The Rebranded Teacher
The Rebranded Teacher
The Harsh Truth: Not All TPT Resources Can Be SEO'd
Ever wondered why your meticulously crafted TPT resources aren't getting found, despite your best SEO efforts? After nine years as a TPT seller and five years coaching other teacher entrepreneurs, I've discovered a hard truth: most sellers are solving the wrong problem.
The issue isn't that your resources lack proper search optimization. It's that you're creating products that can't be effectively optimized in the first place. Many of us start by creating resources we're personally excited about or that our own classrooms need, then try to retrofit SEO strategies afterward. This backwards approach typically leads nowhere because either nobody is searching for the keywords that describe your product, or the competition for those keywords is so fierce that newer sellers have virtually no chance of ranking.
This frustrating cycle is what I call the "silent killer" of TPT businesses. You follow all the conventional advice – create more products, optimize your listings, design beautiful covers – yet sales remain stagnant. The burnout that follows drains your momentum and enthusiasm. Meanwhile, successful sellers who transition from side-hustle to full-time income share one critical habit: they validate market demand before investing time in product creation. They check search volume, assess competition, and identify keyword targets before designing a single page.
Ready to break free from creating "hope and pray" products? Join my free Five Days to 5K Product Challenge starting May 24th! Through bite-sized, actionable daily tasks, you'll learn how to identify products with built-in demand, align your resources with what buyers actively search for, and stop guessing whether your next creation will sell. By the end of our five days together, you'll approach product creation with data-driven confidence rather than wishful thinking. Sign up through the link below – this is likely my only free workshop of 2025, and you don't want to miss it!
Grab your spot in the 5 Days to 5K Product Idea Workshop
https://rebrandedteacher.kartra.com/page/eTl153
Get your ticket to the Teacher Seller’s Summit
https://laurenfulton.krtra.com/t/oTIxSLPqfhYf
Check Out My YouTube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/c/laurenfulton
My Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/laurentschappler/
My Other YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/@LaurenATsch
Free Rebranded Teacher Facebook Group
Welcome to the Rebranded Teacher Podcast. My name is Lauren Fulton. I'm a full-time teacher, author and seller on Teachers, Pay Teachers, and I help other teacher entrepreneurs grow their TPT businesses in a way that's purposeful and sustainable. So if you're looking for actionable, step-by-step ways to grow your business, you're in the right place. Let's get started.
Speaker 2:What if I told you that SEO or your lack of search engine optimization isn't the reason people aren't finding your products? In my experience of being a TPT seller for almost nine years and working with other TPT sellers for the last five years, nine times out of 10 search engine optimization especially for new TPT sellers is not the culprit, but it's the first thing that people flock to because we're told over and over again if people aren't finding your products, it's probably because they're not search engine optimized. And you know what? To a degree that's true. Your resources need to be search engine optimized, but most of the time, the real culprit is that they can't be search engine optimized. And I know what you're thinking. You're thinking what A resource that can't be search engine optimized. I mean yeah, because the whole goal of optimizing for TPT search is having a product that can rank in TPT search, and not only having a product that can rank in TPT search but ranking for search terms that buyers are actually searching for. So if I'm creating resources that can't be search engine optimized, that can't rank, that can't compete with those keywords or maybe they can rank but it's for keywords that buyers aren't searching for then I'm creating the wrong type of product, and that is one of the biggest mistakes that TPT sellers make, especially early on in the beginning. So if you've ever wondered why your efforts aren't paying off or what it is that you're doing wrong, we're going to cover that inside of this episode. But I'm also going to help you build a better product, a better way to approach product creation, one that's data-driven, research-driven, and I'm going to teach you how to do that in one of my signature five days to a 5k product line workshops. You'll find more information about that workshop down inside of the description, but for right now, let's talk about why so many TPT sellers get stuck.
Speaker 2:One of the reasons why so many new sellers run into this problem of like creating a really incredible resource, and these resources usually are truly, really incredible resources. It's not that they're bad, it's not that it's something that no one would ever want to buy. It's just that someone is never going to be able to find it. So one of those reasons is that a lot of sellers make the mistake of creating what they're excited about, or creating what their class needs. Now, this is not always a bad thing. Sometimes you can. I'm going to say luck into it, and I feel like the longer TPT is around, the more it ends up being a luck game where you just so happen to create something that you're excited about or something your students would love, and then it happens to take off because other teachers would be excited about it. Other teachers love it. There's a gap in the market. They're looking for it. All of the stars align and everything works out perfect. But most of the time that's not exactly how it happens for most sellers.
Speaker 2:So you create this really stellar product and then you try to retrofit SEO on top of it. So you're kind of working backwards, right? You create the product and then you try to search engine optimize the product. You spend hours learning keyword strategies. You maybe even attended one of my workshops, ranked my resources, bought a ticket to Teacher Seller where I'm going to talk about winning SEO strategies, but nothing moves and you start to get frustrated. You're like do I not understand how to do search engine optimization? Or is this person not a good teacher? What's going on here?
Speaker 2:But the thing is, chances are you're running into two major mistakes. Number one, the keywords aren't there, so like nobody is looking for those keywords. Or number two, you're picking keywords that work, they fit your product, they describe your product accurately, but oh my gosh, like the amount of competition for those keywords is so stiff that you are never going to be able to rank for this. And I tell you this happens and I think a lot of times SEO gurus they want to tell you there's something out there that will work for your product. And that may be true. There may be something out there that works for your product, but it's probably not going to get you the kind of volume that you want, because if you're looking to create a product that's going to earn you thousands of dollars, then you can't just be creating on a whim and a prayer.
Speaker 2:You really need to create very strategically, because what ends up happening is you feel super confident about these optimized listings, but then you start to get zero traffic and it starts to drain traffic, your time and your momentum on TPT and this is probably one of the most silent killers for a TPT business is that you learn something. You think this strategy is going to be really cool, it's really going to work for my business and it's a good. Honestly, it's a good, solid strategy and you see the strategy being implemented by other sellers and it's working for them. And so you spend time optimizing your resource, implementing the strategy, but then it doesn't work. It's still crickets and you start to get frustrated and you think everything that I'm doing is not working. They said to continue to create products. I'm creating products. They said to search engine optimize them. I'm search engine optimizing them. They said to create beautiful, enticing covers and previews. I'm doing all of these things and it's still not working. Still, people are not clicking on my product.
Speaker 2:So you get burnt out from constantly tweaking listings that were never set up to win in the first place, when all of that energy could have gone towards creating a product that had built in demand. And that's one of the things that we focus on in this five days to a 5k product challenge. And that is beginning with the end in mind. One of the biggest factors that takes a classroom teacher who sells as a hobby on TPT into a full-time TPT seller or someone who has dramatically changed the financial state of their family and their business is that they begin with the end in mind when it comes to creating products. They don't just create. They look at what the market says and they validate what the market says, with the creation of their product. They check the search demand before they build the product and they know exactly which keywords they're targeting before they even write the first word. These are things that are extremely important, and it's exactly what I'm going to teach you how to do in five days to a 5k challenge.
Speaker 2:Now, this is, I think my third or fourth year running this challenge. I love it. We didn't do it last year and I had so many people say are we going to do it again? Are we going to do it again? And I told them no, I don't think we're going to do it. I told them I didn't think I was going to do it in 2025, but here we are. I'm super excited. We're going to fix this together, so I have a free workshop for you. This is probably the only free workshop that I'm going to do in 2025.
Speaker 2:So if you want to learn something that's going to transform your business without having to spend any money, this is it Five days to a 5K product. We're going to spend five days together learning how to identify which products are going to be in demand before you create them, how to align your resource to what buyers are actively searching for and purchasing on TPT, and how to stop guessing and start building resources that will actually rank, and how to get off that never ending hamster wheel of constantly making tweaks to resources and then feeling burnt out because they didn't work, because you're going to know before you ever create your resource whether or not it's going to make you money and, hopefully, how much money it's going to make you. So we're going to stop building hope and pray products and we're going to start creating with confidence. I want you to sign up for this workshop through the link down in the description. This workshop is going to start May 24th of 2025. We are almost there. That means you have less than two weeks to sign up. You want to sign up as quickly as possible. Save your seat.
Speaker 2:These are all prerecorded, so they're going to be sent directly to your inbox beginning May 24th and you're going to get these each day with a little small actionable step for you to take each day of the workshop so that, by the end, all these small, non-draining, non-time consuming actions are going to add up to a really big win for your business, all for free.
Speaker 2:So sign up through the workshop down through the link down inside of my description and if you want to learn more, then you need to subscribe to this channel, because last week we talked about whether or not you need to be creating seasonal resources evergreen resources. We dive deep around here. We talk about practical, research-based strategies that actually work and help you grow and build your business, and I'm here doing it every single week. So make sure you hit that subscribe button, turn on the notifications so you're not missing practical strategies that are going to help you win in your business. And, last but not least, you better make sure you sign up for that workshop. I'm going to see you back here next week, but I'm also going to see you at the five days to a 5k product challenge very, very soon.