Writing course descriptions for the web

The onCourse website is a powerful marketing tool for promoting your products to the public. Your ability to explain your product point of difference and entice students to enrol is determined by the copy you write in your course Marketing tab.

What does a good course description include?

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Avoiding using headings in the first paragraph for the same reason - it won’t render well in list views or make sense to readers browsing your site.

• The first sentence or two of your course description should contain your hook.
• Think about all the questions potential students ask about this course, and provide answers in the course copy. onCourse already helps answer the 'where and when' questions with google maps embedded, and a full class timetable.
• Break up your copy with headings. It’s difficult to scan large blocks of text, so put your rich text skills to good use and separate content with headings like 'What to bring', 'What you will learn', 'What past students say'.
• An image is worth a thousand words. Show, rather than tell, what your students can achieve if they enrol in this course. Learning Thai Cooking? Show them a dish they will cook in class. There are thousands of enticing stock photography images available for purchase online, and the onCourse system makes it easy for you to attach them to a course and upload them to your website.
• Keep the technical language to a minimum. If you are selling vocational training it’s easy to fall into using acronyms and terms that only make sense to people within the industry. Your potential students are here to learn - don’t scare them off enrolling by assuming they have the same industry knowledge you have.
• Avoid negative language. Your course description is not the place to tell people they can’t access refunds if they change their mind after enrolment. Save it for your Terms and Conditions page.

What is a Short description?

Short descriptions are usually placed under the course title when a student is browsing through courses. In some cases this is where the copy that displays in the course list results and 'reels in' the customer, enticing them to click on the [more...] link.

While a good web description has all the general introductory information regarding the course, adding a short description is an ideal way to give important details about the course.

These details might include what are the necessary items that the student needs for the course or if there is a prerequisite course that needs to be taken before enrolling in the course.

Adding these information in the short description will provide students details what to know before enrolling to a course.

What is SEO and why is it important?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation and having a website with 'good' SEO should mean your site appears near the top of the list for searches that are most relevant to your product. A large part of SEO is technical - i.e. can the Google bots that crawl the internet read and understand your website’s content? The technical framework that underpins the onCourse web engine does most of this hard work for you, but one thing we can’t automate is the creation of your website content.

There are plenty of companies out there who will try to sell you an SEO solution, but the one thing most of them lack is an experienced copy writer who knows your product and your market.

Writing enticing copy is a skill. Making sure this copy hits on appropriate keywords and still reads well is an art.

Keywords are the terms people use when they are searching for your product. If you have an AdWords account with Google, they have an excellent Keyword Planner tool that allows you search for keywords and find related terms people search for, with their relative search frequency.

Tips for writing SEO copy

• Your key search term belongs in your course name, which in turn becomes your website page title and heading level content in the results pages. Words appearing in titles and headings are ranked higher than text on the page. For example, the course name 'Learn Microsoft Excel' would be a higher ranking course name for SEO purposes than 'Excel 101'
• The first paragraph of text on the page should reuse your primary keywords and add in your top related keywords, while remaining readable to humans. Say for example you chose the primary keyword Microsoft Office Excel with related keywords MS excel, formulas, spreadsheets, help, online, free, and your generic location. Your first paragraph would read: "Our Canberra CBD courses in Microsoft Office Excel are the solution to learning excel formulas and other spreadsheet functions. MS Excel training will help progress your career in almost any industry. Online classes for Excel are also available, or you can attend classroom tutorials and then access our online Excel course for free."
• If you’re selling education, keywords like learn, course, class, training and tutorial belong in every course description you write.
• If you’re selling face to face training, make sure you use location based keywords that relate to your training venues in the course copy, don’t just rely on the class location to 'sell' to the local market.
• Encouraging people to link back to your content is also a great way to improve your native page ranks.
  Consider providing content beyond the sales pitch - e.g. some Excel hints and tips may be just the trick to keep visitors returning.