The first time I heard about SEO was in 2020—from the king of SEO himself, Neil Patel—when I was a newbie writer.
I’d binge-read different articles on his website for hours until I got splitting headaches. SEO sounded promising, but it was confusing to know how to get all its moving parts to work for me.
Today, it’s a different story. Not only am I ranking for my target terms, but I also get inquiries from people finding me on Google.
It took me 4 years, a hundred plus blog posts for SaaS companies, and a lot of testing to get to this level where I’d write one post and it would rank for more than 10 keywords on the first freakin’ page of Google. See the case study.
I’ve been in your shoes. And I wish the articles I read earlier were stupid easy. It’d have saved me countless headaches and maybe some years.
So, if you’re non-tech-savvy or completely clueless about SEO, this guide is for you. You’ll learn about what SEO is, why it matters, and the six main types your business needs.
What is SEO for coaches?
SEO (that is, search engine optimization) is the process of making your website discoverable when your target client enters a query that relates to your business.
Basically, you optimize your site in a way that search bots can crawl, index, and add your web pages to their databases. It’s like tickling Google’s fancy, because if you do it right, you’ll keep showing up for your target terms on the search results page.
For example, this post I wrote for MOZ on social media competitor analysis has been the featured snippet for that term for more than 6 months now.
So, be sure to set up SEO for your business from the get-go so you don’t miss out on benefits like ranking and getting traffic, leads, and sales.
Side note: the only page that matters when it comes to ranking on the SERP is page 1 of Google. People barely ever check the other pages. I call them “Search Neverland.” So, let your focus be on writing content that ranks on page 1 of Google.
Why SEO matters for your coaches and creatives
If there’s anything you’ll invest in that will give your business a high ROI in months and years to come, it’s SEO!
There are several reasons why you need to start taking your SEO strategy seriously. Here are five of them:
More people can find you
If you can rank in position 1 or anywhere else on Google’s page 1, you stand a chance of blowing up your visibility. Your ideal clients can search your target term and become aware of your business.
Since I used to be a SaaS content girlie in the past years, let’s take HubSpot as a privileged example. It’s a CRM software tool, and it’s not the only one.
But if you search for terms relating to customer relations, HubSpot ranks number 1.
That means every time someone wants to learn about “customer relations” or a “CRM” to support their customer management, they’re likely to read a post from HubSpot.
And, ultimately, that means they’re only one click away from knowing about its CRM solution.
Brand authority and trust
The higher your SEO power, the higher your chances of ranking for multiple terms related to your business. And when this happens, you become an authority—in the eyes of both your readers and search bots—on the subject matter.
Let’s say you’re a course creation expert and someone is looking for tips on how to create their first course, which includes the how-to, the tools, the hosting, and the marketing.
SEO is a great way to establish your authority as someone they can trust to help them, such that you show up whenever people search queries related to course creation.
And if your website shows up every time with quality content as answers to their queries, they will eventually see you as the go-to on the topic. They’ll start going to your website’s content instead of first searching on Google.
More organic traffic and leads
The more you show up on the SERP, the higher the number of: (1.) organic traffic you can potentially drive to your website pages, and (2.) qualified leads you can drive down your sales funnel.
You can see from the screenshot above that HubSpot also ranks as the featured snippet for the term “content strategy.” Well, they do a damn good job at covering content marketing topics too.
This term gets monthly search traffic of 22,000+, and even advertisers pay a whopping $11.24 per click for it (check texts underlined in red).
Being the featured snippet, HubSpot alone gets almost 20% of the total search traffic for that term, which is 4,200 visits per month.
Since the average website conversion rate is between 2-5% (source), this means, they can potentially add at least 84 people (at a 2% conversion rate) to their funnel from that one blog post every. single. month.
More sales and revenue
Generating leads for your business is good, but turning these leads into paying customers? That’s the real deal.
Here are two ways that this can pan out IF you play your SEO game right:
Scenario 1: You show up on the SERP for your target keyword, with transaction-focused search intent. The searcher lands on your page, adds to their cart, and makes payment.
Scenario 2: Or, the user searches for a more information-type keyword that takes them to your blog post. They read through your content, love it, and sign up for your list. Two weeks down the line, after bingeing your content here and there, they’re convinced they want to work with you. Then, they proceed to make payment.
Reliable digital assets
I spoke with a blogger friend recently, and she disclosed that she’s got websites worth over $75,000. I’ve also read a case study of an 18-month-old website sold for $400,000.
Dear Lawd! That’s almost half a milli. It’s crazy good.
Increasing your website’s SEO power improves your traffic and, ultimately, your website’s value. You can build not only a bingeworthy website for your business but a digital asset as well.
6 Types of SEO for coaches & other small businesses
SEO is not a walk in the park per se, but my aim for writing this section is to make it as simple as possible for you.
Many business owners (including me from 3 years ago) think SEO is hard because it sounds extensive. But even copywriting is extensive. Almost every process/niche is extensive until you narrow it down to what you want.
There are six main types of SEO any business can implement, and you should leverage as many of them as you can.
1. Technical SEO
This is really important. Many new business owners aren’t aware of this part, so they launch pretty websites that don’t ever show up in search results.
Technical SEO should be your first focus so that your website becomes discoverable.
To do this, you need to submit your website to Google. That means, setting it up on both Google Analytics and Search Console.
Submitting your website to Google makes it accessible to search bots that’ll crawl and index it, so you can get found on search result pages.
I found these two easy-to-follow guides to put you through:
2. UX SEO
Dear creative, your website should scream “seamless user experience.”
From the moment a visitor lands on your web page, you need to make it easy for them to look around.
Google cares A LOT about how happy users are with your site and content. If the website experience isn’t great, people will bounce.
This will signal to Google that people aren’t interested in your website, and therefore, it’s not worth ranking.
And we don’t want that. So, here are the steps to improve your UX SEO,
- Use easy-to-navigate website design templates
- Fix all broken links (you can install the broken link checker plugin on your website to automate this.)
- Create an organized site structure using groupings by categories, tags, posts, and pages
- Speed up load time by:
- Compressing your images. They should be in KB. Preferably, less than 300kb
- Deleting heavy or unused media files
- Clearing your cache frequently
- Using a reliable hosting service that won’t leave your readers stranded.
3. On-page SEO
Have you ever heard about metadata? That is, title tags and meta descriptions. You can use them to improve your SEO—Specifically, your on-page SEO—by inserting your target keywords.
But, that’s not all.
Here are other helpful tips to nail your on-page SEO:
- Use custom links—such as your site.com/what-is-seo—instead of yoursite.com/p-123
- Add categories and tags to organize your content
- Include featured images on your post
- Add alt texts to your featured and body images
- Format your posts in a hierarchical order: H1, H2, H3, and H4.
- Use keywords in your metadata.
4. Content SEO
The quickest and most reliable way to increase your traffic, leads, and sales is through content SEO.
Start by addressing niche keywords with low keyword difficulty using high-quality content so your target clients can find you. You can greatly improve your content SEO through keyword research & optimization and/or the topic cluster strategy.
Whether you want to write your website copy or a blog post, consider SEO before your final setup because, as I stated earlier, it’s freakin’ important.
Note: I said “final setup” because starting with SEO might throw you off track if it isn’t your thing. So, I’ll advise that you give yourself the freedom to be creative. Then, use SEO to help your target clients find the content you’ve created for them.
p.s. If you’d like to write SEO website copy that gets your business eyeballs and leads, download my SEO website playbook for free.
5. Social Media SEO
This is relatively new, but you can tap in ASAP.
On social media platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter, there is an SEO aspect attached to them that most people don’t know about.
I have been ranking as the only social media profile on page 1 for the keyword “launch copywriter” for more than 8 months now.
Also, you may have searched “how to [do something]” and a LinkedIn post ranked in position 2 as a response to that query.
Even more interesting is the fact that these networks now have in-app SEO strategies.
So, here are some steps to tighten your social media SEO:
- From your profile setup to posts and captions, use keyword-rich descriptions
- Use related hashtags as a part of your SEO strategy for every platform
- Mention the target keyword a few times throughout your posts
- Add alt texts to images wherever you can.
6. PR SEO
This is the part where you leverage the SEO power of other websites to grow yours.
Essentially, you get link juice when media sites and channels add mentions and links that point back to your site. This builds your website’s authority and ranking power.
PR SEO can be done through:
- Guest posting
- Content swapping
- Media interviews
- Podcast features, and
- Blog mentions and shoutouts.
How long before you start seeing results for SEO?
According to Ahrefs, it takes between 3-6 months on average to start seeing results for your SEO efforts.
This is only an average estimation, though. It can take a shorter or longer time, depending on the factors that affect SEO and ranking.
For example, my MOZ post started ranking on day 3. That’s because the platform has a very high domain authority. So, when search bots saw that MOZ had a comprehensive guide on the topic, they picked it up and ranked it above others.
But, if I wrote the same exact post on another blog with average domain authority, it might not rank as quickly as it did.
Overall, SEO is a long game with long-term gains. So, stay consistent and put out quality content.
It’s time to fire-up your website’s SEO.
As you’ve seen in the guide above, SEO is all shades of good for your business.
SEO does require conscious and strategic efforts—and a lot of patience—but it isn’t hard. Feel free to use all or a mix of some of these SEO types to position your brand for increased visibility, authority, and revenue.
If you’re looking to step up your ranking game with SEO website copy that attracts and converts target clients, grab this playbook.
Or if you’d like to map out a profitable SEO content strategy for your business so you can get seen and loved by your dream clients, book this 90-minute consultation with me—and let’s get you a personalized, surefire plan.