A Basic Guide to Search Engine Marketing
Coaches run businesses and need to stay on top of various types of back-office functions and marketing skills, in addition to staying abreast of current information on their areas of expertise. They don’t have a lot of time to gather the information they need; they need the info gathered for them so they can move forward knowledgeably.
With that in mind, I’ve been looking for some great information for search engine marketing for coaches. I didn’t want anything too detailed but I didn’t want anything to basic (I’m hoping that you already know what a search engine is).
Then I found it. An excellent blog by Lisa Barone at SmallBizTrends.com. Lisa talked to Anita Campell, the Editor in Chief of the SmallBizTrends website. Then Lisa distilled down the five activities that business owners (and coaches!) should do to marketing their site online. You can read the full article here but I’ll summarize it for you and give a few extra thoughts.
1. Create a good website, preferably with a .com extension. If your coaching business name is based on a popular word, this might be difficult. However, you might have more luck using your name.
2. Using a content-rich blog, you can create an attractive website that search engines love. Target keywords based on what your customers would search for. This is great advice for coaches since your customers might not be searching for "coach" but rather for the thing you help them with. So, if you’re a productivity coach, consider targeting words like "save time" or "get more done".
3. The section "increase your findability offline" didn’t talk about what I thought they were going to talk about. After you read it in Lisa’s article, I’d also suggest that you actively market your website offline (in newspapers and magazines, for example, or with advertisements in local businesses).
4. Social media was her fourth recommendation and it is good advice: Get involved in social media and start building relationship with your customers and prospects.
5. Dial in professionals. This is great advice. You can’t do it all by yourself! Get professionals to help you. Start with the gaps that you need help with and slowly work towards outsourcing a good portion of your workload so you can focus more on your coaching and less on your marketing.
I think there is some opportunity for article marketing in the coaching field. (Articles are used frequently in other industries – sometimes to the point of saturation – but I think there is still some space in the coaching field for articles).
After doing Lisa and Anita’s 5 steps, and perhaps doing some article marketing, it’s time to get creative and look for other ways to market your website.
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