This short guide is for you, if you are looking to teach an online course. 

Let us start with the first step to teaching an online course. 

Selecting a topic to teach an online course

You may be an expert in any field. It could be in physics or math or music. But before you teach an online course, it’s important to know what your students are looking for. 

Your online course will be of no use if it isn’t addressing your student needs.  Solve their needs and students will automatically enroll in your course. 

So, to select a course topic- first, find out what your students look for. And,here are 2 ways to find it out. 

Use Google suggest 

Suppose, you want to teach an online course for “class 11 physics”, type it in google. 

Google will show what students are looking for in your topic.

For ex: my students want to know how to score a 90 in physics, best physics notes for study, is physics difficult?

You can also type your  search term in google & give a space to get more suggestions.

Instead of space, you can also type alphabets a-z to get more search terms.

Note atleast 15-30 such terms and save them in an excel sheet. 

If you find this tough, use the method below. 

Uber Suggest Tool (Alternative to Google Suggest) 

To help you find student search terms faster, use the tool: uber suggest.

 Simply type ubersuggest.com & give the search term & country 

This will return you, the following result for every search term in the overview section. 

Search Volume: How many times “physics class 11” is googled every month

SEO difficulty: How easy it is to rank your website on the top 10 pages 

Paid difficulty: How easy it is to rank your ads on top 10 pages 

Ubersuggest categorizes what students are looking for in google very clearly. Simply click on the keywords section & go through the suggested keywords. 

Ideally you should select the keywords that will have a >5000 search volume and < 35 score for seo difficulty. 

For eg: Physics for class 11 notes is an ideal keyword example

To Find more relevant search terms used by students on the subject of physics check the related keywords, questions & prepositions and download them.

Once you have identified a list of 15-30 student search terms, sort it in descending order of search volume. 

Now you have a list of topics students are looking for in physics. 

Use this list to decide on the topic to teach for your online course. 

For ex: Many students are looking for physics class 11 notes, for exams. 

So, I will create a course titled: Physics Class 11 Notes For Exam that will contain notes to help them for exams. 

Likewise, come up with a topic to teach for your online course. 

In the next step, let us see how to create an online course goal & structure. 

To know more about building courses check our build a course archive

Read more: How to create and sell study notes online

If you have not created your online academy yet, click the button below.