SEO for Coaches: The Ultimate Step by Step Beginner’s Guide

Ever wonder how to get potential clients to visit your coaching website, read your content, and contact you without having to pay for the leads? The answer: SEO for coaches. 

In this blog post we’ll cover search engine optimization from a coaching perspective including what it is, why you need it, how to do it and what tools are the best to get started. 

By the way, we’re Cass and Tee, web designers and certified life coaches with over 20+ years of experience optimizing websites for search engines. And trust us when we say that SEO still works! You are probably here reading this blog post because you found us by searching for this very topic.

The information we are going to share with you today will help you get started with developing an organic strategy to grow your coaching business. 

Let’s get started! 

What Is SEO for Coaches?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an important strategy for coaches who want to get more traffic to their website without having to pay for advertising. The coaching niche can get competitive, but very few coaches actually make use of good SEO techniques – meaning that if you can do so, you’ll be giving yourself an edge over everyone else.

SEO is about making your site appealing to the search engines so that when people start looking for a coach, your name and your site will appear near the top. SEO isn’t just about keywords but is about search engines being able to find your site and see why it’s useful and how.

Why SEO for Coaches?

So how do coaches benefit? There are a number of that make SEO important for any coach who wants to stand out – and we’re going to explore the advantages it offers below. 

1. It’s A Low-Cost Organic Strategy

SEO for coaches doesn’t have to cost a lot – and very often, it’s cheap! You can learn basic SEO tricks such as integrating keywords and writing high-quality content by yourself with minimal effort. If you do, SEO is essentially free!

Try to think about what you can offer to potential coaching clients; why should they come to your site and what will they learn from it? Play with common keywords and think about how your people phrase their questions.

You could hire people to help you with your SEO strategy, but this guide is going to show you how to do it yourself.

2. It Brings Traffic to Your Website

A website without traffic is not doing you any favors and is probably actively costing you money instead. You don’t want to end up paying for a service that isn’t serving you! The beauty of SEO is that it gets people to visit your coaching website.

This is important because traffic will turn into new coaching clients, new partnerships, word of mouth, etc. And as you get better with SEO for coaches,  your site will begin to appear in the top few links on Google. 

More on that later…

3. It Has A Recurring ROI

Unlike social media, once you figure out SEO you can reap the benefits for years to come. As your website ages, and Google begins to trust you, you’ll start to rank higher in search engines.

As long as your content is relevant and can stand the test of time, it could stay ranked for months and years. This is one of the only marketing strategies that last for so long. 

With social media, you’ll need to constantly update your feeds and promote your posts. These posts stop being effective after a few days. But with SEO, the longer your content stays on your website, the more results you get over time, and there is no extra cost! 

4. SEO for Coaches Increases Brand Credibility

Do you trust the pages at the top of the search engine? Many people do. That ranking is a vote for your credibility, and that’s crucial when it comes to coaching – because as a coach, you need to build a trusting relationship with your clients.

If your website visitors believe you are credible straight away, they are more likely to convert into coaching clients.

Step By Step Guide to Doing SEO for Coaches

Alright… we’ve covered the basics so now it’s time to get to work! Here is an in-depth beginner’s guide to SEO for coaches:

1. Develop Your Ideal Coaching Client Avatar

Before you get started, you need to figure out who you want to attract to your coaching website and what makes them tick. 

If you are a business or executive coach, then your ideal client might be women who are leaders whether at work or in their own businesses. They may be searching for help on becoming a better leader, moving up within their company, or cultivating their voice. 

They may read Entrepreneur or Forbes and follow influencers like Barbara Cocoran or Oprah. They may shop at stores like Nordstorm and make over $100,000 per year. 

All of this information is important because it allows you to develop website content that they want to actually read. The worst thing you can do in SEO is to assume that you know what your potential coaching clients want. SEO is about finding out EXACTLY what your potential clients need and providing that for them. 

👉 FREE RESOURCE: If you aren’t sure how to develop your ideal coaching avatar, we are here to help! Check out our free “Ideal Client Avatar Worksheet” found in our free Resource Library HERE >>

2. Conduct SEO Keyword Research for Static Pages

Now that you know who your ideal clients are, it’s time to get to work and start researching SEO keywords for your static website pages! 

SEO Keywords are the exact words that your ideal clients are typing into search engines to find your content. You’ll use these to let search engines know that your website has the information that the user is searching for.

For this example, let’s say you are a health coach in San Francisco that focuses on holistic strategies and you are looking for SEO keywords to use on your website. 

Step 1: Open a keyword search tool (we like KWFinder) and search for keywords that you think people might be putting into search engines to find coaches in your niche. For example “health coach” or “nutrition coach.”

Step 2: Filter the keywords so that they will be easy to rank for. To do that, set the max keyword difficulty to 30.

Step 3: Save all the keywords that fit your coaching business and your niche and save them to a list to access later. 

Keep researching and collecting as many keywords as possible to use on your website. 

That’s it! Now, let’s get organized so we can use keywords on your website pages.

3. Organize Your Static Pages

By now you should have a good idea on getting started with SEO for coaches. Your keywords should be saved and ready to use on your website! It’s time to organize your static pages. 

Static pages are pages on your coaching website that don’t normally change. Unlike your blog, these pages are rarely updated and are the pages that makeup what you typically think of when you think of a website. 

These pages (see example page list below) normally include your home page, services page, about page, contact page, etc. 

To get started, you want to list out all your pages and place them into a spreadsheet. This will keep you organized and help you remember which keywords you’ve used for each page so you aren’t repeating keywords and confusing Google. 

In that spreadsheet, include the following columns: 

• Page Nickname: This is where you would put the page name as you would normally call it. For example “Home” or “Contact” 
• Focus Keyword: This is where you will place the SEO keyword that you want to focus on for that page. 
• Permalink: This is where you put how you want to structure the URL for the static page. 
• Page Title: This is the title of the page that people will see in search engines. 
• Meta Description: This is a short description of the page that people will see in search engines.

👉 FREE RESOURCE: Download our “SEO Optimization Research Spreadsheet for Coaches” found in our Free Resource Library HERE >>

Okay, you’ve organized your static pages and now it’s time to use the SEO keywords you’ve researched above and optimize each page. Here are some basic rules that you must follow: 

• The exact keyword needs to be in the title. 
• The exact keyword needs to be in your permalink (except your home page).
• The exact keyword needs to be in your meta description. 

Here’s an example of an optimized home page using the health coaching example from above:

Continue until all your pages have been researched and optimized.

👉 TIP: Looking to use SEO on your blog? Check out our article “Turn Your Life Coaching Blog Into A Client Generating Machine!” HERE >> 

4. Start Writing SEO Optimized Content

Congrats on organizing all your pages! You’ve almost mastered SEO for coaches. However, that alone won’t help you get noticed in search engines and rise to the first page of Google. That’s where optimizing your content comes in. 

For every page in your spreadsheet, you need to optimize that page for your keyword. For example, if your keyword is: ‘Holistic Health Coach in Sacramento’, then take that keyword and: 

• add it to your URL, 
• the beginning of your page title, 
• the meta description, 
• the first sentence of your copy, 
• a few of the images on the page, and
• all the headers on your page

…but don’t go over 2.5% keyword density. This means that only 2.5% of the words on that page should be your keyword. Otherwise, Google will think you are spamming, and no one likes a spammer.

Oh, and make sure that each page of your website should also have a minimum of 500+ words.

Follow this exact formula and you should start ranking in search engines. But PLEASE be patient. Nothing in life is instant. It takes about 6-12 months to rank, and a minimum of 12 months to really see traffic and leads start flowing in.

👉 EXTRA HELP: Need help writing high-converting website copy? Check out our Website Copy Guide for Coaches found HERE >>

Our Favorite SEO Tools

Before we go, we wanted to chat a little more about our favorite SEO tools that will help you supercharge your results and turn your website into a client generating machine:

1. KWFinder

Best for SEO Keyword Research

KWFinder is a tool you can use to find keywords that will rank more easily on search engines. It’s no good just choosing a keyword and throwing it into your content – you need to know if it’s actually going to make a difference, or if so many people are already using it that it won’t help your site rank.

This is a tool that’s suitable for anyone trying to find keywords that will rank easily but still have a high search volume. 

It was built by Mangool and is perfect for coaches. You may find that you’re up against stiff competition with some of the more obvious keywords, so this tool can help you find other options that are still easy to incorporate but will drive traffic to your site.

Features:

KWFinder allows you to look at what your competitors are using to increase their ranking, empowering you to deal with the competition effectively. It lets you look at historical search volumes and even find location-specific keywords.

The following is a list of the essential features that KWFinder offers:

• Long tail keyword research
• Competitor’s keyword research
• Organize keywords with keyword lists
• Import keywords in bulk
• Filter keywords that aren’t profitable
• Local keyword research
• Keyword difficulty metrics
• Search volume and keyword metrics
• SERP analysis and SEO metrics

Pricing:

KWFinder has several price plans, including:

• Basic, $29.90 per month
• Premium, $39.90 per month
• Agency, $79.90 per month

It’s worth noting that they offer 40% off if you buy annual plans, which is a significant saving worth considering!  They also offer a free 10-day trial so you can test the product out before paying for it, which is a big benefit if your budget is currently tight.

2. Optin Monster

Best for turning visitors into coaching leads

OptinMonster is a great tool that seeks to increase conversions on your site, and get more email addresses from your potential coaching clients. It’s used by all sorts of businesses, and it can be an effective way to monetize your site.

As a coach, you probably depend on your website to carry your brand and express your personality to clients– and this tool can help you turn it into a cash-generator too. Don’t underestimate the power of advertising space and interactive web pages.

With lots of clever tools, this can give you control over your site and help you better capture traffic that you have driven there via SEO.

Features:

The following is a list of the essential features that Optin Monster offers:

• Hundreds of templates so you can customize the look of the site.
• Drag-and-drop builder that you can use even if tech isn’t your thing.
• Scroll boxes, gamified wheels, floating bars, and lightbox popups. 
• Geolocation targeting for coaches who want to focus on their local area. 
• Popup creator that can even appear if visitors are about to leave your coaching site

Pricing:

OptinMonster have quite a few offers on their site – perhaps utilizing their own tool – so you may find the plans cheaper, but their full prices are:

• Basic, $14/m, billed annually
• Plus, $30/m, billed annually
• Pro, $47/m, billed annually
• Growth, $80/m, billed annually

They also offer a 100% money-back guarantee within fourteen days of purchase, so if you’re not sure whether the product will be useful to you, you’ll have time to test it out and see its results.

3. ActiveCampaign

Turning leads into paying coaching clients

ActiveCampaign has many features, but you might find its ability to help you grow your email list particularly handy. This is ideal for coaches who want to share a regular newsletter or develop a sales funnel.

You can divide up your clients and personalize your email so that you maintain the sense of a one-on-one relationship that is so crucial to good coaching. This is also a good way to touch base with clients between sessions.

The tool will help you find ways to increase your client base and ensure that you keep their attention once you have established a relationship with them.

Features:

The following is a list of the essential features that ActiveCampiaign offers:

• Site tracking so you can see what’s happening on your site.
• Email marketing to keep clients engaged with you and your products/services.
• Email segmentation so you can target emails at the right people.
• Subscription forms, which will help you grow your email subscriber list and reach more people by making the sign-up process simple and attractive.

Pricing:

The pricing varies depending on how many contacts you have on your email list. For example, if you have up to 500 contacts (the lowest amount offered), the following plans apply:

• Lite, $9/m, billed annually
• Plus, $49/m, billed annually
• Professional, $129/m, billed annually
• Enterprise, $229/m, billed annually

However, if you increase that to up to 5000 contacts, you’ll see:

• Lite, $79/m
• Plus, $135/m
• Professional, $199/m
• Enterprise, $359/m

Make sure you account for the number of clients you need to use within the tool – but for most coaches, 500 (or perhaps slightly higher) will be sufficient, so you needn’t worry about the higher costs unless you plan to grow significantly!

Final Thoughts

Thanks to our ‘SEO For Coaches Beginner’s Guide’, you don’t need to google a million things to figure out how to start showing up in search engines as a coach. You have everything you need right here in one place. 

As you saw in the post, SEO is special, and it allows you to organically start attracting your ideal clients. It takes a while to start seeing results, but it’s worth the effort.

Before you get started with optimizing your coaching website, make sure you leave us a quick comment and let us know what you thought of this guide!