SEO & Content For Coaches With No Time To Spare
Do you struggle with getting clients to follow your blog? Do you find it challenging to produce content for your business consistently? Are you a coach who wants to grow their practice and build their coaching community but don’t know where to start? If so, this post is for you! I’ll be covering the benefits of creating content for coaches and some tips on how coaches can create valuable content. Read on below!
What Do I Mean By Content For Coaches?
Your content can be anything from blog posts and Facebook lives videos to Social media posts on Instagram or Tik-Tok. All of it exists to engage, entertain, and inform your audience in return for nothing but their time.
Of course, you are doing this to move them along the buyer’s journey towards your service, but they are not immediately paying for the content. So unless you decide to block your content behind a paywall, which only works for the highest quality creations, this will be your strategy.
So, for now, let’s focus on what you can do to use your content to produce a positive ROI. And I know this may seem impossible, but there are ways to make it happen without an in-depth SEO strategy.
Because who has time to do that, produce quality content, and run a business? But remember that you will need content.
Your advertisements won’t sustain you forever, and the time will come when you’ll wish you had a backlog of content drawing in organic traffic to your website.
Why Do Coaches Need Content?
As I already mentioned, you are creating content to move your audience along the buyer’s journey (or sales funnel) and towards a purchase. Which for you is probably enrolling in your coaching program or evergreen offer.
Not many people know this, but products are more valuable than services because a product already exists, and service promises work. And there is no guarantee that the service they pay for will be what they expect.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CTz0asOlA9v/
So your content needs not only to be engaging enough to draw in clients but be authoritative enough to show them that you know how to do your job. In a way, it is similar to an advertisement but on a more intimate level.
On top of that, it’s an excellent opportunity to show off your personality and let your audience get to know you a little better without ever meeting you.
How Do We Make Our Content Valuable?
There are many ways to make valuable content, and how you do so will be reliant on your medium and your industry. So think about what your audience wants and give it to them!
Either way, your content needs to be engaging, meaningful, and interesting. Easier said than done, I know, but that’s the way it is.
A promising direction, whether you’re on Social Media or your website, is to stay informative. People come to you to learn and improve themselves after all.
So give them the resources to do that! Make short Tik-Toks how-to’s that solve problems your audience might have.
Or, if you are more of a writer, then create a post like this one. Again, you will want to be intentional about what you write and target your audience for SEO purposes if you can.
Learn More About How Coaches Can Utilize Search Engine Optimization!
But if you don’t have time for that, start by focusing on problems you are already solving for your audience. It’s a great way to show off your expertise.
Just remember that all of your content should be relevant to your business. Jumping on the most recent bandwagon isn’t going to mean anything if you have a 0% conversion rate.
What If You Don’t Have Time To Make Content?
We all know what it’s like to try writing a blog post. You start with a great idea, and when you get started, the words just won’t come out. Everything you do write seems terrible, and your mind just blanks on the rest.
And even if you are producing consistent content, eventually, that burnout will catch up to you. Or if none of that is true, then maybe you just don’t have time to create content in the first place.
That’s okay! It’s hard to run a business, and it doesn’t leave us time for everything. That’s why we learn how to delegate and optimize.
Consider hiring someone to produce content for you. The time that you save doing it all yourself could be well worth the money.
But if you want to take on the challenge yourself, here are 3 ways to make the process a little easier.
1. Plan Out Your Topics Ahead Of Time
Make a content schedule or just a list of topics that you are excited to cover. Sometimes knowing what you are going to do is half the battle, and figuring that out ahead of time will make everything way more manageable.
2. Outline Your Content
Not everyone is a creative genius, and coming up with great ideas on the spot is hard. This is why you should use an outline to plan out what you will produce before you work on it. You’d be amazed at how much easier content production is with some simple guidelines.
3. Ask For Input
Sometimes we get caught up in our worries and can’t see a finished product for what it is. Asking friends, family, or colleagues for their input is a great way to get a read on a piece of content before it is released.
Doing this is also a little thought of a solution to a creative block and can new ideas start flowing again.
5 Easy Content Ideas For Coaches
- Make a Tick-Tock or Youtube Short showing off some of your successes, this could even be something you could buy because of your coaching income.
- Make a quick how-to guide on something you know how to do well, like setting up a digital funnel.
- Share your morning routine.
- Write a blog post (warning: articles written about topics concerning money or wellness are difficult to rank for organically, but can still be good content)
- Hop on a Facebook live and share some of your ideas.
Search Engine Optimization For Coaches
Many questions come up in the coaching industry about ranking for SEO and what keywords to use. We will answer those questions by talking about different ways you can get more clients and grow your business.
But first, let’s talk about SEO. SEO is an acronym for “search engine optimization.” It refers to all the techniques you use on your site (or blog) to show higher search engine rankings than other sites with similar content.
This post will help you do just that, but don’t worry if this sounds confusing or overwhelming – we’ll break down everything step-by-step!
Why SEO Matters For Coaches
SEO is a crucial part of any digital marketing strategy because it helps potential clients come across your business without ads.
Your site’s ranking will improve over time as you produce more quality content and organically bring a whole new audience to your site.
It’s not just about Google Search rankings- SEO also helps you rank higher on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, which means more traffic coming from people who are already engaged in the conversation you’re having online!
You can use it across your entire website, including your landing pages and blog content. All of which will improve their chances of being found organically, saving you money in the long run on advertising.
What SEO Optimization Means
SEO optimization is when you create a plan to use SEO keywords and techniques on your site to show up higher in search engine rankings than other sites with similar content.
To put it simply, SEO works by targeting keywords that your potential clients search. So when you search for “cute puppies” on Google, the first websites you see are the highest ranking for that term.
It gets a little more complicated once you start aiming for featured snippet spots, but for now, let’s focus on general optimization.
For example, this post is targeting the keyword “SEO for Coaches.” You’ll notice that this term is in the headline, URL, meta-description, and throughout the post. All of these are like flags to Google’s engine and will improve your overall ranking.
Your target keywords will depend on your industry and what type of audience you are targeting—my posts on this site target specific industries looking to solve their digital marketing problems.
Such as my previous post on the Top 7 Social Media Marketing Strategies For Law Firms.
We’ll get into a little bit more of how you can find your keywords and how else to improve search rankings below.
How Google Uses Seo
When you post a page, Google will index and crawl it to evaluate several things.
- What terms are on the page?
- Is it Quality Content?
- Are there other resources (pictures, videos)
- Is it inaccurate or misleading?
- Is it spam?
- How fast does the page load?
- Are there links to other pages on and off the site?
All of these factors will affect the SEO ranking, and there are more that I didn’t include for the sake of simplicity. If you’re interested in learning more about how Google “crawls” your website, here’s a quick explanation from our friends over at Linkbuilding HQ.
In general, the more relevant your page is to a search term, and the better quality content you have, the higher Google will rank your website over others for that given keyword or phrase.
When in doubt, focus on making quality content. None of your optimizations will matter if your audience isn’t finding value in what you post.
When it comes to choosing your keywords, there are a few things you’ll want to keep in mind. The first of which is what you want to rank for.
Just because “Cute Havanese Puppies” is easy to rank for doesn’t mean it’s worthwhile for your business. Instead, think about what problems your audience has and then choose common search terms that solve them.
(let us bless your feed with this smol boi 🥺)
A good and easy way to come with term ideas is to use the Google Autofill and People Also Search For functions. These tools will help you figure out what people are searching for, and you can take those to your SEO tool for an in-depth report.
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SEO Research Tool- SEMRush
There are plenty of SEO tools that you can find online with free or paid programs, but SEMrush is inarguably the best.
There is a lot you can do with these tools in general, such as rating the optimizations of your blog posts, tracking your best-performing keywords, and comparing them to your competitors.
With access to an SEO tool, you can easily plugin and test the difficulty of your terms. So, for a website that’s just starting, don’t worry too much about search volume. Instead, finding terms with a low ranking difficulty (KD%) will be much more worthwhile.
If all of this sounds like gibberish to you, then check out the resources included with your SEO tool. It’s in their best interest to make using it as straightforward as possible for you.
What To Do Once You Have Your Terms
Once you decide what you’re ranking for, you will want to go back and gear your existing web pages towards that goal. Here are a few simple checklists that will help you get optimized quickly.
If you use WordPress, you can download the free Yoast SEO plugin to check all of this for you.
Checklist For Blog Posts
- Is Your Keyphrase In The Headline?
- Is Your Keyphrase In The Meta Description?
- How Many Times Does Your Keyphrase Appear?
- Do you have pictures with your keyphrase in the text?
- Do you have outbound links?
- Are there any inbound links?
What To Do After You Optimize
After you optimize a blog post, your job isn’t over. First, we recommend setting up your website with a Google search console, which will give you access to your page statistics.
You will want to check in every once in a while and see which pages are performing well and which ones aren’t. A poorly performing page could mean that it was not appropriately optimized or just that the content wasn’t suitable for your audience.
Either way, take it as a learning experience and constantly evolve your website to keep up. If you want to scale in the digital space, then this is your chance.
Hopefully, this post answered all of your questions about SEO for Coaches. If you have other questions, you can check out the rest of our resources here.
Or, if you would like someone more experienced to handle your SEO strategy, you can reach out to us here.
This will help you build up trust with potential clients as they’re browsing for coaching services – meaning more leads and ultimately higher sales conversion rates in the future! If this sounds like something you’d be interested in learning how to do yourself (or are already doing), we can help!
If you have questions about our SEO strategy, contact us today!
Editors Note: This guide was originally posted on September 28th, 2021, and has since been updated for quality.
