5 Steps to Building Search Visibility for Your Coaching Website

January 28th, 2009
by Kenn Schroder

If you want to reach out to a huge sea of potential clients, build
a large email list, and sell a lot of products, then harnessing the
power of the Web is a smart move. One very important factor towards attaining this goal is building visibility on search engines.

Here are the basic steps to high search-engine visibility:

--1. Ensure that you have a search-engine-friendly website.

A website is "search-engine-friendly" if it enables search engines
to easily access the content (primarily written content) on the
website.

There are essentially two key components to doing this right:

The first component is page coding. This is the programming code
that is responsible for presenting information properly on your web
page.

This code must be simple enough for search engines to
understand so they can easily access the information on your pages.

Unfortunately, many websites are invisible to search
engines because the coding is too complex. These websites don't get
found by searchers.

Secondly, the linking between pages of a website must be easy for
search engines to follow. Search engines need to jump from page
to page within your website to grab all the content.

Many websites do not use links that are easy for search engines to
follow and those pages don't get picked up by search engines.

Make sure your web designer or web design software has considered
search engine friendliness when building your website. Otherwise,
people won't find you when searching.


-- 2. Create targeted, keyword-rich pages.

In order for search engines to associate your pages with the
phrases people are searching for, search engines need to know what
your page is about. To do that, search engines look at the
phrases that appear most often on your pages.

For example, if you are a health coach who works with overweight
teens, you'll want to use the terms on your website such as
"weight-loss coach for teens," or "how to lose weight as a teenager."

Here's a good strategy for creating a keyword-rich page. Write an
article centered around one challenge your audience faces.
For example, "Eating Tips for Teens to Lose Weight and Grow Strong."
As you write this article, be sure to include lots of keywords
related to the subject.

One good tool for brainstorming effective keywords is Google's
"Keyword Tool". It gives you keyword suggestions and an
indication of how popular those phrases are. This will help you
discover new keywords as well as keywords that people are actually
searching for.


--3. Get quality inbound links.

There are two types of links:

1. "outbound links" which TAKE VISITORS AWAY from your website to other websites, and
2. "inbound links" which BRING VISITORS to your website from other websites
   
   

The second type of link, an inbound link, is the kind you want to
seek out. They are more valuable than outbound links in the eyes of
search engines.

The reason is because an inbound link implies your website
is worthwhile to link to. It's a vote of confidence for your
website --from another website--. Whereas, an outbound
link doesn't say much about the value of your website.

At the same time, you also need to make sure that your inbound
links are coming from -quality- websites. If the websites that
link to yours are unrelated, have lots of useless content, and are
hard to use, then your ranking won't improve much.

Great links include websites that your target audience often visit.
For example, if your target audience includes dentists, then links
from websites that discuss building a dental business would be
great.


--4. Have well-written page tags.

Page tags are snippets of code that are hidden in your website.
They clue search engines on what your web pages are about.

Well written page tags help search engines evaluate your pages as
well as help searchers know what your website is about before they
click to it.

The four top tags to focus on are the Title Tag, the title of
your page, the Description Tag, which describes the page in more
detail, the Keywords Tag, which indicates the main keywords on
the page, and the Alt Tag, which is used to describe images.

To write the tags well, make sure the tags relate directly to your
web pages and use your keywords where possible.

For example, if you help professional men lose weight, then the
title of your home page could be, "Health Coaching for Overweight
Professional Men." This is directly related to what you do
and includes various related keywords.


--5. Check your stats to improve your website.

In your statistics you can find a whole host of information.

A good starting point when looking at stats is to see:

• how many people are visiting your website
• from which websites your visitors are coming from
• what keywords people are using in to find your website
• which pages they are looking at
• if there are pages not being visited

Here are two examples of how checking your stats can improve your
website.

Example 1: When looking at your stats, you may discover that one of
your pages has never been visited. You should contact your designer
to make sure there are no technical errors.

Example 2: In your stats, you may find that almost every visitor
who goes to a specific page ends up calling you for a free coaching
session. Consider making this page more prominent.

A good statistics tool is Google Analytics. It has a lot of
information, and is easier to understand than many other stat
programs. And, it's free.

In conclusion, the keys to building visibility on search engines
include:

1 - ensuring that your website is search-engine friendly;
2 - creating targeted keyword-rich pages;
3 - getting quality inbound links;
4 - having well-written page tags;
5 - checking your stats to improve your website.

With more traffic to your website, you can grow your coaching
business with more clients, more email list subscribers, and more
product sales.