SEO for Coaches: Rank High and Get Free Traffic From Google

If you’re a coach, you’ve probably spent some time creating a website for your coaching practice. Whether you built it yourself or had someone build it for you, you’ve taken the time to create a website that tells people about your coaching practice and how you can help them. If that new website hasn’t been optimized yet, it’s time that you get organic traffic from Google to help grow your coaching practice. SEO for coaches comes down to a few key things you need to do on your new website to rank at the top of Google and get free traffic.

Listen to the podcast episode here.

What is SEO for coaches?

SEO stands for search engine optimization. It’s a few things we do on our websites to make it easier for Google to understand the content. When Google understands our content, it’s more likely to show it to people who are searching for information like what we have on our websites.

Google SEO isn’t super techy or scary. I want you to think of it as a connection point between your content and the audience you are creating it for because that’s really what SEO does. It helps connect content to the right audience by working with Google. 

How does SEO work for coaching websites?

Google looks for clues as to what a page is about in specific places on your website or blog. Each time Google sees a keyword in one of those SEO elements, it takes note and files it away. When you have the same keyword used in each spot that Google checks on a specific website page or blog post, then Google understands that your page is about that keyword.

The next time someone searches for that keyword in Google, they’re more likely to show your website as one of the options because they know that your content is about that keyword based on the information they found in your SEO elements when they searched your site.

Do you need to do SEO for a coaching website?

If you want to get free organic traffic from Google, then yes, you need to do SEO on your coaching website. If you don’t care about potential clients finding your website on Google then you don’t. A website without properly done SEO is basically invisible to Google. But If you have enough ad budget that you’d rather buy ads than work on ranking on Google that is an option, though it’s costly.  

How do you do SEO on your coaching website?

The first thing you’ll want to do when starting search engine optimization for a coaching website or any website is to choose your most important keywords for the site. As a coach, you likely have a few pages on your site, they could include: home, about, coaching, and maybe a contact page. 

Your home, about, and coaching pages are likely to be the most important on your coaching website, so you want those pages to rank higher in Google so you can get free organic traffic to them.

Choose your SEO keywords

Choose one keyword for each of your most important pages, and you’re going to use that keyword in your SEO elements. If you’re not sure what they are, get my Beginner’s Guide to SEO right here, and it will walk you through what they are, how to write them for your website, and what they look like to your potential customer.

You’ll use your keywords in the following places on each page:

• Title Tag
• Meta Description
• Header Tags (the big text that separates the copy blocks on this blog post)
• Copy
• URL
• Image file names

It’s important to note that Google will only show your website twice for any keyword, so you need to choose different keywords for your most important pages. If you use the same keyword on three or four pages, you’ll limit your chances of ranking high in Google’s search results for some of the pages because Google will only show two of your pages for that search.

Local vs online coaching keywords

If you work with local clients, you also want to look for what we call a local SEO keyword. That’s one that includes your local area, city, etc. If your potential client is looking for a coach in their area, then that’s going to be helpful for them to find you.

 For example, if you’re a grief coach in the greater LA area, you might want to target a keyword like grief coach Los Angeles or grief coach LA.

If you’re an online coach, you don’t need to worry about localization in your keyword selection. Let’s say you’re a weight loss coach for perimenopausal women. That might be your keyword—weight loss coach for perimenopausal women, weight loss coach for women over 50, or weight loss coaching for women in perimenopause.

Other SEO tips for coaches

Google considers several factors when determining which website to rank higher in the search results. They consider your SEO elements and the user experience. How easy is it to find the information someone needs when they get to your page, and how helpful is the content?

Google wants to ensure that the websites it ranks at the top of the search results are good and provide value to the reader so that people continue to use Google as their search engine.

You want to check your website's page load speed. Google and searchers like a speedy site. If your website loads slowly, it will impact your rankings, and you’ll likely attract people who won’t wait around for your site to load—they’ll go to your competition instead.

You can use tools like the Google Page Speed Index or Pingdom to check the speed of your site. In most cases, the thing that slows down websites is the amount of time it takes to load the pictures because the files are too big. If you find that your image file size is an issue you can minify them using a tool like Jpeg Mini or a plug-in on wordpress. Reducing the size of your photos often is all that it takes to speed up your website so that you are in the green light zone on the tests.

Run the test, make the changes you can, and if there’s something else in the report that you don’t understand, you can always hire that out. Look for a web developer in your area or work with someone on a site like Fiverr and have them take care of it for you. I don’t do the technical back-end work on my website either, and that’s OK.

How do you rank for more than just a few coaching keywords?

If you want to have more chances to be found on Google so you can help more clients, you’re going to want to add a blog to your coaching website. Your website itself has a limited number of chances to rank simply because there aren’t that many pages of content. However, when you have an SEO-friendly coaching blog, your ranking opportunities are almost limitless.

Each well-optimized blog post that you create that targets an SEO keyword that your coaching website can rank for is another chance to rank higher and get found on Google for terms that are important to your ideal customer. 

Rather than focusing on SEO keywords like grief coach LA or weight loss coach for perimenopausal women, we might focus on the problems they’re facing on a blog and bring them into our world that way.

For example, a blog keyword for the grief coach might be something along the lines of healing after the death of a spouse, or how long until I stop hurting, or the best way to heal after the loss of a loved one. These are longer keywords, and often, they can be the actual title of the blog post. They’re things your ideal customer would be searching for in Google and you can find them in the same keyword research tools that you use to find your keywords for the website.

Your weight loss coach might use blog keywords like – perimenopausal weight gain, why it is so hard to lose weight after 50, and whether it is possible to lose weight in midlife.

Creating a blog content strategy plan that’s helpful for your ideal customer and targeting keywords your website can rank for is the key to ranking higher and showing up more often on Google. Your blog posts will likely get more traffic than your website over the years, so you want to spend time creating great content on your blog that’s helpful for your potential coaching clients and let Google connect the two together with SEO.

If you’re ready to learn how to set this up for your coaching practice, join me in Simple SEO Content. I’ll walk you through how to do SEO on your website and create your blog content.