Step 2: Google Search

In this task, you will try to find a comprehensive list of competitors for your topic idea by searching on Google.

In this task, you’ll find your competitors by searching online. A great place to start is to go to Google search and type in your topic. The keywords you type in should be your online course idea.

Whatever it is, type it in and look at what comes up in the search results. For example, you may be thinking about teaching a course on creative writing.

In that case, you’d type creative writing courses into the search box.

Next, check out each URL that looks like it could be offering a course. You can start by clicking on any ads that may have come up within your search.  Visit those sites (they will likely sell something and are most likely offering a course).

So here, you’d want to look into these sites. If you click on their ad, they’re charged, so you can just open a new window and type the URL in.

So here we’re at writingclasses.com. Make sure to make a note of the URL in a spreadsheet or document when you think it’s a good one. So here I’m just going to copy and paste it into the spreadsheet.

So back to looking for more competitors on Google; with this particular example, you’ll notice some of the searches lead to actual college courses.  You can collect those if you want or leave them off your list. You can spot them because they’ll end with .edu.

You can skip udemy.com and other big marketplace courses for now.

It’s best to look at all the search results on the first page and even the second. Check them all out, whether they are paid ads or organic search results, and start collecting a list of sites offering courses on your topic.

Type in your main topic a few ways, if possible.

To get some ideas, look at the alternate searches under the search box as you’re typing. You can also see a list of searches related to your topic at the bottom of the search results page.

You can also search for your topic + boot camps, coaching, membership site, and others in addition to the course. Here boot camp returns some results, so that’ll help you collect even more.

Just gather up all the URLs for your competitors here. You can put them in a spreadsheet or a document.

We want to find some courses to compare ours to start, so backing out of your topic if you don’t find anything. That means you may want to go broader.

For high school students, an example might be a course on mastering Microsoft Excel. I don’t believe there are any actual courses on that.

I’m not doing an exhaustive search, but it doesn’t seem like there are any courses. These results likely all lead to free information.

So, in that case, you may want to back out and start looking for excel courses.

It looks like if you search for excel courses then I’m sure you’ll find many of them. So by looking around, you may realize that creating a general excel course makes better sense. Or you can dive in and take a different direction.

I had been doing prior research on Excel and noticed there are courses out there geared toward accountants which makes a lot of sense. So you could look into narrowing your topic to Excel for accountants. As you can see, I’ve typed that into Google, and there are many. You’ll get familiar with your industry by doing the research tasks I’m putting together for you.

You can always adjust your topic if you need to. Now during your research phase, you want to change it up, not later on after spending a month creating your course! So it’s good to start sorting all this out now.

If you’re unsure how broad or narrow to make your course, you can try to go broad now and stop at the first 10 to 20 competitors. You can narrow it down later on.

Another point is that you may see membership sites, flashcards, or something other than a course related to your topic. In that case, you’ll want to gather up all that too. It doesn’t have only to be courses, but whatever people are buying to help gain knowledge about the topic you’re thinking of going into could be considered a competitor.

The list you’re creating right now will turn into your top list of competitors, which you’ll refer to repeatedly, so you want to be as thorough as possible.

Make sure to complete the action plan for this task and put a list of competitors together.

Task

To complete this task, do several Google searches for key terms relating to your course topic idea. You’re looking for your competitors. Add them to the spreadsheet provided, or create your own.

Strategic Planner

Sign up and log in to download the ‘Google Search’ Strategic Planner. Fill it out, and then save it. Start moving your business forward!