With our simple guide to SEO best practice, you can make sure that your resources are ready to be easily found by other teachers.
Search-engine optimised content can make a big difference to your sales and downloads. Below we share some advice on how to write SEO-friendly resource titles and descriptions when uploading your resources.
SEO best practice for authors
Resource title
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Make your title search-friendly - When titling your resource, think about what someone looking for the resource would be searching for. This word or phrase is known as a keyword.
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Keep your title concise – Google truncates titles that are too long, which will make people less likely to click on your resource, so aim for about 45 characters with spaces. Resource description pages that rank the highest tend to have more concise titles.
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Front-load your title with the important bits - Include your keyword right at the start of your resource title.
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If you think the year or phase is important then include them, but after the keyword.
Resource description
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The more information the better – Resources with longer descriptions rank better, so we recommend making your description at least 400 words.
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The first two sentences are key - The first 25 words (or 155 characters including spaces, to be precise) should clearly describe what the resource is about, elaborating on the title, as this will appear under your resource title in Google’s search results. It’s also important to grab a teacher’s attention when they’re scanning lots of resources.
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Don’t keyword ‘stuff’ – Google will penalise content that looks like spam, so don’t cram your title or description full of your chosen keyword; this is known as keyword stuffing. Two or three mentions in a description is plenty, just once is best in a title.
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Provide a definition of your chosen topic - For example, if your resource is a 3D shapes worksheet, briefly explain what a 3D shape is and how your resource will help students be able to identify them (see example).
Images and PDFs
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Optimise your file names – By including your keyword in the file name of both your resource and the accompanying image, you’re telling Google that those things are also relevant to the search.
Sharing your content
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Google likes links – If you use social media, have a blog or even send out a department email, including this is a great way to highlight your new content to search engine robots. The more you can share and link to your resource from other sites the better.
Example resource title and description
Title:
3D shapes worksheet
Description:
This worksheet is designed to help year 4 pupils learn more about 3D shapes, such as cubes, cuboids, spheres, cylinders etc. The exercise is suitable for all abilities, will help children identify each shape and should take around 30 minutes to complete.
3D shapes are shapes with three sides; faces, edges and vertices. In this worksheet children will have to identify different shapes from within a range of different scenes. I’ve used this exercise with both year 3 and year 4 students and you can make the exercise more interesting by asking them to colour in the shapes.