your Product
Now that we have our list of keywords with our analysis, we will craft our title. Pick 2 or 3 keywords to craft your title. Pick one term that is low competition. Pick one term that is medium popularity.
Why do I suggest this?
When you target low competition keywords, you’re more likely to get views. With a compelling description you can convert these viewers into sales. if the product is high quality and relevant to the customer, you may get a good rating! If we’re right about the TPT algorithm, these should help you rank higher for the additional terms in your title/description and help drive further sales.
Example:
In our example of sight words for kindergarteners, here are some options:
- sight word matching worksheets – 3100 results, SellerSpy Popularity 23
- editable sight word worksheets – 3000 results, SellerSpy Popularity 248
- sight word memory game – 2700 results, SellerSpy Popularity 56
- kindergarten sight word practice – 60000 results, SellerSpy Popularity 55
- sight word activities printable – 61000 results, SellerSpy Popularity 0
I may try a titles similar to:
- “Kindergarten Sight Word Practice – Editable Worksheets – Matching Activity”
- “Editable Sight Word Worksheets – Kindergarten – Matching Activity”
- “Kindergarten Sight Word Matching Worksheets – Editable Printable Activity”
You have 80 characters to work with. Use them wisely!
TAKE ACTION: Write a few different versions of your title. Choose one for posting your product. After some time, evaluate views and test out different titles. Be careful of changing it too many times since every time it changes, TPT needs to relearn what your product is about.
Step 4: Don't Forget the Snippet
The last step of TPT SEO is using a mixture of those same title keywords in your product description. You’ll want to ensure they are placed within the first two sentences.
Be careful not to keyword stuff. Make sure the sentences flow and read naturally.
I also like to add the keywords throughout the description as well. There is no harm in further telling TPT and your potential customers exactly what your product aims to do.
TAKE ACTION: Write two sentences that include the same keywords as your title. Make sure to write it in a natural way.
When we first come across the idea of optimizing our listings, it can seem overly complex. But TPT SEO doesn’t have to be a daunting task. By following the steps outlined above you can update your product listings easily. And the best part is the result will be increased views and sales.
