How to do Keyword Research on TeePublic
A common question we get here at TeePublic is, "What should I draw?" Though it's always best to design for your own niche (the style you've honed over days/months/years of practice and which feels most natural to you), you might be wondering what's popular on TeePublic at any given moment and want to try your hand at designing for the audience at large.
If you're at all familiar with the wild world of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), then you're no doubt familiar with the practice of keyword research: using various tools and databases to determine the content you should be creating based on the terms actual users are searching for.
Let's apply the same principles of keyword research to TeePublic to see what we come up with!
1. How to do Keyword Research?
Generally speaking, you'll want to start your keyword research by thinking about the "buckets" of content that you'd like to engage with: 5-10 topics that your work can answer. For example, you might want to design products around the terms "mothers," "flowers," "curlicues," "corgis" and "ramen," both because you like those concepts and because you can draw them well.
To zoom out even further, you might want to consider your "buyer personas," the types of people for whom you are designing: What are their likes and dislikes? How old are they? What kinds of products do you think they will like most for their purposes?
Next, you'll want to search these "bucket terms" to find more specific keywords for which you can create content.
With this context, you can do this searching process in a few ways:
- Search your "bucket terms" on Google to find out what other people are searching for:
- Sign up for a Google Ads account and use the Keyword Planner tool.
- Generally, find internet trends (or upcoming trends!) by using Google Trends. Simply search the bucket term and see a graph of search frequency, location of searches, and related queries. BINGO!
(The spike you see is Mother's Day in the US)
With all of this information, you should be able to get a plan for content creation. Winning!
3. How to Apply These Principles to TeePublic
Everything we've detailed above has to do with keyword research in general; but how should you approach using this framework on TeePublic. SIMPLE!
- Create your list of "bucket terms." For the sake of this example, let's use the very same as before: "mothers," "flowers," "curlicues," "corgis" and "ramen."
- Who are your buyer personas for each keyword?
For "mothers," for example, your buyer will likely want to either buy a gift for a mother or is a mother herself. What might a mom want, then? Totes could be nice; same with mugs! What about a tank or two? Generally speaking, what do moms like? At the risk of generalizing for too many moms out there, it's a good idea to get a concept of who will be your audience.
Let's try another: "Corgis." Who might want products associated with corgis? Dog-lovers, for sure. Owners of corgis, definitely. People who love the British Royal Family, maybe. Get creative! Maybe if folks who like corgis and the British Royal Family also might like cute illustrative representations of corgis over realistic ones. Any ideas brewing now? Write it all down.
Let's search those bucket terms now, both on Google Trends (to get a general online picture of which bucket term is most popular at this exact moment) and on TeePublic.
To return to corgis...
We plugged that term into Google Trends and found that it could actually be a great term to design for at this present moment since it's experiencing a bit of an uptick in the volume of searches since last week, and more generally, for the last month or so:
Now, let's search that term on TeePublic and sort the results by "Popular":
Here, we see 16 pages of results, which means that it's pretty popular, but not the MOST popular term on TeePublic. So it might be a great idea to design something around this term, especially since "Mothers" has 236 pages of results.
Next, consider the types of designs you're seeing as the "most popular": Illustrative or otherwise cute renderings of corgis, and it's usually punny. Can you do something similar, or put your own spin on it to add your voice to the mix?
With all that, you might think you want to do a funny shirt involving corgis somehow. Great thinking! Still looking for your personal style? Try this quiz on for size!
With all of these steps together, we have no doubt you'll be well on your way to designing for yours and our audience alike!
