Gone are the days when you could simply start a coaching practice by printing some business cards and attending a handful of networking events. These things might still work to some extent, but they won’t get you fully booked in 2023. Using SEO to market your coaching practice on the other hand will.

Most people looking for a coach in 2023 are going to look for one on Google

The great thing is that appearing in Google’s organic search results doesn’t cost direct advertising money. Here’s what it will require instead…

 

Content Writing

Someone needs to write the pages or articles that will appear in search results, in the case of a coaching business, this is best done by the coach. However, once you have a clear picture of what you need to write and a defined writing style, you can find a writer to do it for you.

 

 

Website design

Your site’s layout and flow can help or hinder your ability to turn visitors into clients. You need to have the right funnels and call-to-actions in order to convert visitors into discovery call bookings.

 

Technical Web Design

Ensuring Google and other search engines are properly crawling, indexing, and ranking your site is key to getting ROI from your SEO. If your website is struggling to get indexed, consider changing the technology altogether. As a general rule, the most accessible and best SEO-ed platform available at the time of publishing of this article (Jan 2023) is WordPress. A self-hosted WordPress – meaning you install it on your own hosting not simply create an account on wordpress.org.

You can create a WordPress site yourself quite easily with a bit of help from your hosting provider (this course shows you how). However, if you also want to find a WordPress developer to help you troubleshoot any problems. You can probably start off with the developer that created your theme. Then at a later stage move on to a developer that knows how to make more advanced edits. You may not need advanced edits too often, but remember as your website evolves you will want changes and sometime this will require going beyond the abilities and features of your template/theme.

 

Links

You’ve probably heard of link-building as a strategy to rank higher in SEO. Although content can and will rank without backlinks, Google still ranks it quite prominently as one of the important elements of SEO. You can get natural backlinks by sharing on social media, guesting on podcasts, publishing guest blogs, and through outreach (asking others to link back to you.) But the most effective strategy is still to create link-attracting content. Content will attract natural backlinks if it is industry relevant and specific, and contains information a lot of people want to refer to such as research and stats.

 

Strategy and Reporting

It takes experience and skill to create a great content plan and pick the best keywords that will convert. Hire a coach or outsource to a professional. The strategy is the most important part of the process. You need to be sure your content plan will attract the right people to your website.

You also need to learn how to analyze your data and improve your performance. SEO is something you never stop doing, you keep improving the results by reading your data and taking action accordingly.

 

How long does SEO take to work for coaches?

Most technically sound websites that publish 2 to 3 quality blogs weekly will take 6 to 12 months to rank and start producing leads for your business. This estimate is based on my clients’ successes. As an experienced SEO, I have ranked agency clients’ content in 3 weeks – but that happens when everything on the website is in good order and an experienced SEO steps in to work on the strategy.

A new website and a new coach with a reputation to build will take more time. A lot of my clients experience success around the 6 to 12-month mark, and some take 18 months. This happens because there are many variables that will affect your success, like the amount of competition and the age and technology of your domain/website.

You might be wondering why this is worthwhile and why they keep going.

SEO provides unparalleled lead quality for coaches that turn into clients easily. A coach that blogs can reduce their marketing down to a day a week and still get fully booked with high-ticket clients.

It also gives you a cumulative ROI…

 

The ROI of SEO for coaches

Every article that ranks will keep generating leads in the long term – so the ROI is cumulative. Unlike social media or PPC ads, SEO-ed content will continue to give you a return on investment years after you created it.

It will also provide you with a lot of content that is easy to repurpose into social media posts, podcasts, or videos.

Would you like to understand how blogging and SEO can help you build a fully booked coaching practice? Let’s talk. Book your free call here

 

 

 

 

 

———————— About the Author: Stephanie Fiteni

 

Hi, I’m Stephanie, a Digital Marketing Coach and Business Mentor for Coaches. I’m the creator of the Profitable Content Marketing Method™ and help coaches generate more leads and clients through their blogs and websites whilst helping them build a business that makes good money with ease. My clients get fully booked with just a handful of enjoyable marketing hours per week!

I have over 15 years of experience creating websites, building businesses, writing blogs, and creating social media campaigns, and making sure funnels convert. As well as ranking articles, videos, and podcasts on the first page of Google. I also managed the content and web dev team in my own agency for over 10 years. I can teach you how to create content that will convert your visitors into clients, every time. Let’s Talk