Online Coaching

In this episode, we talk about referral strategy. This is the second of a series of 4 episodes covering the topics of Inbound Marketing, Outbound Marketing and Referrals/Affiliate Sales.

Lead generation is the lifeblood of every business, but it doesn't have to be hard. Getting leads can be easy.

In this episode you will learn:

1. The 3 main types of referrals
2. How to turn a trickle into a consistent stream of leads
3. Uplevelling with affiliate programs

Episode links

Drop your referral questions here

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Are you setting up your online coaching business? or scaling up?

In this episode, we talk about procrastination and getting things done. It's such a common problem that makes you spin your wheels instead of moving forward.

Procrastination is common, but learning how to get unstuck especially as a solopreneur coach can make or break your business.

In this episode you will learn:

1. The 3 things that make you procrastinate
2. How to plan for consistent action
3. How to write better to-do lists that help you get unstuck
4. Books that can help you with project planning and mindset

Links

Getting Thing Done by David Allen

Lucky Bitch by Denise Duffield Thomas

10 Steps to Getting More Leads from Your Website and Blog

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In this episode about creating simple onboarding systems for solopreneur coaches, we talk about the essentials and how to simplify every step of the process. Time is precious and admin is not a nice way to spend it!

These tips will help you minimize your onboarding and client admin processing.

>> Contracts - when you really need them

>> Feedback and Onboarding Forms

>> Google Drive or DropBox

>> B2B Coaches

Episode Links and Mentions:

>> DropBox

>> Google Drive

>> CoachVantage

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Full Transcript:

Hey, welcome today we're gonna talk about administration. So basically how to do as little admin as possible in your online coaching. Now you've probably heard before that you need to do at least 50% marketing and 50% coaching. So break down your time, you know, half of it for coaching and half of it for marketing, this is something that has been going around the coaching grapevine for a while.

But of course, it makes you wonder... where do I squeeze in my admin? Now of course automation is key. Absolutely. I love to do as little admin as possible, but there are some things that you need to have in place in order to save yourself a lot of time. Now I have been in this industry for a while. I've had businesses before and I'm a big, big systems lover.

So what I'm going to share with you today is actually probably a little bit of pre. As to my love for simplicity. I love simplicity - there are many great tools out there. I still have not found one that really suits my systems to a T. So I really haven't found one that can really see my processes through from beginning to.

And I'm going to describe to you what I've done, and I'm going to give you a few tips that will really help you save time because there are some things that you think you have to do. But when you think about it, logically, maybe they are not so necessary. For example, let's start with point number one, and tip number one is actually something that I've started doing based on.

So one thing I do is I don't send out contracts to people who haven't paid me yet. So basically what I do is people pay me first. They decide what plan they want, whether they want the payment plan or the full payment. And then only those that pick the payment plan are going to be sent a contract. And the reason is this, you know, if somebody has actually paid you in for.

They, are the ones holding the risk. You're not the one holding the risk. They're the one's sort of sticking their neck out and trusting you. And of course, you know, you're, you're a great coach, you know, you're going to deliver, you know, everything's going to be fine, but of course, They are the ones holding the risk because they don't know that yet, but because they have paid you in full, you're not really running an asterisk, so you really don't have any need to send a contract.

So what this does is it actually saves you quite a lot of time, because let's say, for instance, approximately 70% of my clients pay in full. This means that out of every 10 clients, I'm actually saving. The time it takes to get the contract signed and everything, everything in order for the contracts, I'm saving all that time for 70% of my class.

The clients that do the payment plan of course are going to require a little bit more admin. And, but this is a service that you need to offer, you know, to close sales for some people. But there is absolutely no reason why you'd need to have a contract for absolutely every client. In reality. When you think about it, if people don't want to break a contract, They can, they can, and they do.

And usually, especially when you're dealing internationally and you're in different countries, it's not going to be so easy for people to hold you accountable or for you to hold them accountable. So you have to calculate your risks and make sure that you're taking us to as possible. And then you kind of take the legal side with a pinch of salt.

You also need to remember that in order to get somebody to sign a contract, you have to have. So if you send that to us, the first thing you're going to be toing and froing with emails or forms to collect their information. So the way I do this is once somebody pays, then they go to a form, which is the onboarding form, where I collect all the information I need for the first session to happen, where I map all the content of their coaching sessions, because I customize my one-to-one coaching to the clients.

So to make sure that they achieve theirs. But basically, this form also contains all the legal stuff. So name, surname, business name, you know, VAT, number, everything you need for the financial and the contractual side. So when they pay, they are automatically taking them going to this form. They're going to give me the information, which is going to stop me from to-ing and fro-ing emails when it comes to getting information for the contract.

So what have I done? I have basically as the first step, sent them the payment link once they have paid, I know that they are serious. So this is the point at which I am happily going to give some admin time before they've actually paid is just relationship building, but I'm not going to stay processing paperwork before any of this is for sure.

And set in stone was if paid for me, this is committed. It's a set. They have received the form. They put in the data, people who don't pay the full amount, then we go and take the data from the actual form, which they filled in the onboarding form. And that information goes into the contract and the contract goes out for that client.

In the onboarding form, the client will also find two other things. They will find some information about how to prepare for the first call with me, which is usually the mapping call. So I get to know them better and I can customize the pro. And then they will also find the link to book the first school.

So they actually book themselves in for the first mapping call. I don't have to do anything. I have days in my calendar that are dedicated to this. They can go in and just book themselves. So, so far, if you track it back, what have I done? So all I have done is I've done the discovery call. I've maybe emailed the client once or twice.

If the call if they didn't decide to buy on the call, once they've done the payments, they got the onboarding core onboarding form in this onboarding form. Then they gave me all the details for the contract so that I can send the contract. And then they also find information to prepare for the mapping.

And then link to book the mapping code. So they have booked themselves in. We have practically started the first step of the coaching and I have burly how to do anything when it comes to admin. Now, what happens on the call? Again? The call is designed to get to know the clients. Get to know them really well, and make sure that the program is customized so that they can reach their goals.

We make sure we have enough time for everything they wanted from the program. And we also make sure that they've picked sort of the right duration and that, you know, take a look at what they have, where they come with. Do they have a website? Are they going to change it? Are they blogging? You know, all that stuff to get a very clear picture.

I also would like to get to know my clients from a different perspective, you know, how they work with their clients. How do you collect testimonials and sort of, we also take a good look at all the business? And this takes, you know, the mapping call, which is about 90 minutes during, which were my pout, all the goals that we're going to achieve during the coaching that they do with me.

But like I mentioned, this call can also be used to save you abdomen time. And the way I do it is very simple. At the end of the call, we will go in and we will decide which day of the week and time of that day, they're going to have the subsequent sessions. So if they picked a six-session coaching my six-week program, that we will then go in, we will say, okay, so for the next six weeks, we're going to meet on Thursdays at 5:30 PM.

That's as confirmed by both of us on the call, I put it into zoom, create the event, and then it's ready for the next step, which is to actually create the main documents, the master document that is going to contain everything that we do together in our sessions. Now you can do this by using Dropbox or Google drive.

I use Google drive. I basically have a folder for the client where I share every swipe file, every template, every checklist that I share with them during the coaching. We also sometimes create copy for their packages for their pages. So, you know, there's usually quite a few documents there, but apart from having a folder, they also have an index.

So they will have a master document that links everything. All the notes, everything they had in each session, and then also a link to the replay now. Offering replays is a little bit time-consuming in the sense that you have to wait for zoom to restaurants, the file, you have to upload it to YouTube.

You have to then link it in the document. But for me, this is an important part of the service because the kind of stuff that I teach is stuff that people are going to want to go back and watch again, sometimes we talk about, you know, SEO things that you can. As a second or third step stuff that you need to do to review your content plan after the first six months.

So these are things that my clients I know are going to do off to some time when they've stopped working with me. So they are going to need to go back and watch them. Now, of course, human may not need to give your clients recordings, but if you do, and they are important, then it's very important to how the links in a main document or in a folder somewhere for.

To be able to access it if they don't need it so badly, you can simply allow them to record the session during your session and then allow them to organize it. In my case, I find they are an important part of the service because it's very important that they can access them in the long run. So usually there is nothing left then apart from actually delivering all the sessions, making sure all the content is organized, making sure a nice follow-up email goes out every week, reminding the clients that their actions for the week, the recording and their swipe files have been uploaded to their folders so they can check everything.

And then from the known words, it's a matter of, you know, coming to the end of. The coaching and sending out the form, the feedback form a feedback form is an important part of the process. You can share it with your clients on the last day, or you can simply send them an email. I like to send an email cause I also have some packages which have special rates only for people who have worked with me.

You know, I don't really. Do one-off one hour bookings or even sort of monthly bookings with people who come straight out onto my website and ask me. But I do allow people who have been through my program to book two sessions at a time just to catch up with me or to also book monthly calls on a, on a different of course client only.

But this form. So the form where you're collecting feedback can be very important. So the way you format, this can actually help you get testimonials. It can help you understand whether the client wants to work further with you, and this can also help you understand how to improve what you're doing. So make sure that you ask the right questions.

I'm sure this is a great topic for another episode, and I'm going to jot this down because I will definitely do on about this. And maybe I live in share my forms with you. But for today, the point of the matter is that you actually have to send the form and, you know, invite them to work with you further to upsell or downsell.

And then of course, put your clients on a list where you keep in touch with them in the long-term. So ideally get yourself a CRM or a very simple Excel sheet. Or Google sheets document, which is actually what I use. Now. This process is going to help you a lot. If you are doing one-to-one, if you are selling online, you're going straight from one thing to the other things can be very simple.

And it's also allows you to scale up a little bit in the sense that you have a very predetermined. System and process. And if you decided to take on more clients and the admin becomes a little bit demanding, you can actually hire a virtual assistant for just a few hours to help you with maybe uploading the videos and preparing the main documents and maybe just you know preparing the calls on zoom and things like that.

It's not a lot of work. It really doesn't take very much time. It's literally takes a few minutes per person, but when you're scaling, of course, there's a little bit of support goes along. If you work with B2B businesses and you're a coach that works with large companies where maybe their employees can book you at different times, then this system is not going to work for you so well, but there are coaching platforms out there like coach Vontage is one of them.

There are quite a few more that will actually allow you to streamline this process in a different way. And in fact we will have an episode about these tools in the future. I am actually recording one in the next couple of weeks, so do hang on in there. But for you, you know, if you're going to scale if you're going to hire coaches, then of course this process will break.

If you have more coaches working with you, this is just for people where it is themselves and maybe their virtual assistant. And, you know, you have a kind of incoming. A flow of discovery calls from your website, and you need to process them as fast as possible because of course you don't want to get stuck in, in the onboarding process.

So this is basically my system. The idea came from a client who actually asked me about this last week and she really enjoyed the fact that it's a very simple system. It's a system that has taken quite a few years to create. But my goal has always been. Whenever I do a change. I simplify, simplify and simplify further.

And this has actually been one of the principles that has really helped me grow and improve my business over time. So if I had to give you one piece of advice, it would be to simplify and whenever you see a chance to simplify all over. That's all I had for you today. I hope you enjoy today's episode.

Don't forget to subscribe and I'll see you next week.

In this episode about List Building for Coaches, we talk about '3 Ways to Grow Your Email List Faster and Cheaper'.

These 3 tips will help you get better quality leads onto your list more affordably.

Topics this episode...

>> Qualifying Your Leads

>> Segmenting Your List

>> Creating a Quiz as a Lead Magnet

>> Creating a Mini-Course as a Lead Magnet

>> Boosting Results with Lead Ads from Facebook/IG

Episode Links and Mentions:

>> Interact Quiz Builder

>> Lead Ads

>> 10 Steps to Getting More Leads from Your Website and Blog

 Did you Enjoy this Episode?

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Full Transcript

Hello, thank you very much for joining me today. We are going to talk about how to grow your email list. And it's not just about how to grow your email list. It is very specifically for coaches and we're going to talk about the three fastest ways you can build your email list, but not all email subscribers are built the same, not all email subscribers are.

The same. So today we're going to talk very specifically about those things that are going to help us find really high-quality people to get on our email list. One of the biggest problems a lot of people have been experiencing lately is that Facebook ads have become more expensive. And as you probably already know, Facebook ads have been one of the ways in which a lot of people are boosting their freebies.

To put their content in front of people to grow their email list. Now this has become more expensive and a lot of people have turned to lead ads or simpler ways of reaching more people, which unfortunately has been creating a place where we're getting much lower quality leads on our emails. But today's episode is going to help you resolve the problem because by creating the right freebie and putting it in front of the right people, you can resolve this problem.

You can still keep your costs low. And again, you don't necessarily have to use Facebook ads. We're going to talk about this towards the end of the episode. But most of all, if you have the right kind of content, you are going to get the right kind of leads. That's. By your coaching that will buy your programs, that's will register for your group programs, participate in your challenges when you're launching, they are going to be the right kind of.

So let's dive right in and talk about the first one. Now the first type of freebie, which I absolutely love. I have, in fact, very recently launched my very own after working with clients who are launching their own and had fantastic results. And this is the quiz.

It allows you to really ask quite a few questions to your prospects and you know, of course, you've got to make them fun because they have to enjoy it, but it really allows you to. I get quite a lot of information about this prospect about this person that is interested in your topic. So automatically you are dealing with people who are interested in what you do, and you're going to be able to segment them.

So you're going to be able to put them based on their answers. You're going to be able to put them in the right place on your email list so you can send them more relevant content because of course, that is extremely important for conversion. And you're also going to be able to, filter them in a way that allows you to qualify a lead.

Now, if you haven't heard this term before qualifying a lead means simply sort of ticking those boxes that make this person a good prospective client. So let's take an example. For instance, if you are a sales coach that works with. Your ideal client will probably be a coach. It would be someone who doesn't have enough sales.

It would be someone who is maybe in their first two to three years of business, you know? So you have all these things that describe your ideal client. So you, what you can do with a quiz is you can actually. Use these questions in your actual quiz. So you can ask them how long they've been in business.

You can ask them whether they like selling or not. You can ask them, you know, whether they're being successful with their sales, you can ask them what they have. For instance, if they're using any particular sales tools, so you can really profile your clients quite well. And you can take those boxes that make them a qualified lead.

And then especially if you use interact, which is the tool that I have found recently, I've used it with my clients and I found it really, really good. I will actually link it in the show notes. If you use the right tool, you can actually connect it to your email list and put people in the different groups in your email list based on their own.

So this is really, really valuable. So what this does is it really sort of takes away the heavy lifting from the advert, because let's say I have an ad again, I'm a sales coach for coaches, so I'm running my ads to coaches and maybe similar service providers, but it is actually my quiz that is doing the filtering for.

Which puts me in a fantastic position. So this of course is going to allow you to maybe run lead ads and get a cheaper cost per lead. But it's also going to allow you to then further look at your leads and definitely put aside and segment those that are really strong leads and are perhaps ready to come.

The other leads that I may be a bit cold and not ready to convert. You can be very clear with them. What kind of content you're going to send them? If they don't like that, they'd probably unregistered right away. The ones that do stay on your list, you can then send them your weekly information. And you can slowly maybe get them to register for your podcast or follow your blog every week.

And you can keep nurturing them every single week with additional new content. So that will allow you to then warm them up and an invite them to your next free training, or maybe your next webinar, where you sell your one-on-one coaching and you can keep them alive and keep them warming up within your orbit.

The second one. So that was the. The second one. And it's something that has been around for a long, long time is the free mini-course. Now every mini-course is, has a big promise. It promises quality. It promises a lot of different things. So as a person creating a free training for your ideal clients, also puts you in a great business.

Because if you know your ideal client well, and in fact, I do not recommend this kind of freebie if you don't know your ideal client. Well, because it does take quite a lot of work. So you do want to kind of try to start off with something that takes a little bit less work. If you have multiple ideas, start off with checklists of PDFs and then move to the free mini-course later, when you have validated the kind of content that your audience is looking.

But the mini-course. So this is what he can do. So you can actually take this approach is the simplest one. You have one of two options. The simplest one is promise the same thing. That's your coaching promises. So if you're getting promises to make people happier, your mini course should be happiness goals or you know how to find happiness or how to understand why you're not happy.

It can do one of two things. It can either make exactly the same promise as. Or potentially it could also teach them well, they need to know in order to be ready to buy from you say you're a marketing strategist. You're teaching people. Like in my case, inbound marketing people would ideally have a website before they start working with me.

So one of my mini courses might be teaching people how to actually build their way. Another way of doing this as well is, you know, sometimes maybe you have people, especially with life coaching, maybe your audience, it's not that they don't understand what you did. So they are kind of ready to buy, but maybe they don't yet have the belief that they can do what you're going to help them do.

So maybe, you know, maybe they want to lose weight. Maybe they will improve their life. Maybe they want a divorce, but they've been procrastinating. What's going to happen. What's going to happen is that you are going in this mini course. You're going to kind of make them the same promise that you're coaching the livers.

And then you're going to work on convincing them that they can do this with your. So very often, it's a matter of getting people where they are teaching them that little bit extra information that they need to come closer to buying your program, to really convince them that it's the right thing for them.

And of course, you also want to add things that are going to weed out the ones that are not a good match for your program, because you don't want to convince everybody. You only want to convince the right. Because of course, it just sort of becomes a whole cycle. You want to work with people who are going to get good results.

It's going to be a feel good for you. There's going to be a feel good for them. It's going to be good for your business because you're going to get testimonials. So you always want to make sure that there is a certain level of transparency and authenticity. Although that word is really overused, but there is a certain level of transparency where, you know, you mean well, and you're really giving them this information because you want to help them.

So the next step and take the right decision with the right information. And of course, you also want to give them the confidence that they can do this. This is extremely important because without the confidence that they can do this, they're not going to buy. So working on your prospect's confidence is going to help them.

Then, you know, take that little step of maybe booking the discovery call with you. And it's extremely important that you ask sell your mini course should not just be. I mean, it goes, it also needs to have your call to action. It needs to have a description of what they can do next, or they should do next, whether your help or perhaps even without your help, but you know, how are they going to go to the next level?

And of course, that is where again, you're going to do a little bit more filtering and filter the ones that are ready to talk to you and jump with you on it. Discovery. So once again, it's an important part of your funnel and you should definitely make sure that you close it in the end last, but not least.

It has potentially more of a way of kind of strategy than actually a way of building your email list. But very often this is something that a lot of new coaches do not understand. And this is why I'm a big believer that new coaches should not be building their email list. It should not be their main focus.

It should be their secondary focus and by secondary focus, I mean that you should be using things like blog and social media distribution to build your reputation on your authority to become. And to get to book your discovery. Cause, and then as kind of a side goal, you could also have maybe a popup on your sites that appears for all those people who are leaving your site.

So those who have already booked your session, great. Those who haven't might actually jump on your freebie, but you don't want to make that the main thing because you end up putting people on your email list and then you're sent on booking or discovery calls. So if you're starting out booking your discovery, Is going to be the main goal, but once you're ready to add another strategy for actually building your email list and you have a little bit of spare money, even if it's just, you know, two or 300 years a month to start building your email list, then you can definitely start looking at these two options that we have looked at, which is the quiz and the mini course.

But. You've probably noticed if you have tried this before, it's very hard to actually grow your list at any particular speed. If you're using only organic mediums, because you're assuming, going to run out of people in your Orbis and in other people's Facebook groups who actually want to join your list.

So using Facebook ads, or maybe any other type of social ads, really, because you can use Pinterest ads, you can use Twitter ads, you know, there's different kinds of. I mainly talk about Facebook and Instagram ads because they're the ones I've used the most, but you can actually also use Google ads, which is something that I'm actually experimenting with at the moment.

So you will be hearing more about this in the future. When you talk about Facebook ads, we know that prices have gone up tracking has become a little bit difficult since they've added the iOS update. It has become trickier. But you still can have lead ads and I will actually link a place if you don't know what lead ads are.

I will actually add a link so that you can find out more, but they're basically ads that allow people to register for your freebie without actually leaving Facebook. And this is a great option. You also have the option of, let's say, if you have a quiz, you can turn it into a nice post and then you can boost it.

Of course you would need to create your audience before. So that you have, you know, your audience ready there to quickly just add to your boost. And then, you know, you can show your ads to whoever you want, but of course it really helps when your freebie or, you know, your, a free course or your quiz are actually doing the heavy lifting for.

To really warm up your audience in terms of the mini course and in terms of the quiz to really filter. So in fact, you can also combine the strengths of the two and actually filter people through the quiz and then send them the mini course later. So you really filtering people to see, to get the warmest of leads, and then you're sending them this mini course, which is going to warm them up even further.

So that's definitely something that you should think. But in terms of Facebook ads, like I mentioned, it's important to understand that it's going to be inevitable. So if growing your email list is something you want to do, and again, why would you want to do it as a coach? You want to grow your email list for two main reasons.

Either you want to sell more one-to-one or you want to get people. To actually join your group program may be you're going to launch a group program. So-and-so obviously you're going to need more people. And this is the main reason why coaches actually build email lists. They need to have more people.

They need to have more volume in order to book their group coaching programs. But it's not as easy as that because even just need to put them on your list, you need to warm them up and he needs to make sure that they're the right. One thing that a lot of people don't actually tell you is that people who join your email list are much more likely to convert in the first few weeks when they have joined your list.

So, one thing you want to make sure of is that before you actually start building your email list, you work on an email sequence that gets people to do what you want them. This is something I work on with my clients very often because they are looking to book to go to group programs in the future.

So one of the things you need to do is make sure that once, if they'll know, did your freebie, you are guiding them. They're either going to go to your one-to-one and you can start off directly from the thank-you page. And then those that don't book from the thank-you page, and you can actually warm them up further before masking.

Alternatively, you can go to the free training and the free training can be a mini course, or it can be actually something like a challenge or a webinar. So you can then get the people on your email list to get to know you a little bit better and you can offer them one-to-one or you can actually launch your group programs like that.

But one thing you cannot do is ghost your email list. It's already, statistically does not convert very well. If they have been on your list for a long time. Yeah. So what you want to do is you want to keep your email list, always fresh with new people coming in, and you want to keep doing quite a lot of things, especially if you're launching, if you don't have a lot of resources and you're just dipping your toes in the water and you're just starting out, but you do want to have group programs.

You can use actually a strategy, which I use. I am not very big on email marketing. At this particular stage, it's not something that is one of the main priorities in my business, but it is something that is works very well combined with launching your group programs. So you could decide to launch a group program two or three times a year and use this boost, the budget of your group program to actually.

Build your email lists and it kind of works naturally because you're going to have some free training with your launch. Usually you're going to have maybe some webinars. You may also want to boost your freebies just before all this activity starts. So that's, so you can actually combine everything, but you don't do it, you know, 24 7 all year round, you do it in two or three sprints a year.

So you're grabbing your list, but you're also doing it. Okay. Like I mentioned before, like a little bit of a secondary, it's a bit of a secondary goal. It's not exactly the main thing. Cause if you're launching, of course your main goal is going to be to get people, to come to your free trading and to buy your program.

So it's going to be a secondary goal, which is going to work just. Okay. So I hope you found this useful. I'm pretty sure that you have a lot of questions after listening to this episode. I know that it's very difficult to cover something like this and in just one episode, and I'm sure there will be more episodes about this in the future.

If you have a specific question and you want to hear something very specific about this topic, feel free to email me on info [at] Stephaniefiteni.com. Or you can go to Stephanie fatina.com/podcast, check out the show...

In this episode about content ideas for coaches, we talk about 'How to never run out of content ideas again!'.

We also talk about how to find content ideas that people are already looking for. Because not all content is created equal. And if you're going to invest time and money into creating content you want to make sure it generates leads for your business.

Topics this episode...

>> How not to come up with content ideas

>> Keyword research for coaches

>> Other resources to give you more ideas

>> How to pick the right ideas

>> What to do next

Episode Links and Mentions:

>> Keyword Finder: The tool I use for Keyword Research

>> GET ON MY LIST HERE (to hear about my next free keyword research training)

>> www.answerthepublic.com

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Subscribe to this Podcast Here

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Are you setting up your online coaching business?

And need support deciding which tools are best to get payment, book calls, onboard clients, and market yourself? and help to set them up?

Then check out 'The Online Coaching Business Bootcamp' https://my.stephaniefiteni.com/online_business_success_toolkit

Full Transcript

Hello, thank you for joining me. You're listening to the profitable online coaching podcast, the place where we talk about everything, online coaching, including marketing, business models, tools, and mindset.

Hello, thank you very much for joining me today. Where are you going to talk about content ideas most specifically about how to never run out of content ideas? We want to create content that people are actually looking for. So we're going to take a little bit of a different angle today. We're not going to talk about the usual, oh, find the five pillars of your business and write down the alphabet and think of an idea for each, or, you know, take a look at your competition.

We're not going to talk about these usual run of the mill ideas. We're going to talk about keyword research and which, if you know anything about me, you will know that I am really quite keen. So why am I so keen on keyword research? I am very keen on it because it's giving me a real picture of the real world.

It's not something that I have made up. There is no guessing. There is no making up ideas. There is no copying your competition, which is a big mistake because your competition, especially for. They are never going to be exactly the same kind of people that you want to attract, even if you are offering exactly the same thing, a perfect match client for you is not going to be the same perfect match client for your competitors.

So by copying their strategy, what you're really doing is attracting potentially the wrong kind of. So the system I'm going to teach you today is actually a small part of the blueprint that I used, the profitable contact method at some small part of the blueprint that I use with my clients. And it is the most important.

And, you know, you're going to find a lot of training out there about keyword research, which is the key to finding contents that people are looking for. However, keyword research can be done in a lots of different ways for coaches. It needs to be done in a very human way, which means. That the research over your ideal client and the way you connect that to your keyword research is absolutely key to your long-term success.

I was actually talking to a client yesterday and I was telling them how you don't need a lot of traffic. A lot of my clients, even myself, my website doesn't have thousands and thousands of visitors a month. I get around. 500, 600 visitors a month unique visitors. And that is more than enough to keep my one-to-one sessions.

Superbugs up, even my waiting list. Yeah. In fact, my next step is going to be to actually channel the people that come from a CEO into my group program because I cannot keep turning people away because you know, it's, I have too many leads coming from my websites. And the conversion rate is super close to a hundred percent because I have done my research when it comes to the idea of class.

I have also done my research when it comes to the keywords and I have put the two together and I have a solid content plan, which I follow every week. I blog twice a week. I do try. Hit three per week when I can. But most of the time I actually prefer to focus on the quality and that works absolutely fine.

So how do we do keyword research and how are we going to get it right for our coaching business and how is it going to give us content? Now, again, as a podcast, it's a little bit hard to not do this visually. In fact, in the show notes, I'm going to link, I have a blog post that actually shows how to do the keyword research with, with screenshots.

I also encourage you to download the freebies from my website. I will actually link it to the podcast as well to the podcast show notes, because I encourage you to jump on my email list because a couple of times a year, I actually run F. Keyword research training. It's actually a client attraction training, but one of the key topics that we tackle is actually keyword research.

So if you want to learn how to do this properly, I highly recommend that you download one of my freebies and jump on my email list so that you're there when I open the free training, but getting back to the content. So what you want to do is you want to make sure that the. You know your ideal client.

Well, you should not start your keyword research before, you know, your ideal client. Well, now I can already hear some of you say, oh, maybe I'm too much in the beginning of my business. I haven't worked with so many people. Maybe I've worked with people that are so diverse. I'm still not sure who's going to be my ideal.

So the first thing you got to do is pick, pick, think of the ideal situation. The kind of people you'd want to work with if money was no object, if money was not a problem and getting clients was not a problem, which of these clients would you pick? Which ones you feel are a natural connection are, have a natural match with you, and then start defining this ideal clients.

So you would want to think of. What they do, what their life is like, what their family background is like, what their business looks like, what they want to do in life. If they don't have a business, of course, the kind of pain points that you're resolving and helping them with. So you need to build a really nice, detailed picture of this ideal client.

And once you've done that, you should have a list of all the struggles that they're dealing with small and. And I say small and big because I see a lot of people focusing on the big problems, like being stuck, going through a divorce, but what really makes keyword research powerful is focusing on the little, on the small struggle.

Like for instance, instead of focusing on, you know, dealing with a divorce, you know, if I go to keyword research tool, which again, I'll, I'll link you to my favorite keyword research tool in the show notes, because it's one of the few tools that actually allows you to keep really nice track of your keyword research by saving it to.

So basically what you want to do is you want to go to the micro struggles. So let's say if you're a divorce coach, you might be looking at keywords around divorce, but when you look at sort of more specific things, like for instance, how to find the right attorney or how to find a particular form, maybe they're looking for a particular form that they need to fill in to process something in the court.

So whatever is a daily, small struggle, even things, maybe how to discuss with your husband about, you know, your children's arrangements after divorce, anything that is a smaller struggle, anything that is real every day. Anything that they're going to need to really tackle is. I fantastic keyword. So by going more niche, and this is something I know you have heard ad nauseam, you have heard it.

Oh my goodness. All the time from everybody. But the truth is that when you niche down, so if you become as specific as possible, it's going to be really easy for you to understand what the specific problems are. Now, if you're creating content like, uh, videos on YouTube or blog posts on your website, This is something you don't need to worry about too much, because you can actually align to different ideal clients and have different content for them because people are going to find you through search.

So you don't need to worry about confusing people. You know, you need to worry about that. On social media, you cannot talk to more than one different person on social media, but when it comes to SEO and also when it comes to, making, making videos and putting them on YouTube, these are found by searches.

So you can actually have more than one ideal client and they're going to find your content and they're going to. To your, in your orbit, they're going to come into your universe through this little window, which has that keyword, which is defining the struggle that. So this kind of makes it very easy as well for new coaches.

So if you're a new coach and you don't really know what your keywords might be, you don't really know who you're going to specialize in yet. You don't know how you're going to niche. What do you need to do is you need to think of all the struggles that you, your particular coaching and your services are going to resolve.

And then what you do is you go to a keyword research tool and start trying to find. All the different struggles that you resolve and what people are punching into Google and other search engines connected to these topics. This will give you amazing insight into how the people who have these particular problems are actually thinking and it's could really actually set you up for creating some fantastic content, because you will be able to see the kind of questions they asking the kind of.

You know, the kind of topics that they're putting in the longer, the phrases, usually the more the information they're going to give you now let's get down to the technical side. So what you want to do is you want to find a tool. The, the tool I use is called keyword. Find. I know it's like, if you type that into Google, there's no way you're going to find that because it's their old keyword finders.

But I am going to put a link in my show notes for this particular episode. So, and then yet, you know, Once you've got the tool you'll again. And usually you can pick whether you want to find keywords, research traffic for your particular area or internationally. Of course, if you're working online, you know, borders are usually not a problem.

So you can go for internet. And then what you want to do is you want to punch in your keyword. You can even start with a broad topic, ideally not super broad, so not like one word, you know, you want to have at least two words. So for instance, let's save your life. Uh, and you help people get unstuck. You know, you, you would say gets on stuck in life or get on stuck at work or, uh, whatever, whatever your clients has, that kind of struggle.

So you can be pretty specific and still be quite broad. And then what you'll find is that the tool itself is going to give you not only. The traffic, if the keyword has any traffic of that particular keyword, but it's also going to give you, all these other recommended keywords with their traffic.

And this is where the gold is because this is where all your ideas can come from. You can literally type in a particular topic and see so many different. And the cool thing is that you can actually see the traffic. So you'll be able to see which ones are being searched more, which ones, you know, are not being searched so much, maybe different ways of actually expressing the same thing.

Sometimes, you know, this happens in every industry. Very often the words we use are not the same words our clients are using. So that is a very important thing because the keywords will actually show us what words our clients are. So, what you want to do is you want to take, make a big list of these keywords.

And I can assure keyword research is a big rabbit hole. It's, it's a really difficult to come out of. So give yourself a time limit or a keyword. So say you want to find 50 ideas, 50 keywords, you know, give yourself an hour and make sure that he kept it because it's really easy to spend half your day and like have hundreds of keywords.

And then you won't know where to start, where to begin to actually start sorting them. So keep a lid on it because it is a lot of fun actually. It can drive you crazy if you find too many, so make sure you don't have too many, any. The great thing about using this keyword research approach to find ideas is that you can pick the ones that already have traffic and perhaps start off with the ones that don't have a lot of competition, because they can be hard to rank for.

And then you already know that your blog posts and your videos, aren't going to be, you know, optimize the people that are already going to be looking for those particular. Of course, it takes a lot more than just finding the keyword to optimize your blog posts and optimize your YouTube videos for search and, you know, to be found.

You can do that with our podcasts as well. And any other medium that you use it? However, of course this is an enough's topic and we won't be covering it on this particular podcast. but you know, stay tuned because I'm sure it's something we would cover in the future. but one of the things you want to keep in mind is that there is already traffic out there.

So you are going to be. Sort of relax and you can rest assured that there is traffic out there and people are going to respond. And of course you can also then share these blog posts and share this content on social media. And it's going to attract people more because these are the natural struggles.

These are the natural words. These are the natural topics that people out there are looking for now, especially if you want to have content, that is question. There are other tools you can use out there, like answer the public. The only problem is that these sites don't actually give you an idea of which ones are more popular, which ones are being searched.

So what you can do, you can actually use something like the. if you Google it, go to or go to answer the public.com, you will find this website, you can put in a topic and you'll get a lot of questions. I will link that in the show notes as well. And you can then after that, maybe take them into your keyword tool, and find out if they have traffic.

So that's just another alternative for you. If maybe you are out of ideas and you don't really know your ideal client. I hope that this has helped you. It will definitely if you follow this, step-by-step, it will definitely mean that you never ever run out of content ideas again. And it's not just regular content it's content that already has an audience.

So it's a real no-brainer, you're going to feel so much better about sitting down and creating this content because you don't have to wonder whether it's going to hit home with your audience. The only thing left will be to optimize it. And it's a bit later, but until then, good luck with your content ideas. And I hope you'll join me again for next week's episode.

Did you enjoy this episode? Please share it with friends and colleagues and anyone who you think is going to find this useful.

My guest today is Megan Huber, a Business & Leadership Mentor for established women entrepreneurs, helping them move from being overwhelmed and overworked to leading their lives and businesses from a soul first, strategy second approach.

Megan combines her experience as a high school teacher, competitive athlete and sports coach, and running multiple 7-figure coaching programs to help business owners optimize their already successful businesses with an emphasis on simplicity, sustainability and structured freedom.

We talked about...

>> Building trust

>> Facebook group marketing

>> Upselling and Renewing Clients

>> Getting to 6 Figures in your first year/s

>> Onboarding systems and exit interviews

Episode Links and Mentions:

>> https://www.facebook.com/groups/tribeoflegendswithmegan

 Did you Enjoy this Episode?

Subscribe to this Podcast Here

YOUR NEXT STEP?

Do you want to create a Marketing System in your business that generates more discovery calls and leads on automatic from organic search engine traffic?

Then let's talk...

Book your free call here

In this episode about SEO for coaches, we talk about 'How to Optimize Your Website'. 4 tips that will help you optimize your website structure and tech so that your content flies.

Topics this episode...

>> Organizing your website in logical content groups or categories (with one top keyword)

>> Optimize the pages of your sales pages

>> Create category landing pages

>> Add blog entry points all over - homepage, footer etc.

>> Hide pages from search engines

Episode Links and Mentions:

>> 10 Steps to Getting More Leads from Your Website and Blog

 Did you Enjoy this Episode?

Subscribe to this Podcast Here

NEXT STEP?

Are you setting up your online coaching business?

Need help getting your online coaching business set up and your marketing in ship shape?

Book your free call here

Full Transcript

Hey, thank you very much for joining me today. We're going to talk about SEO for coaches. Today's episode is a continuation of this. The SEO for coaches series, which I am running on the online coaching podcast. Last week, we talked about writing for search engines. And this week we're going to talk about how to optimize your web.

Now, of course, not all websites are created equal, but of course, optimizing for search engines is possible for practically every platform out there. There are some platforms that are not so great. Maybe they may not have all the features, so you're going to need them. Programming and extra plugins or extra features to do it.

But generally, if you have a website that is built-in WordPress or a website that has built, you know, in the most common platforms where you have actually access to all the features from your dashboard, or specifically has some kind of SEO features, then you can do this. We're not going to go into super technical.

SCO, we're going to go through just a few tips that I have tried over the years, and I know work for specifically coach websites. Now you might think. What makes a coach website different? Well, what makes a coach website actually a little different from other types of websites is you're probably right. I'm not selling a lot of products.

 And if you are, I recommend you don't. But that's a topic for another episode. But definitely, you know, it's not like e-commerce, you're not selling a lot of things. You are actually. Selling just a few packages. What you're explaining tends to be a little bit abstract. So, you know, search engines can have a bit more difficulty understanding you.

 We also will not have million pages because it's not that kind of site. You don't have a lot of different topics to go into. You just have a handful. So coach websites tend to be. Very similar to, you know, typical sort of service-based small businesses, like we're talking about therapists, consultants, this kind of thing.

So when I say coach websites, I'm specifically referring to the kind of site that probably has five or six, maybe seven menu items at the top, and then a blog or a podcast. And then, you know, like that serve as content. So, what do you need to do in order to make sure that it is well optimized? The first thing you want to worry about is your organization.

Now I know not everybody is naturally organized, but when it comes to websites, you really cannot skimp on this. So a little bit of thought and a little bit of support, especially when it comes to organizing your categories and your blog pages is going to be super important. So what you want to do is you want to make sure that you pick just a few categories.

Usually, about three or four and you collect all your content within these three or four categories. Again, these categories need to be keyword-based. So it's important that you pick the right keywords. They don't have to be super easy to rank for keywords because these are your categories. They're going to get a lot of strength in the long run, but you want to make sure that.

They kind of explain to people and to search engines, what you're really about. So this is probably the trickiest spot. You want someone to come in, take one, look at your categories and know exactly what you're about because part of optimization is actually using your whole website and the way you organize it.

So actually tells such engines who they should be giving your content to, who they should be showing your content to serve. So, this is very important. It's probably the one thing that's going to make the biggest difference in your search engine optimization. So get this right. If you can't do it yourself, get the help of a consultant.

You can even get in touch with me if you want, but it's very important that you get this right from the. The second thing you want to make sure you do is to optimize also your sales pages. Now your sales pages would not naturally be categorized as the pages where you have your packages. Maybe you run a program once or twice a year selling a course.

So any page that is designed to. Is, of course, going to be harder to optimize when it comes to copy, especially if you've hired a nice, good high-quality copywriter for your sales page, or maybe you've trained yourself and you've written some nice sales. You don't really want to kind of compromise that for full keywords.

You don't want to just add keywords and kind of ruin the whole flow of things, because of course, that is a page that is written for people, not for search engines, but there are ways in which you can optimize this. And it's very important that you have at least your keyword in your URL. So in your web address and you have sort of the keyword peppered through it a little bit, he just wants to sort of optimize lightly without.

Butchering if that is a word but I could use copywriters would often use this word of, for SEO people. You know, there are, especially when the SEO person does not really know copywriting, they tend to be able to disrespect the copy. So, you know, SEO writers can sometimes really butcher a piece of copy, especially if it's highly fine-tuned sales.

So don't go overboard obviously puts the sales pitch first because you want to make sure that the people who do Lander are going to buy, and that is more important. Conversion rates come first. And what is going to happen with your sales pages is that your blog is going to make these pages more relevant.

To the actual keyword that you're using. So even if it's not super well optimized, just because the site is optimized for that particular keyword here's has pages that start ranking. Again, most people are not going to go directly from Google to your sales page because they are looking for something different.

So what's going to happen is they're going to go to your blog posts and then they're going to navigate to the work with me section or the services section, just to check out what you're selling. So most of the time, this is going to be step two. They're not actually going to enter the website through your specific Cinespace.

So keep that. But it does really help to optimize them a little bit. The next thing you want to do is make sure you have category landing pages. A lot of people skimp on is because it does not come as a natural part of most templates when it comes to websites and not even WordPress, which is the most commonly used one for people who really want to take a CEO seriously.

So what. First of all, let's explain where these pages are found. So let's say you have a blog, it's got category, a category B category C. We are referring to the page that you see when you actually click on the category names. So let's say you click on category a and insight. It normally let's say if you're using any theme, actually, normally if you click on that category, you're going to see a page that has all the blog posts that are in that particular case.

Now, what you want is you want to have space for text here. You want to have some nice menus. You want to sort of make it a nice buzzing page where it really explains its validity on your website. Why it's there the kind of content you're sharing? You know, you want to imagine that. People are coming kind of into, into a place where you themed it with this particular category.

So of course it is going to serve mostly search engines because most people are going to come to your website through a search result directly to your blog posts and directly to your book, a call link. So they're going to book the discovery call directly. They're not probably going to even see these categories.

At full search engines is a very, very important because you need to have all these elements that tell a search engine, what this category is really about. And with coaches, this is so important. There are websites out there that's ranked without it. But I really feel that for coaches is a super important because coaches can have, you know, vague topics and also they can also have very similar topics to each other, but then have very different ways of achieving.

So, you know, if you're a life coach and you help people, for instance, who are in an unhappy marriage to, to get out, you know, you'd promising happiness, you promising a better life, but you're still kind of making the same promises as somebody who is maybe helping people who are stuck in an unhappy career, whatever the kind of person you're targeting.

You're kind of gonna have the same keyword as. It's still going to be around happiness. So what can you do? So this is why the category pages really important. The category page allows you to use all the different keywords. When you have space for texts over. So it's going to allow you to really tell search engines how you're tackling this topic and who it's really for one way.

I love to also make it more clear. What my category is about is, you know, I would get a couple of articles that actually mentioned my target audience in the title. And also link them in that copy. So you don't need to have a lot of copy and not, you don't need to have a lot of words in your category page, but you do need to have, I don't know, a 300, 400, 500 word description.

Some SEO people would actually tell you to have a lot more. I don't feel that you need that because all the summaries of your blog, they kind of add up to the wording of the actual. Another thing that really, really helps now this, again, maybe not such a search engine tip but it really helps conversion.

So one thing you want to do as well, you want to have your pinned post. So if you're a site can do that. My WordPress is sorry. My website is a word for a site and it can do this automatically. So my cats agree then has a pinned post, which is a post that always appears the time. And it's important that you pick the right article, because let's say let's take my websites.

As an example. If you go into Google and you type in digital marketing for coaches, you're going to find my website. And what happens is you're going to find a category page to actually ranks for that keyword. That category page has a description there out a few links, but then it's also has a pinned post.

This bent post is there to help your convert. So you want to pick an article that would really appeal to someone who searched the keywords that is taking people to this page. Now, of course, you're going to do this in in the beginning. So you can only do it in retrospect, once you know, which keywords are actually guiding people to that particular page.

And it's probably going to be exactly the same keyword as the category. Then you can just pick which post is going to sort of answer the query to help people stay on the page, because that is very important. If people don't stay on the page, you will not stay. And it's off position in Google, even if you have managed to get there.

So very important point. So the next thing you want to do is add blog entry points all over your website and by blog entry points. I mean, you know, like. Blog summaries and the homepage, you know, you have these like the three latest blogs. You can have links in your footer, in your sidebar or any other place that your website allows you to add all these different links.

The reason why we do this is because we want to make sure that. No matter which pages on our website gets indexed gets crawled. You know, Google can actually find new content and new links to the new blogs on your website. So very, very favorable. If you use links that simply take you to the latest blog posts, because they're always going to find a different blog, which makes it really search engine friendly and really helps you climb the ranks.

Mark. And the last thing you want to definitely not forget again, this is something you don't hear a lot of. In search engine optimization, but it really makes a big difference if you've ever had problems, ranking a website that has a lot of pages about similar topics or, you know, different angles. If you've ever had difficulty ranking something, you learn this, you learn this the hard way.

So w the last thing you need to do and very important is to strategically hide certain pages from being. You weren't going to have some pages in your website that are perhaps too generic or maybe too personal. You know, some people like storytelling and you can have blog posts, that have personal stories that are maybe not so great to optimize for search engines.

And they might actually confuse search engines as to what your website is. A. So if you have a number of pages that are about a topic that maybe your audience loves, but it's just not relevant from a sort of robotic logical point of view for boats, just leave them on your page, share them on social media, allow your clients to find them there because they love them and they can relate, but do not include them in your search engine.

Make sure that you use either a plugin or a tool for your particular platform to hide these from search engines it's easily done. It's not something very complicated, you know, just Google your own platform. Let's say go to WordPress, how to hide pages from Google and you will find the answer how to do that.

Okay. So we've reached the end of the episode. That's all I had for you today. If you're interested in getting more leads and traffic from your websites, I am going to add a PDF guide, which takes you through the 10 steps to help you get more leads from your website and blog. It's going to be in the show notes.

In this episode about SEO for coaches, we talk about 'How to Write for Search Engines'. 4 tips that will help you create blog posts that rank on the first page of Google.

Topics this episode...

>> Writing foe Search Engines

>> Optimizing your articles for Search Engines

>> On-site linking

>> Meta Description

>> Alt Tags

Episode Links and Mentions:

>> Keyword Finder: The tool I use for Keyword Research

>> Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin

 Did you Enjoy this Episode?

Subscribe to this Podcast Here

NEXT STEP?

Are you setting up your online coaching business?

And need support deciding which tools are best to get payment, book calls, onboard clients, and market yourself? and help to set them up?

Then check out 'The Online Coaching Business Bootcamp' https://my.stephaniefiteni.com/online_business_success_toolkit

Full Transcript

Hey, thank you very much for joining me today. We're going to talk about SEO for COVID. Today's episode is a continuation of the series, the SEO for coaches series, which I'm running on the online coaching podcast. Last week, we talked about the four steps you have to follow to create your SEO strategy.

And this week we're going to talk about writing for search engines. This is one thing I get so many questions about, and it's actually one of the things I really go deep with in my training programs with my clients and also in my one-to -one sessions. So my advice on writing for search engines is don't. Yeah, just don't write for search engines.

I mean, you can optimize for search engines and it's perfectly fine, but we do not write for search engines. I often come across people who say. That they are search engine, and writers or SEO writers or, and this just completely rubs me up the wrong way. And I'll tell you why. I mean, I always teach my clients.

We write for people. We do not write for search engines. Although of course we are going to do keyword research and we are going to weave those keywords into the article. We still do not write for search engines. So what we do is the first thing is to just write for people. So the first thing you need to do is, you know, your title, your title has to be based on your keyword.

And it has to be based on the right topic that allows you to then optimize the article for that particular keyword. But it does not need to be written specifically for that. So once you have your title and you know, your title is kind of going to take you in the right direction so that you cover that key.

Then you forget the keyword. So you sit down and you write an article and you think of your ideal client. If you think of what they want, you think of how you can possibly give them as much value as possible. And also how you can find ways of maybe getting them to engage or take some action after reading your blog post.

Once you're happy with that, then you can go into the optimization. When it comes to optimization. My first tip for you is to use one keyword. You've probably heard that, you know, with Google getting more complex and modern a CEO and you know, some people are using two keywords or maybe even three to optimize one blog post.

And I can understand that kind of approach, but there are two problems with it. The first thing is it's going to be really difficult for you to track what you've used as a main keyword and sub keywords. Over time, you can have so much overlap. It just becomes really overwhelm. So, what do you do instead?

You just use one keyword and this one keyword you keep track of. Now, Google is still going to decide which keywords are going to rank you for. So you could choose a keyword like marketing for coaches, and then Google decides to rank you for coach marketing instead. So in reality, Google is smart enough to optimize, look at your article and still rank it for different keywords, although you are not using those different keywords.

So I think this is a little bit of an old fashioned idea. Google gets smarter and smarter. And we really don't need to spoonfeed very much, especially if our website is structured in the right way. And all the other content of our website is going to tell Google what we're really about. So then, you know, Google can take decisions about what your article

should be served for. So, you know, what other keywords your articles should be saved for? So definitely stick to one keyword because that makes it easier. Now, there is sometimes going to be a problem that you have a very long keyword can be a whole sentence sometimes, and it becomes really difficult to optimize for a whole sentence.

You know, how many times can you use it? So what we do is you can actually, in that case, take a look at synonyms. Phrases. That means the same thing and use a mixture of those. So that in that case it works perfectly fine. But as a long-term strategy, I prefer, and it works very effectively to just use one keyword.

The next. Tip for writing for search engines is to use internal and external links. Now, when you're writing, keep in mind all the other topics that your website is about, especially the ones in the same category that you're writing for and in a way it's going to happen naturally. But also, if you think of your article in the context of the category, it's going to be published and then this is going to be so much easier for you to optimize later.

So definitely think about what internal links you can have. So how you can find words in your article and link them to other articles on your website. And also two articles outside your website. Once your links are sorted, you will want to think about my next tip for you, which is the meta-description the meta-description sometimes referred to as the meta description.

They are one in the same thing. It actually does not appear on your page. But it has a very important role for search engines. In fact, when you go and punch a keyword into Google, you will see that you get a search results. The search results would normally have a title. It will have a date at the bottom of your blog is dated.

It will also have a short description. And the short description is your meta description. Most of the time, I'm say most of the time, because sometimes if you don't have one or if you don't have one that Google likes, maybe it's too long or too short, they might just pick at random and take a piece of your art.

But generally we want to do a good job of our meta-description because this is going to tell Google what our keyword is. So we definitely want to have our keyword in there. So this is going to tell Google what it's about, but it's also a very important part of the whole SEO strategy, because this is the part that people will see.

And apart from the title, which is of course extremely important to have a clickable. But your meta-description is the second most important because that's what people read before they actually. Your search out as the one they want to click on. And the more people click, of course, the higher your searches all goes.

If you are in the first search results, if you are in the first page, then you're going to rise to the top. As long as people click on your result, you will stay at the time. So, this is extremely important. I also like to add a call to action, and this is a little trick that a lot of SEOs use. So you can use a call to action.

You can describe what your article is about, and then you can write click here or read more. Or, you know, see more or just more with three dots on it, whatever you do. It's important to have a call to action because call to actions will increase the amount of people that actually click on your search results.

A lot of search results will not have your call to action. So you will have a little advantage there. So why is the meta-description so important? The meta-description actually in the old days, there used to be just. And this one method description used to describe the whole size, but today you can have a meta description for every page and for every blog post on your website.

And this is a very good way of kind of summarizing to Google. What your article is about. So this might be a little bit tricky. It can't be very long. You can only have about 25 words in it because of course it's also important that it shows properly on mobile. So 25 words to actually appeal to people to click.

And also to explain to Google what your page is all about. So meta-description put the work in it. Shouldn't take you too long, but definitely make sure that you have one. Now, since this does not normally show you usually need an SEO tool on your website to use this. So if you using WordPress, then this should be a plugin called Yoast.

And there are other sites like WIX that have their own sort of embedded features. And there are unfortunately also platforms that don't allow you to do this. And this is why you will hear that some platforms are better than others for SEO with WordPress, probably being the most popular and then other tools that's appeared more recently on the block that are perhaps not as well optimized.

It's really allow you to you know, make too many changes and put a meta tag for all your different. Okay, so to finish off, I have one last bonus tip for you. You've probably heard this a lot, but for those of you that haven't as just a little reminder that the old tag, which is the alternative tag, or actually the tag that is hidden behind your images can also make a big difference.

So Google will also look and other search engines, they will look behind your images to try and understand what your website is about. And the old days search engines used to take a look at them because people used to put descriptions for people who are actually blind or need to use something.

Tool in order to access a website. So that's where the Altecs came from. They were actually for people with special needs mostly with visual impairment who needed to use a third-party screen readers in order to to actually. Understand what the site is about because perhaps they couldn't see the images.

This is actually where my experience with SEO started all those years ago. I used to program websites for people with special needs. What happens is that. When you put keywords on your old tags it really helps Google understand the whole principle of sort of all the topics that you're covering on your, on your article.

And it's basically another source of information for them to find out what your article is really about. So do write short descriptions or long descriptions, use your keyword behind the images. Very. Especially your featured image. You want that to have your main keyword? And this is like, it's going to give Google a really clear loud signal as to what the keyword you're optimizing for is they will still take their own decisions as to whether you are the best choice for that particular keyword.

But at least you can tell them the keyword that you're trying to optimize for. So that makes it really, really loud. So that's all I had for you today. If you'd like to see the show notes and take a look at the tools and the tips that I mentioned today, go to Stephanie fatina.com/ 37. And find this podcast.

See you next week.

Did you enjoy this episode? If you did, please share it with friends and colleagues and anyone you think is going to find this useful. If you'd like to give me some feedback, leave a review on iTunes or a comment on the YouTube channel. Don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast app or YouTube, whatever you do make.

Don't miss the next episode because we have more juicy content coming your way. See you in the next.

This is the second episode about SEO for coaches. Today we talked about How to create an SEO Strategy for coaches. The essential 4 steps to creating an effective strategy.

Topics this episode...

>> Getting the basics right

>> Keyword research (and tools)

>> Implementing what you find

>> Creating the SEO-ed Content Plan

Episode Links and Mentions:

>> Keyword Finder: The tool I use for Keyword Research

 Did you Enjoy this Episode?

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Full Trasncript

Hey, thank you very much for joining me today. We're going to talk about SEO for coaches. Today's episode is a continuation of the. The SEO for coaches series, which I am running on the online coaching podcast. Last week, we talked about building your audience and getting clients. And this week we're going to talk about the four steps to creating your SEO strategy, like any good and respectable marketing strategy.

It's all in the basics. So even with SEO, the first thing you need to do is take a good look at your ideal client. Now you've probably heard me say this so many times. If you follow me on Instagram or on Facebook, or maybe you're on my email list or in my Facebook group, I say this a lot. I really focus on the ideal client.

Even when I run my, my challenges or my free training. That's something I really work on with Mike. Because knowing your ideal client is key. If you don't know your ideal client, well, then you might have some problems. You also need to work through some misconceptions about your ideal client. For instance, I actually had a new client this week who said, well, I really don't know my ideal clients.

I don't know how old they are. I don't know where they're from. I don't know how many kids they have and I don't know what kind of handbag they'd like to buy. I don't know what kind of car they drive. And, you know, I kind of giggled a little bit and I'll tell you why, because this is a different kind of ideal clients to kind of ideal clients.

Somebody would create for you when you create a social media strategy. And for inbound marketing, when we create our core content lead bridge needs to be a little bit. Social media tends to be very visual and very superficial. Whereas when we're talking about SEO and analyzing our ideal client for SEO, we got to go deep on those little struggles on those micro thoughts that are going through their heads.

On those little steps that they take from feeling like they need something to really understanding what the solution is and how you might be the best person to work with. So it takes a little bit of a disciplined journey. And in fact, analyzing this ideal client really well is really important because you need to build the customer.

You need to know all the steps that they go through in their head, especially you need to know all the little motivations, all the little pain points they have that are gonna make them go to Google and punch in a question that's related to what you sell. So as a coach, you want to be found by these people, and this is why you need to know your ideal clients really.

So the first thing I would say, if you don't know them, make sure that you survey your audience, you send a few emails, you talk to your clients, and if you don't have any clients yet find the kind of people you want to work with and coached them for free, make sure that they give you testimonials and exchange and make sure that you offer them the right questions so that you can build your ideal client persona.

Once you've got your ideal client persona in place, you want to make sure that. Both your ideal client and your marketing strategy are aligned with your offer. So the next step is going to be to take a good look at your offer and to make sure that this is aligned with the kind of people you want to.

And also with your whole marketing strategy. So more on that in a minute, but one of the main things needs to be that, first of all, you are happy with your offer. You cannot sell an offer that you wouldn't buy and that you're not happy selling, so it needs to be profitable and you need to get it as close as possible to a November.

A no brainer in the sense that it's such an easy decision for your client to go with it, because if they have the kind of pain points you resolve, then you have created the perfect offer to resolve that. And again, it all ties in with knowing your ideal client, knowing their pain points. And of course, knowing the various ways in which these can be resolved and positioning yours as the main.

The main solution to this problem, of course, you may need to do some work. If you're in the beginning of your business, you need to make sure that you are effective. You need to build your confidence. You know, you need to spend time with your clients, ask them what they want, ask them what the biggest problem is, especially very important question, ask them what they thought their problem was before they met.

Because very often they thought and named the problem in a different way than you would. So it's very important to also look for the words the way they say. About your particular coaching and those struggles that you resolve once you have double-checked and you're happy with your offense. So you're good with your pricing.

You know, you're offering value for that price and the client is getting a good deal because they're getting exactly what they want. And yeah. Then you can be sure that you have the basics in place. Once you have these basics in place. The next step is going to be to go through your keyword research and your keyword research is going to draw on your ideal client and also your offer in order to find words.

And keywords out there. You know, they can be phrases, you know, 2, 3, 4 word phrases. You can have what we call a long tail keywords. You can have questions. Keywords can come in many different forms. Now you're going to need a keyword tool. I use. A tool called keyword finder. I will. The name is very common.

I'm sure that that's what you're thinking. Yes. You're going to find many cured finders out there. I will add the link to the show notes and you can go ahead to Stephanie britannia.com/podcast and find the link in the show notes, but how are you going to use this tool? So the first thing you're going to do is get ideas.

You can go to places like Quora, answer the public again. I will add all of these. You can also just check out your own Facebook group, other people's Facebook groups for the kind of questions your audience asks, and then start from there, go and put them in your keyword tool and the keyword finder. And you will find out if they have traffic.

Now, one very important thing. I come across a lot of people who say, oh, I heard I'm already using the main keywords for my. Make sure that you use a keyword tool to check that they have traffic. Sometimes we think that like the main keyword for that we use, you know, these words that we use about our business.

We think other people are using them too, but that is not necessarily the case. I can actually confirm most of the time. It's probably not the case at all. So do go to your keyword research tool, use different words. And find out which ones actually have traffic. The tool will help you because it will give you suggestions of similar words, similar questions and similar phrases that's actually do have traffic.

So definitely worth your while. So what do we do once we have the keywords? Once you have the keywords, you are going to have to use these keywords to organize the content of your. Now, the first thing is you've got to turn these keywords into content. So turn them into titles for your podcast titles, for your blog titles, for your YouTube videos.

And of course, learn a little bit about how to optimize these on your website and on the platforms that you use on. So once you've got all of this in the form of a content plan, you're going to need to take a decision about how to organize this content on your website. And this is very, very important in order for Google and other search engines to understand what your website is about and who to serve the content.

You need to make sure that your content is organized in a way that reflects what is most important in your business. Once you do this, you can be sure that Google. Rank your posts, especially if you pick the right keywords. That probably actually requires an episode all for itself. I do run a free keyword research training once or twice a year.

So if you were interested in this, just stay in my orbit and you would come across it. Right. So once you have finished organizing your keywords and organizing everything on your website, in order to become more relevant to your own topics, then you're going to need to take some big decisions. And this is the final and fifth step.

So it's like your bonus day. And the big decisions are usually about frequency and funnels. You will need to decide how often you're going to blog, how often you're going to publish a video, how often you're going to podcast. Of course, this is going to depend entirely on the medium you pick and also on your goals and how quickly you want to get to your.

You also need to think about your funnels. The kind of funnels that you pick, you know, you have to have different funnels for different mediums. For instance, podcast is great for warming up an existing audience. Blogging is great for getting new people into your orbit from search engine searches. You know, people who would not know you otherwise.

You know, you can have YouTube videos that can serve different purposes. They can be part of a launch. They can serve as kind of webinars. They can also serve to, you know, warm up your audience, or also as an entry point. So the way you work out your plans and your funnels and your frequency and your goals is then a very important part of how everything comes to.

And finally, after you have taken all these all important decisions, you want to think about your assistance because content and SEO are two things that you need to do in order to keep growing your audience. And it does have an amazing cumulative effect. But you have to be committed and then you have to do it for the long term and in all the, to stick to your good habits, good content habits.

In the long term, you are going to need systems. So this kind of encompasses the whole four steps plus the last bonus step, because you do need to take all those decisions. Once you have come this far, you have your SEO strategy. Ready? You have your systems ready, and all you have left is to just dive in and start.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Do keep following the series. There was one before this and there are another two coming. So if you want to go a little bit deeper on SEO for coaches, keep following, because of course, for your online coaching business, it's just so amazing to get people from search engine searches will just come to your website and book your a discovery course.

And that is exactly what SEO will do. All right. So I hope you enjoy today's episode as I will see you next week.

Thank you for listening to the profitable content marketing show. Did you enjoy this episode? If you did, please share it with friends and colleagues and anyone you think is going to find this useful. If you'd like to give me some feedback or a question, leave a review on iTunes or a comment on YouTube.

Don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast app or YouTube, whatever you do, make sure you don't miss the next episode because we have more juicy content coming your way. See you in the next episode.