At the time of writing this post, Your Data Playbook SEO Tools have been around for about a year. As a pre-existing YDP member, I’ve had access to these tools since their beta launch. While I’m absolutely no expert, I thought I would share how I’ve been using the Your Data Playbook SEO Tools.
Full disclosure, this is my workflow. I do not know if this is considered best practice, but it has helped me significantly with a few of my products. My goal in sharing this is to help you think through using these tools in a way that works for you.
I’m writing this midway through June 2024, so this might not reflect any updates since then. One great thing about the Your Data Playbook team is that they are always surprising us with new, helpful updates!
Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links that earn me a small commission, at no additional cost to you. I only recommend products that I personally use and love, or think my readers will find useful.
What is Your Data Playbook? What are the SEO Tools?
Your Data Playbook or YDP is a host of data analysis tools. If you want to learn more, you can read my full review of Your Data Playbook here.
In addition to their main suite of offerings, they also offer SEO tools for Teachers Pay Teachers sellers.
The SEO Tools are specific to the TPT algorithm. It includes helpful information like which terms teachers are searching for most, how many reviews it takes on average to get to the first page of a search, and more.
These tools are sold separately from Your Data Playbook. (I believe pricing starts at $30/month, but that’s certainly subject to change.) The SEO tools are considerably cheaper, which makes them a great starting point for newer sellers looking to level up their game.
What Is SEO?
I can’t get into the SEO tools without covering SEO. SEO stands for search engine optimization.
When you search for something on Google, Google’s search engine uses an algorithm to choose which results are best and in what order to show them. TPT’s search bar does the same.
Results that are search engine optimized typically return higher in searches.
For TPT sellers, that means we want to make sure our resources are SEO-friendly so that they appear higher when buyers search on the Teachers Pay Teachers website.
There are lots of factors that go into improving a site’s SEO. However, when it comes to TPT, the main factor we can control is keywords.
The words you use in resource titles and descriptions heavily influence how your resource ranks in a TPT search.
So if you can figure out which words to include to boost your ranking in the TPT search engine, you can greatly increase the odds of buyers seeing your resource, and, thus, sales overall.
How I Use Your Data Playbook SEO Tools Step 1: Set Up Your Tools
Depending on your Your Data Playbook SEO subscription, you will have a certain amount of keywords you can track.
There are two groups of keywords you will need to track: Your Keyword Finder and Your Rank Tracker.
For the Your Keyword Finder, you’ll want to track “root” keywords. These are broad, probably one-word, search terms. For example, “grammar,” “first grade,” or “Christmas.”
The second group of words for Your Rank Tracker should be more specific. These are “long tail” keywords for TPT that buyers might use the narrow down their searches. For example, “grammar worksheets,” “first-grade math stations,” or “Christmas poetry activities.”
I recommend choosing some root words that pertain to your product lines and overall niche. If you’re already aiming to show up for specific keywords, you can add those to your rank-tracking list immediately, too.
Otherwise, if you’re not sure what keywords to add to your Your Rank Tracker, you can input your Your Keyword Finder terms first. Then, after the SEO Tools have had a few days to gather some data, you can use the “Keyword Finder” tab to choose new terms to include in your SEO Tools.
You can add words to both of these lists by clicking the link at the top of your SEO Tools.
How I Use Your Data Playbook’s SEO Tools Step 2: Choose a Product
When I use YDP’s SEO tools, I usually begin with a product or a product line in mind that I want to improve.
I have a membership for all of YDP’s tools. In my most recent strategy plan, one of the pieces of advice YDP gave me was to use more of my title space for my “Horror Genre Study Unit Bundle.”
YDP was right. “Horror Genre Stuy Unit Bundle” is a pretty short title. There’s lots of space to add informative keywords for buyers. But I wasn’t sure what words I should add.
So, thanks to Your Data Playbook’s suggestion, I knew exactly which product to focus on. From there, I opened up the SEO tools.
How Do I Know Which Product to Choose?
I think as a seller you may intuitively know which of your products are fantastic but not getting enough eyes on them. Follow this intuition.
With the YDP SEO Tools, you can also see which of your products are not ranking very high or ranking at all. Simply go to the “Your Product Tracker” tab.
From there, you can filter for products that are not ranking for any keywords you’re tracking or for products that are ranking on pages 3-5. These will show you resources that could potentially benefit from some SEO optimization.
Alternatively, if you are a Your Data Playbook member, you may receive the advice to add more to your product title. When I am given this advice for a product, I do keyword research with the SEO Tools to see what terms I can add to the product’s title.
This is what I’m doing in the example in this post.
How I Use Your Data Playbook SEO Tools Step 3: Check Your Resource’s Current Ranking
When I created my “Horror Genre Study Bundle,” I hoped that buyers would find it by searching “horror” or “horror genre.”
To see if this was happening, I opened up my SEO Tools and went to “Your Rank Summary” on the left. From the “Find Keywords” dropdown, I selected “horror” and “horror genre.”
When you select keywords here, all of the products you have that rank for these keywords will show up below.
I was pleased to see that my “Horror Genre Study Bundle” (and its components) was doing well for both.
But could it be doing better? What other keywords could I target?
How I Use Your Data Playbook SEO Tools Step 4: Find Relevant Keywords
Next, I moved to the “Your Keyword Finder” tab. This tab is great for finding relevant keywords that you can target for your resources.
Since “horror” was the root word I’m trying to target with this bundle, I deselected “popular on TPT” and selected “horror.” (I also like to filter for only “exact match” in the “Keyword Match Type” dropdown.)
This shows me the most popular keywords that contain “horror.”
I also changed the dropdown filter for “Period of Time” to “lifetime.”
From here, I’m looking for keywords that meet certain criteria:
- They are relevant to my product
- The “1st Page Reviews Threshold” is less than 32 because my product has 32 reviews at the time of writing this
A few terms stood out to me.
Some terms, like “horror unit,” I was pleasantly surprised to see. This is a keyword that I already include in my product title, but I wasn’t aware was something buyers are searching for. For this one, I’m going to add it to my Keyword Manager, so I can start seeing if it’s something I rank for already.
Some keywords I can eliminate immediately. My bundle has nothing to do with “Little Shop of Horrors” or any particular “horror film,” so I shouldn’t add those words to my resource–even if they perform well in search.
Then, there are a few keywords that DO pertain to my bundle that I’m not yet using. In particular, the keywords “horror stories,” “two sentence horror stories,” and “elements of horror” all relate to different products in my bundle.
Using this information, I went ahead and renamed my resource. I changed it from “Horror Genre Study Unit for Digital or In-person” to “Horror Genre Study Unit: 3 Stories, Elements of Horror, and More.”
I think this change gives buyers a better idea of what kind of resources they will find inside the bundle.
How I Use Your Data Playbook SEO Tools Step 5: Update Your Keyword Manager
Since I’m now aiming to rank for some new keywords, I need to make sure I put those into my Keyword Manager right away. (Again, there is a link to the Keyword Manager form at the top right of the SEO Tools.)
I went ahead and added “horror stories” and “elements of horror” to the list of keywords I track. This will make the next step easier.
How I Use Your Data Playbook SEO Tools Step 6: Track Your Progress
After changing your product’s title, you’ll want to give it time before you check in. I try to wait at least a few days.
Then, you can head to the “Your Product Tracker” tab in the SEO tools. To evaluate my title change, I filtered for just the bundle I’ve been working on.
This area shows you how your product is ranking for each of the relevant keywords you track. I can see that I’m now ranking at number two for a new keyword I added: “elements of horror.” I think that’s a major win!
I’m also now ranking number 7 for “horror stories.” Not bad!
If you scroll below this area, YDP also provides a graph for how your ranking has changed over time. My favorite part is that it adds a data point for dates that you’ve changed the product’s title.
As you can see, my rankings have improved since changing this title.
YDP even tracks your title changes automatically and breaks down the data for you. This change is currently “trending successful,” which means I can’t quite label it a resounding success yet, but it’s looking good!
Who Should Subscribe to the Your Data Playbook SEO Tools?
YDP’s SEO Tools are an incredibly powerful tool for any TPT seller, but I don’t recommend them for everyone across the board.
If you’re new to selling on Teachers Pay Teachers, I think you should work on mastering the basics–creating products, previews, covers, thumbnails, and SEO-friendly descriptions–before paying for any seller tools.
There are tons of free blog posts, podcasts, and seller Facebook groups out there to help you get started.
It’s only after you start seeing regular monthly income that I recommend any seller commit to subscriptions.
If you’re starting to make $100 a month and ready to level up, then I think YDP’s SEO Tools are the perfect next step! It will help you perfect your existing products’ search rankings and help you plan out your next product line.
These SEO Tools are also a great place to start for those interested in using Your Data Playbook. Your Data Playbook, while incredibly helpful, isn’t inexpensive.
Starting with these SEO Tools is an easier point of entry and learning how to use them will take awhile. Begin with these tools, get through the learning curve, increase your revenue through SEO, and then consider adding the rest of YDP’s suite to your TPT toolbox.
You can sign up for YDP’s SEO Tools right here!
Your Data Playbook SEO Tools Alternatives
If you can’t quite afford the SEO Tools yet, don’t worry! That doesn’t mean you can’t do any keyword research!
Optimizing your SEO is a must-do for any TPT seller these days. Luckily, more and more YDP alternatives are emerging on the market.
Check out this blog post where I talk about TPT SEO tools from free to paid!
Conclusion
If you have product lines that you suspect could be doing better in search, or you want to start planning product creation with more intention, then you should definitely give YDP’s SEO Tools a try.
Because this is a monthly subscription, you can always try it for a few months and discontinue the service if it’s not right for you.
I highly recommend YDP’s SEO Tools. Every time I use it I find more and more ways to improve my product listings.