Episode 38
038: SEO For Coaches [Part 3 of 4]How to Optimize Your Website
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
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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.
