SEO for Coaches: The Comprehensive Guide

Excited for more ideal clients and customers? What about sustainable website traffic? Or not relying so much on high pressure launches or social media?

Search engine optimization (SEO) has the power to do all of that and more. It’s essentially the practice of fine-tuning websites for visibility on search engines like Google.

While it has a ton of pros, like anything else, it also has some cons. It may not be for you if you don’t want to blog or hire a blog writer, you’re looking for instant results, or you’re not able to outsource it to a specialist or spend the time learning and then implementing it yourself.

Let’s get to the good stuff!

How Does SEO Benefit Coaches and Online Service Pros?

Many people casually throw around the word ‘SEO’ and end up confusing those around them. They make attractive claims of results. They leave out the hard work or outsourcing it took to get there. And sometimes they make dreamy (aka unethical) guarantees. But that stops here. The following are four proven and time-tested benefits of SEO for coaches and online service providers.

Builds a long-term online presence

Unlike Instagram and Facebook, Google is a search engine. That means people open it up specifically to search for something they want or need answers for. Because they’re already aware of what they need help with, they’re much closer to becoming a client or customer than if they randomly happened upon your Instagram profile.

And did you know blog posts have a long shelf life? Imagine someone finding a blog post you wrote two years ago or one you wrote two months ago! SEO coupled with strategic blogging helps meet potential ideal clients and customers where they’re at and that’s the immense power of SEO for coaches and online service providers.

Generates consistent leads and sales

When your blog posts meet people where they’re at, they naturally help people progress towards solving their problems and reaching their goals. Whether that’s through joining your email list, bingeing more blog posts, buying your mini-course, or booking your most personalized offer.

It’s unrealistic to expect that each new website visitor will purchase something right away, but each time they interact with your website and leave after a positive experience, that’s another point towards building a meaningful, long-lasting connection.

Results in sustainable business growth

Here’s a simple rule: the more SEO-informed blog posts you publish, the more opportunities you create for potential ideal clients and customers to find you.

“The average #1 ranking page will also rank in the top 10 for nearly 1,000 other relevant keywords.”

– Tim Soulo, CMO at Ahrefs

In non-jargon, the most successful pages on Google can be found through hundreds of relevant keywords, not just the main keyword that those pages target.

Your website traffic from SEO grows quickly from consistent blogging and steadily attracts new ideal clients and customers every single month.

After a while, even if you didn’t publish any new blog posts for a month, your website would still work hard behind the scenes.

Requires minimal upkeep

SEO isn’t a quick fix. It’s not one-size-fits-all. And it’s not a one-and-done thing.

After you get some good blogging going, it’s key to keep publishing high-quality posts as often as you can. Whether that’s once a week or once a month – there’s no pressure to churn out blog posts like you’re some kind of robot.

No, it’s totally ok (and more realistic) to publish however often your capacity allows. The goal is to not just never touch it again.

Once that’s in a rhythm and feeling good, be sure to circle back to your earlier blog posts every 4-6 months or so to make sure the information is still up-to-date and relevant.

What Do Coaches and Online Service Pros Need to be Successful at SEO?

Not a whole lot. All you need is a healthy mix of business foundations and mindset clarity.

5 Business Must-Haves to Be Successful at SEO

01. A Well-Designed Website

02. Ideal Client and Customer Profiles

03. Clear Messaging

04. Validated Offers

05. Time to Write Blogs or Ability to Hire a Blog Writer

4 Mindset Must-Haves to Be Successful at SEO

01. Commitment

02. Long-Term Vision

03. Patience

04. Trust in the Process

Is SEO a Good Fit For Your Online Business?

Like all SEO professionals say: It depends! Here’s a short and sweet checklist to help see if your business is a good fit for search engine optimization.

[  ] I have the 9 must-haves from above

[  ] Potential ideal clients and customers are searching for answers on Google™ related to what my business helps with

[  ] There’s a good amount of topics, subtopics, and questions that I (or my blog writer) could write about

[  ] I understand what my potential ideal clients and customers would be interested in reading and learning

DIYing Your SEO

If you decide to DIY it, good for you! You’ve taken the power of SEO into your hands and I’m sure you’ll do amazing things with it.

Just so you know what you’re getting yourself into, learning SEO takes a lot of time and energy. There’s a ton of awful (and just straight out wrong!) SEO advice out there, including things that go against Google’s guidelines and should be left in the 2010s, so please be careful.

That’s why I recommend starting with Ahrefs, SEMRush, and HubSpot’s blogs. They have a ton of good SEO tips and tricks to help get you going.

If you’re not looking forward to DIYing it, why not have an experienced pro take care of it for you?! See if our signature SEO service is what you’re looking for.

Hiring a SEO Pro

The biggest benefit of outsourcing your SEO is knowing that it’s being handled by a pro who knows exactly how to optimize and grow your website.

You’re tapping into their deep knowledge and experience, so it takes them way less time than it would’ve taken to DIY it.

Of course, not every single SEO Strategist is honest about their experiences and capabilities. Please make sure to ask a lot of questions to anyone you’re thinking about hiring to get a complete sense of what to expect from working with them.

There are definitely some red flags you should look out for.

How Do High-Quality Blog Posts and SEO Work Together?

A high-quality blog post is easier to create if you know what needs to go into it. It starts with knowing how it’ll benefit the reader (i.e. why someone would want to read it), its business purpose for you, the target keywords, the reader profile it’s targeting, and even how it fits among all your other blog posts.

When you have a clear blogging strategy coupled with SEO, you gain the powerful visibility and reach that comes with that duo. How?

Well, let’s use an example to help clarify this.

If Christina, an email marketing consultant, wrote SEO-informed blog posts about all things related to email marketing, then people actively searching for ~all of those things~ will find her blog and enter her business’s ecosystem.

A portion will sign up to her email list, and a portion of those will become clients and customers for her business.

How Do Blogging, SEO, and a Strategic Website Work Together?

It takes about 0.05 seconds for users to form an opinion about your website that determines whether they like your site or not, whether they’ll stay or leave.

On average, someone spends a little less than a minute visiting a page on a website.

The unfortunate reality is: if your website hasn’t been designed with your most important goals in mind and with strategic design and marketing best practices, then you’ll probably see high bounce rates and low conversion rates.

What’s a bounce rate?

A bounce is how many times someone visits just one page on your website and leaves (i.e. doesn’t go to any other page). So your website’s bounce rate is the amount of bounces divided by the total amount of website visits.

What’s a conversion rate?

A conversion happens when someone completes a desired action on your website. Actions include signing up to your newsletter, downloading a freebie, buying your mini-course, ebook, or templates, signing up for your program, sending you an inquiry, etc.

Let’s dive into how blogging, SEO, and a strategic website work together seamlessly. Blogging and SEO attract and invite targeted traffic to your business. That’s people who are searching for the answers you provide. Now you’ve got a steady stream of interested people entering your online home, exploring, and deciding if they want to stay connected with you or not. But then what happens once they open up your website?

Ideally, your website has been strategically designed to engage visitors and guide them to where you want them to go.

The goal: a steady stream of interested visitors, of which a healthy percentage complete a conversion.

Not only do blogging, SEO, and a strategic website come together to help more people, but you’ll also enjoy the benefits of having an effective website that works 24/7 in the background.

How to Easily Do Keyword Research for Beginners

Step 01. Clarify Your Content Pillars

Content pillars are 3-5 broad topics that most closely relate to your business. A productivity coach’s content pillars could be time management, mindset, automations, and organization.

Step 02. Take Your Main Keywords to Ubersuggest

Once you’ve got your pillars clarified, head on over to Ubersuggest and plug them in one by one. The free version of Ubersuggest gives you three searches per day.

Step 03. Look for Low SEO Difficulty Keywords With High Search Volume

As you analyze each broad topic, pay close attention to related keywords that have low SEO difficulty and high search volume. If your website is brand new or has no blog posts on it yet, go for the lower SEO difficulty keywords. But if your website has been around awhile and you’ve already started blogging, don’t be afraid to pick out the keywords that have a bit higher difficulty level.

Need a keyword research tool? Here are my tried and tested recommendations.

How to Repurpose and Promote Blog Posts as a Busy Business Owner

Repurposing Blog Posts to Save Time

Repurposing blog posts just means squeezing out every bit of value from each blog post. It means making the most out of your longer, more in-depth content.

You’re going to want to pull out interesting quotes, statistics, tidbits, and quick tips from each blog post so you can craft shorter and sweeter content around them for your social media platforms.

This way, the hard work is already done and you’re simply bringing greater attention to the juiciest components of each blog post. Major win!

As an example, let’s say you have a blog post titled ‘5 Easy Ways to Work Smarter, Not Harder’.

You can pull out each ‘way’ and craft separate Instagram posts, reels, or IG lives around them. The same goes for Facebook, Twitter, and potentially even LinkedIn posts. Then your community members (i.e. audience) get more exposure to your main points and better understand what you’re talking about.

Promoting Blog Posts to Maximize Your Reach

“Create once. Distribute forever.”

– Ross Simmonds, Founder of Foundation Inc.

So you’ve just published a blog post and you’re beyond proud of it. Now what do you do?

Not telling the world about it isn’t an option, so promoting it across your social media, email list, and possibly podcast or YouTube channel seems like the way to go.

The beauty of blog posts is that they mostly stand the test of time. They’re relevant today and remain relevant a couple of years later (with some updates now and then).

Aside from their longevity, not everyone sees every single blog post you release into the world. I’ve seen 6 and 7-figure online business owners promote pieces of content from months ago and receive an awesome response each time.

So don’t be afraid to share relevant content, no matter when it was initially published.

This not only saves you time, but it also showcases key ideas that new community members haven’t seen from you before. And your original community members will most likely thank you for reminding them.

4 SEO Mistakes in Your Coaching and Service-Based Business

Mobile-Unfriendliness

In case you missed it, Google finalized a pretty important update to their algorithms around March 2021. This update made it so that only the text found on a website’s mobile version is read by Google’s algorithms.

Why is that important?

Well, Google algorithms choose which website pages get ranked on its search engine. So if you have amazing text or a blog post on the desktop version of your website but not on the mobile version, Google wouldn’t be able to see it and therefore rank it. It wouldn’t be found by searchers and wouldn’t work for you in the background as your website should.

In Google’s own words, here’s why mobile-friendliness matters:

• Mobile-friendly sites show up higher in search results
• Mobile searches make up more than half of searches on Google.com
• If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, visitors are 5 times more likely to leave

Is the mobile version of your website fast?

Almost 50% of website visitors will abandon a website if it doesn’t load within 3 seconds. How long does yours take to load? Pingdom has a great, free speed test tool.

Is it easy to navigate?

If people have to zoom in or squint really hard to read any text, that’ll leave a bad impression and they likely won’t return. This directly impacts SEO! A ton of ads (especially pop-up ads) also makes it tough to get around a website and is known to lead to high bounce rates.

Is it easy to take action?

Visitors don’t want to have to look everywhere to take the next step, so make it easy for them. If your buttons are too small or the colors are hard to read, you’ll turn off more visitors than you turn into community members, clients, and customers.

Broken Links

Broken links are like a skin care shop owner inviting you to check out their face cleansers but then putting a huge red stop sign in front of you.

They happen when you change your URLs and don’t set up 301 redirects to the new URLs or don’t update buttons and links to the new URLs. When someone clicks on old buttons or links, they’ll be taken to your 404 error page instead of where they were wanting to go.

It’s best to just avoid that whole mess and keep track of your website’s URLs so that whenever you change one, you’ll be able to look back to see what’s been changed and to update any buttons and links.

A Slow Website

Did you know: 40% of website visitors won’t wait more than 3 seconds before abandoning a website?

That’s not great news for slow websites. These days, we’ve been spoiled and gotten used to lightning fast technology. Thanks to the likes of Amazon and other big tech companies, the standard has been set and other businesses have to either match the standard or lose almost half of their website visitors (the unfortunate truth!).

If you haven’t checked your website’s loading time yet, I’d carve out 5 minutes for it this week via Google’s free PageSpeed tool. If it takes more than 3 seconds to load, you could be sending people away without even welcoming them first.

Want to know the quickest way to make your website faster? Compress all of its images and re-upload them! This process reduces file sizes so they don’t take as long to load. Even saving a bit here and there will add up and make a difference.

Compress a JPEG/JPG

Compress a PNG

Compress a GIF

Compress a PDF

Thin Content

Think short, shallow, and unhelpful pages or blog posts.

Google and other search engines hate thin content because it doesn’t help anyone. It doesn’t serve searchers, Google, as a result it doesn’t help your business either.

Searchers and Google crave informative, original, and relevant pages and blog posts that answer questions and cover topics from all angles.

By delivering what they want, you’re also getting what you want in return. That is, you’re getting more website visitors, more blog readers, and more clients and customers.

Win = Win!

Starting Your SEO Journey to Grow Your Online Business

So your coaching or online service-based business is off to a great start and you’re looking to solidify its long-term growth?

If so, it sounds like you’re on the right track by researching all things SEO.

Here’s my biggest piece of advice for someone in your shoes:

Don’t be afraid to just start. Start with the keyword research basics or start by compressing all of your images. Just start. And please don’t pressure yourself to get everything done in a day. That doesn’t help anyone.

Once you’ve started, check-in with your progress at least once a month to see how it’s going. I recommend setting up Google Analytics and Google Search Console (both amazing, free website tools) to help you measure your efforts over time.

If you ever need help or just want a SEO professional to do it all for you, check out our signature service as well as our à la carte menu to see if we’d be a good fit.

Good luck! And have fun!