Hi there. This video is all about naming your course. Kind of sounds simple and it is,  but, uh, we need to go through this process  because you want to give your course the best shot at life. And this is probably its main ingredient,  or at least its first step at kind of, uh,  it's being all it can be. And you're gonna need three names, okay? One's just a short name you use for files.

Another one is going to be a search engine name,  and the other one's gonna be kind of a human,  uh, human name, okay? The way we use it to describe to people. So I'll go through just a real quick overview of them,  then I'll get into a bit more detail  for the people that are interested. So the first one, the short name, it's just  what you name your files, right? It's pretty easy. Um, this video that I'm recording here,  I'm gonna name and put on my computer.

There's gonna be a folder it's gonna go into. I've got a checklist that I use to follow. It's a short name so that, uh,  let's say it's a Photoshop course that I've made. I'll call it Photoshop Advanced August, 2019. Okay? So it just means later on, okay,  in a year from now when a course needs to be updated  or somebody needs a file from something, I can go  and easily find it.

Um, so that's the short name. Super easy. Um, the search engine name is not more complicated,  but it's probably, for me,  the most important part of naming. And it's, uh, there's methods that I'll go  through in a second on how to work out what  to name it in terms of,  'cause you don't want to call it, uh,  like say my Photoshop course. I don't wanna call it super amazing, uh,  designs in Photoshop, okay? Because that's not what people are gonna be searching for,  even though that's might be the content, okay?

Uh, you wanna make sure that it has a bunch of words there  that are going to, at least when people are looking for it,  uh, it's going to, it's gonna appear okay  and kind of battle it out with the other ones potentially. But you don't want to be having an obscure name. So we'll work out the techniques  to make sure it's search engine rich, both for Google  and some of the marketplaces. Um, yeah, so we'll do that. Then there'll be a human name. And the human name is, it's what I call,  there are times when, uh,  the search engine name is appropriate.

And there's some, there's times when, say on social media,  if I post, uh, my course,  I'm not gonna call it the ugly search engine name,  I'm gonna call it something else. I'm gonna use it  to describe the course in a bit more  meaningful, like features. Who's it for? Uh,  and you can be a lot more like,  it's more like marketing material  or sales material than it is search engine friendly terms. Okay? So, um, that side also, the human side also has a,  we'll go through my, uh, a method for kind of working  that human name out,  but it really helps you get clarity about  what you, who your course is for.

So let's say the human name will help describe who it's for,  what the features are in that course,  and the benefits to the user. And at this stage it's really candi to know that, so  that when you're doing your outline next,  like what's gonna be in the course, you can exclude things  and include things based on that kind of human name that,  that kind of area where you've, you know, like outlined  who it's for in your target audience. Otherwise, uh, you can end up with courses like me,  my first ones, it just tried to be too many things  to too many people and it just ended up with not complaints,  but yeah, a few complaints, but just  not clear about what I was doing. So it wasn't in the title, wasn't in the marketing material,  it was just like, here's everything for this bit  of software and it just didn't work. So that kinda human name is really important now so  that I can go, it's for this not talking  to these people, I'm talking to these people. Alright, short name, search engine name, human name.

Let's work out on the computer. Now, my kind of methodology, uh, that's not a word. Methodology for working out how to do each of them. Alright? See, the first name is the easiest one. It's just a name that you're gonna give it  to use kinda internally for things like file names.

You can see, uh, some of the files that I've got here. Okay? And that's in Dropbox as well where I back up my files. So let's say I've got a new course coming out  and I'm gonna call this one, uh, say after effects. And this one's gonna be court essentials  and put the date at the end. Okay?

It doesn't really matter if you,  well I find the date really useful  because I end up updating these courses. Even if it's your first course, you will end up updating it. Say it's successful and you need to go back  and make a new version or update it. I find these dates are super helpful. Some of the early courses I didn't and I regret it. And in this folder here is  where I'm gonna stick all the recordings.

Okay? Anything that I'm gonna use,  class materials, everything goes in there. You can see it over here. Some of the other courses  that I've made, I put video in the front of it just so  that they group together in my Dropbox. 'cause Dropbox has got lots of  stuff in here at random stuff. Um, but I put all my videos together  by just putting video at the front.

You don't have to, okay? You can see some of 'em have dates like my Illustrator  Essentials made early January,  my Photoshop courses that I just finished. Okay, so April, June just finished a while ago. Now they're all in just nice little folders there. I also use it for my, uh, instructor HQ checklist. So I use Instructor HQ just to kind  of track where I'm up to.

You can create a checklist of it's for producing courses. I can give it a name. I can call this one  After Effects Essentials. This one's gonna be January 19. I pick a template kind of for the step  by step process and I hit save. I'm not going to, 'cause it's not a real one.

I'll show you an existing one. So in the checklist here, say Photoshop Advanced,  you can see just a easy way that this checklist, okay,  with all the steps that need to go through are connected  to the same name that is in here, that is in Dropbox. It makes it easier to work with when you're working  with others and you're emailing them about it. But sometimes the search engine name  and the human name can be quite long  and maybe a bit confusing or complicated. Alright, let's jump into the search engine name. Alright, the next name you're looking at is  the search engine name.

It's the ugly name that has all the right keywords in it. They're kind of like three main places  where these are gonna be used. Um, you want people to find you in a,  just a traditional Google search. Plus another one is on YouTube. Okay? We're making video courses.

So YouTube is a really big player in this  and it works really well for me. That's one and two. The other search is within say,  a marketplace like, like in Udemy here, when people search,  what are they searching for? And the same in here in say something like Skillshare,  these two are the big players for online courses. So you want your course to appear when people type it into  Google, YouTube, or any these marketplaces. How do we do it?

The quick  and dirty easy way is, let's say like this video course  that I'm making right now is like how to kind  of sell online courses or make online courses. So, um, you can use Google's predictive text. So if I do how to,  'cause I want to kind of, I guess, uh,  not make pancakes or slime. I wanna get into the how to videos  and I'm just gonna type it online course,  like pretty like terrible search  term if you know what I mean. But it's gonna hopefully predict what I want. You can see in here how to teach online courses, plural,  how to create an online course.

So these words here are words that I'm,  I guess I'm getting an understanding for I'm, I'm kind  of putting them into a list, like  how can I string this into one long  sentence and to cut to the chase. What I did before this course is I did all this  and I ended up calling this entire kind of series of videos  how to create, sell and market online courses  because it had all the right  keywords that were looking in here. So create, I found sell to be quite popular. And same with market Your course. So this is an easy one, just type in the basics. So how to, or maybe after effects we were using  before and just see what appears.

Templates, tutorials will be a good one. Course I found tutorials is a bad one  unless it's free people looking tutorials,  they mean I want After Effects free  and course is, I wouldn't be  surprised if I had to pay for it. But the word CC is quite useful as well. So I always call it CC or the version number  because it adds another little keyword into my  little extra list. Something else that I potentially might rank for. So just use Google Predictive test to do a real rough check.

Do the exact same thing in YouTube. 'cause YouTube is full of how to videos, right? So if I type in online course,  we're just gonna see online courses free  with certificates creation. So here you go. It's a good word. Uh, design might be a good one.

Online course masters, that's Phila, he's awesome. Let's follow on with creation and just see what else. Creation tools. Let's type in how to,  I just kind of throw things at this and see how it works. So how to online coursework, how to register, how to apply,  no, how to sell an online course. That kind of influenced my naming of my course.

How to launch. So can I add how  to sell launch by marketplace? Like I excluded launch just  'cause it ended up having poor search terms with a tool. I'll show you in a second Google keyword tool. But yeah, unfortunately it's not very sexy,  but you're gonna have to put this in your name if you want  it to be searched and found. If you're gonna direct your audience then you might  not worry about this stuff.

But, but do it at your peril. And I've just noticed, I logged in, I logged out  of my account so you wouldn't see  what I was up to on YouTube. What I end up watching, I'm not sure this is much better. This uh, default YouTube results. Anyway, uh, let's look at other methods. So it's really quick and easy to go  to something like YouTube and Skillshare  and just type in what you're looking for.

So online course  and they've got a bit of predictive, it's probably not  as good as um, say YouTube or Google. They've got a lot more complicated search algorithm stuff,  but it'll give you an idea. Okay, so online marketing business, just keywords  and terms you might use for your course. You might be like, oh yeah,  because sometimes weirdly say tutorial or course  or training, okay? They can all fight it out for what they should be in there. And you might be able to stitch all three of them in.

I'm gonna type in that creation, hit search  and just see what other people are doing. So you go, you can see their names, get ideas, you can see  that's I mentioned before. He's a great dude to go and follow  and all sorts of stuff in here. Let's look at say, uh, Skillshare. Let's look at say like InDesign. So of course that I teach, okay?

And I'm just getting ideas of like, uh, yeah,  course names or could go into it. There's me, there's me. Um, but just look at other people's, what they've used. Get ideas for names. Okay? So that's kind of like a general gives you some terms  to start working with to look at some more specifics,  maybe some more hard facts.

Um, if you are not already, okay, go to udemy.com  and sign up as an instructor or a teacher  and you end up with this instructor dashboard. And the cool thing about it is this thing here,  marketplace insights. Okay, super helpful. We looked at this in an earlier video,  but let's have a look at this one here. Let's say I wanna make a course about InDesign. Okay?

What I'm looking to do here is I'm gonna use good old Udemy  to give me an idea of what they consider that word. So can you see here, top search keywords  for InDesign is InDesign InDesign cc. This is a little bit less, but I could write the word  InDesign and add the word InDesign cc, no problem. Like I wouldn't destroy the title. Okay? And you see the word adobe InDesign just a little less.

So I could make a course saying Adobe InDesign CC  and all those keywords there they are there. I've already thought of that, but  that key word appears perfect,  which is the top one I've included. cc, which is there, Adobe, which is there,  and CS six I wouldn't just as an older version. Other things to check out is over here you can see there's  other kind of topics of interest  and sometimes you're like, oh actually  that's a better name for it. So mine's quite specific here. InDesign, let's say you wanna search, don't search up there,  close down this weirdly  and then go say it's online course creation course create.

You can see here it's got some ideas, okay, which is cool. And if I click on this one, it's gonna tell me, uh,  Udemy online course creations kind of low  create online courses. A term that I might not have considered if we're just  getting ideas of what to call this thing here. And Udemy can actually tell you  like bingo, you should call it this. 'cause these are all the top search  terms like it did for InDesign. Okay?

So go through, type in a bunch into here  and just see what appears. We're gonna get more nerdy. Nerdier, nerdier. So we're gonna use this thing called moz.com. So Moz helps mainly with Google results. Maybe we looked at Google a second ago in here.

Okay, just your traditional results. And this one here, you're looking for the slash explorer. It's called their keyword explorer. Now, if you are not a paid member,  I think you can only do there it is there if you,  you can sign up for a free MOS account  and get 10 free queries a month. So I'm gonna log into my account and be back in a sec. Okay, so I'm come back here, I'm gonna search not  with New Zealand, I'm gonna do United States  'cause that's where most of my courses get sold.

If you're doing it in different language,  obviously put in your kind of country there. Is there a global, I think  it picks, you have to pick a country. Anyway, us. So online course  creation, All right? And what we're looking for here, there's loads  of interesting stuff, but this keyword  suggestions is really what we want. Seal suggestions or click on this.

And what we're looking for is just other  interesting keywords that I might use and monthly volume. So what I'm looking for is something  that has high monthly volume, which would be awesome. Doesn't have to be like, this is I guess a tool  to help you pick the name. But if you know like this is new and niche  and nobody's searching for it  and I'm gonna be the first do that. If you are doing something that exists  and there's lots of other courses,  you just wanna really make sure you get this kind  of search engine keyword working perfect. And out of this list, this one seems  to do the most course platform.

So that's not gonna work for me. This one here, create and sell online courses. Perfect. That's how I ended up with my, you know, term. Not just because of this, but I looked a few other ways. So this, this and marketing I felt,  I felt was a good one to get in there as well.

How to create and create, sell  and market online courses still feels natural enough,  but it has some good keywords in there. Work your way through and just, yeah, get some ideas. Uh, yeah, you can export them  and start doing some nerdy stuff and excel. Type in a few at the top here. Remember you've only got 10, okay a month. And let's get into the last tool that kind  of helps you work out keywords.

It's very similar to this tool. Okay, it's under, it's through Google AdWords. So I'll leave this to last  'cause you need an AdWords account. Signing up for Mars is super quick and easy. Signing up for Google AdWords is slightly harder, okay? Not super hard.

And I'll ask you  to create an ad and create a campaign. Just ignore all of that until you end up kind  of at the home screen  and then go up to tools on the top here  and go to, you're looking for keyword planner. Now they change this interface every like two months. Okay? So if it's not under this big spanner here saying keyword  planner, it'll be somewhere. They call it the keyword planner.

Look through your settings, look through the options. They like to move. I think they wait till I release a  course, then they go and move it around. So keyword planner, you end up here, it's fine. Keywords, let's type in online course creation. Okay?

Get started. You can put in a few there. Okay, I just put in one. You can put in a comma and um, just can type another thing. So online, uh, sell online courses. Sell online courses.

I put a comma there and you can just keep doing that. Get results. And this thing goes on forever. So it's really like the Moz Explorer. Just a little bit more complicated to get into and use  and really want to make you sell ads. The moss one might be perfect, same kind of results  and data, but what you're looking for is good keywords  with high search volume  that you can use in your course name.

Alright? Once you've done all that, you get a kind  of an idea what you're gonna call it. Go ahead and write down your tippy top best  search engine name for your course. Like this kind of entire course, how to buy, uh, how  to create, sell and market your online courses. And say some of my Adobe courses,  they are Adobe Photoshop cc Advanced Training course. Why?

Because training did well, course did well  and it's kind of still natural enough. You know, Photoshop training course is a,  I can get both words in there without it feel like I've kind  of keyword stuffed. Okay? Jammed them all in there even though  it's exactly what I've done. Alright, let's move on to the last  of the name, the human name. Alright, the last name that you need to come up with is more  of a, a kind of a sentence  or a phrase to describe your course.

And you need to do it the beginning for a couple of reasons. It's the name that you'll use when you are describing it in  more kinda like sales and marketing material. So you're not going to, uh, post on Facebook. I've got a Adobe Photoshop CC 2018  Advanced Training course tutorial, okay? Like the search engine one. 'cause that's useful for search engines,  but not when it's actually face to face with somebody, okay?

When it actually appears. So in the graphics,  in the taglines, in any descriptions. Also, when you're talking to people  and describing your course, you need  to give it kind of a human element. Plus it's good for a few other things. Let's talk about how to kind of structure it. Now.

I totally borrowed this idea from Aaron Morton at Thinkific,  gave some structure to when I was thinking about this  or creating this kind of name  and this's the template at the top that you can follow. It's really served me well. And you just fill in the blank. So you put in your course topic, your target audience,  the outcomes that they're gonna get and their benefits. You can see down the bottom. That's my version of it.

So my training on online course creation helps new  instructors learn how to create  and sell their first online course so  that they can get maximum return for their effort. Now I change training for course, mainly  because it's just really hard. Like I'm, I'm doing an online course about online courses. So my online course is about online course creation. da. So I changed it to training.

Anyway, you get the idea, right? So use this, my course on Adobe InDesign helps  beginners learn how to create flyers so  that they can benefit, get better jobs,  get paid more, be recognized at work. Um, that's off the cuff, but you get the idea, right? Fill in the blanks, write it down before you get started. 'cause it's gonna do a few things. It's gonna help you talk  about it, which we discussed at the beginning,  but it's also really gonna help you, uh,  figure out your outline.

So say I'm making a course now  for InDesign, it's a bit of software. You might not know it, but it's an InDesign. It's for desktop publishing. If I don't write down this kind of humanized name,  I never work out my target audience  and I end up like say the outline. So I'm deciding what goes into the course. And if I, if I'm a bit vague about it,  like if it's beginners or for advanced people  and I don't write that and I don't get clear about it at the  beginning, I find it very hard to write an outline.

Like, should this go in? Should this not go in? Should this be part of it? Should this not? If you have a clear target audience, it makes it really easy  to kind of decide, ah, okay, now that should wait  for a different video or not in this course. Or maybe that's a bit too advanced  or that's perfect for this.

So that'll help with the outline. It'll also really help you build your intro video. The intro video is for me the,  the most important video you make of the whole course. I make it at the end rather than the beginning. And it allows me to kind of basically say this out loud,  like, uh, it's how I introduce the course. I don't say, Hey, welcome to my  keyword rich stuffed search engine version of the name.

I say, hi. Hi, my name is Dan. And this training is on online course creation  to help new instructors to learn how to create  and sell their first online course. Okay? So it, it helps that,  and I guess that makes it clear  for the person who's buying the course. What this is about.

And you should be clear,  wait at the beginning here, not at the end when you are  making your intro video  and you're like, ooh, who, who should this be? It's a bit late for that. The other thing I found really  helpful for me is before this kind of technique  or humanized name, I would start a course  and I, I wasn't clear back to the target audience really. I wasn't clear who this was for  and what the outcomes were gonna be. So I was, I didn't know who I was talking to. So I was, I was doing these kind of voiceovers, like  for me now talking on this video right this second,  I know it's for people who are brand new  to making online courses.

There will be people who have made courses  before that will benefit from it. But I'm not targeting them. 'cause if I try to do people that have already made courses  and people that already that haven't  before, I, I find it too hard  to explain myself giving a kind  of a introversion plus a medium version plus an adv advance. What if advanced people are watching it? I want to give them all the benefit  and it means that I get confused. So I don't do it well for anybody.

So I know during this video series  that I'm gonna be talking exactly to people  who are brand new, never done it before. I'm gonna keep it step by step right at the beginning. And sure they're gonna be other people who watch it,  but it's not aimed at them. I didn't tell 'em it was aimed at them. They can get benefit from it  and they'll watch it and they'll be okay with it. 'cause they knew it's four beginners.

Now I'm not sure why I go on a bit too much about that. I, I know what it is 'cause I know that my first courses,  I was really awkward about talking about, you know, uh, how  to describe it or I describe it two ways. One for the intro person or the advanced person  or the person that's used it before, has never used it  before and it just made my life hard. I was sweating and stressing even though they're just video  courses because I'm like, man, have I done that right? Is that the right thing? Now that I have a very clear target audience  and I know what the outcomes are  and the benefits are, it's real easy to kind of talk to  that during the course.

Alright, so that is going to be it for how  to choose a course name. This is my methods. We have the short name for internal use. We have the search engine friendly keyword, not stuffed. It's keyword rich, it's a better word. And we'll look at the human name here,  where we identify things like the target  audience, benefits and outcomes.

Alright, I hope you found it useful. Let's get on to the next video.