How to set up your new coaching practice

Excellence Assured - 2012

Brochure Contents

Page 2 Introduction

Page 2 Training & Qualifications

How to set up Page 4

Page 6
Which services to offer

Keyword Searching for your new coaching

your new Page 8
business

Choosing a legal structure

coaching Page 10

Page 13
Naming your practice

Getting a website

practice Page 15 Creating and designing your website

Page 17 Search Engine Optimisation

Page 20 Running a successful business and getting
Save hours and hours. Learn from our experience. clients
Things you need to be thinking about in order to set up as a
coach on a budget. 9 stage process.

Your Training, Practice Structure, Specialisation,
Website, SEO, Getting Clients!


Introduction explain how to do it all for minimum outlay, avoiding
unnecessary consultancy and web design costs.

So, lets start by assuming that you are feeling like breaking
free of all the constraints of your current comfort zone. Your
comfort zone is that area of life that you are in where life is
comfortable, where you do not need to push yourself because
you are “ok.” Things are familiar in your comfort zone and
things are comfortable. You are fed up of this mundane
existence, just getting by and earning a living, you want more!
You want to make a real difference to other people and help
them improve their life whilst of course making a living
yourself. You want to become a coach. What do you do?

Stage 1 - Training and qualifications
The first thing that you need to do is make sure that you have
the necessary coaching qualifications. Coaching is not a
regulated industry as yet and so there is no one national or
international body that sets coaching related qualifications or
accredits coaching schools or training providers.
Our NLP based training courses provide many marketable skills
There are many providers of coaching and coaching related
and we get asked all the time about the practicalities of
courses, each offering different levels and titles of coaching
individuals setting themselves up in a coaching/therapy
qualifications.
practice.
So, which is the best provider and what is the best qualification
One of the things that deters people from going ahead is the
for you? The best thing to do to answer that question is to
perceived cost and complexity involved. In order to support
think about your desired outcome. What is the outcome that
the students of our coaching and NLP training courses we are
you desire from your coaching qualification? Think about that
going to produce a series of blogs on how to practically go
question now and jot some thoughts down.
about setting up a practice and marketing your services/
networking, website construction, design and getting
Ultimately you want training that is going to allow you to be a
recognised by search engines. Most importantly we are going to
successful and professional coach, don’t you? What is it that is

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going to determine whether or not you are successful in your our courses provide recognised professional qualifications that
coaching career? are accredited by the NLPEA, an international body of NLP.
There are two stages of professional qualification in terms of
There is one thing that stands above everything else in terms of NLP. The NLP Practitioner qualification is the first stage, the
what will facilitate your success, that is, how good you are at second stage being NLP Master Practitioner. These two
coaching! You can have all the qualifications in the world but if qualifications combined are recognised now throughout the
you do not get successful results with your clients, then you world of coaching as being a stamp of coaching excellence and I
will fail in business because you will not have any clients. would recommend any wannabe coach to complete these
Successful coaches, running successful businesses all have one qualifications.
thing in common, they get great results with their clients and
these clients are happy to tell other people about how good Our popular online NLP Training courses are perfect for
they are. Referrals (one client referring you, your services to International and UK based students alike.
another person) are a major source of business for coaches and
will form a massive part of your marketing plan. Setting up in business
Whilst you are completing your training you can also be in the
So, picking a training course that will enable you to be a great process of setting up your coaching/therapy business.
coach is your first and foremost consideration. This is why NLP There are many things to think about at this stage, here are
Training is so popular amongst the coaching community. NLP just a few that we will be writing about in this ebook:
provides skills that are a perfect fit with coaching, enabling • What services will I offer specifically? Eg, Life Coaching,
you, the coach to develop your own excellence, and providing Business Coaching, Executive Coaching, Relationship
skills and techniques that will enable you to help others to do Coaching, Performance Coaching, a combination of
the same. services etc
• What sort of business do I set up? Sole Trader/Limited
Your second consideration is probably to ensure that you have a
Company/Partnership
qualification that is recognised by the appropriate professional
bodies. Whilst as I say, coaching is an unregulated industry, in • Name of your company/trading name? Incorporating/
terms of acquiring clients it is possible that some corporate registering your company
clients will require you to be a member of a recognised
• Designing a logo, getting your business stationery.
national or international body. The largest recognised coaching
membership organisation in the world is the International • Getting a business bank account
Coaching Federation (ICF). Our NLP Training courses provide
• Getting an accountant?
you with “coaching specific training hours” that are required by
organisations like the ICF in order to become a member, and • Website - a major consideration. Getting a web address,
web hosting, web design
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• Website optimization Stage 2 - Which services to offer?
• Insurance - Professional Indemnity Insurance/Public
Liability Insurance
• Joining a professional organisation (NLPEA/INLPTA/ICF)
• "Once I have my business how do I make it successful?"

You have decided on your training path and you are undertaking
your training on your way to becoming a coach. Whilst you are
training, and in order to get started with clients as soon as
possible you will be thinking about setting up your coaching
practice.
One of the first things to think about is what services specifically
are you going to offer? Before you decide on a name for your
business, before you decide what legal structure you are going
to opt for, you need to decide what services you are going to
provide, and what areas of coaching you are going to focus on.
“Life Coaching” as a broad title can encompass coaching in
many different areas of life. Here are just a few:
• Business Coaching
• Confidence/Self Belief

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• Finances/Money
For example I decided to offer an Executive Coaching service.
• Health
The reason for that was because I have worked at a senior
• Leadership management level in business and so in the eyes of my clients, I
am able to empathise from experience with many of their
• Motivation
challenges, eg work/life balance, challenges in managing others
• Parent Coaching (including your boss!).
• Personal Development
So, for another example, you may be a mother, in which case
• Relationships offering Parent Coaching would make sense, as you have a
perceived level of experience in that area.
• Retirement
• Spirituality Your NLP Training, should you decide to go ahead with that, will
provide you with the skills to operate in all areas of life and
• Stress
business coaching, so it may be that you offer a full range of
In addition to that there is Executive Coaching, Performance coaching services, but you specialise in one or two particular
Coaching, Business Coaching and Mentoring...the list goes on. areas.
In making a decision as to which direction you head with your
coaching business I think that we need to think ahead a little bit. As well as the credibility aspect of specialising, it will also make
The beauty of coaching is that a coach does not necessarily your marketing easier, as you can target a specific market or a
need to have any knowledge of or skills in the area in which they specific group of people, rather than marketing to the whole
are coaching. population. Marketing to specific groups of people is
considerably less expensive as you have less competition.
The whole idea of coaching as we know is that the person being Thinking ahead to your website, and thinking about acquiring
coached (the coachee) has all the skills and knowledge inside clients using your website, it is much easier to get on the first
them already, or they are able to get them, in order to reach their page of google, for “Executive Coaching Sheffield” for example,
potential, or solve their problem. The skill of the coach is to be than it is for “Life Coaching.”
able to facilitate the coachee in releasing, discovering that
potential, in facilitating the coachee in looking inside themselves The next stage of the process in setting up your coaching
for the resources to solve their own problems. practice will be to investigate these “keywords” or key phrases
on google, and I will explain how to go about that in another blog.
Having said that it definitely helps from a credibility point of view Depending on the popularity or not of your keywords, you may
with potential clients if you are able to provide some evidence of need to change your mind over specifically what areas you are
having skills in the specific area in which you are coaching. going to work in, you may need to expand your work areas if
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there are not sufficient potential customers or further specialise if Stage 3 - Keyword Searching for your new Coaching
your potential marketplace is too big and too competitive. business
For now though, thinking about what skills you have and
matching them up with specific coaching areas will be useful for
you in taking your business planning forward.
Next stages:
• Keyword searching
• Naming your Coaching Practice/Choosing your website
domain
• Choosing a legal structure for your business
• Choosing/Designing a logo.

You are still in the early stages of planning your coaching
business, you are completing your training and gaining your
qualifications. Whilst you are training you are wisely taking the
opportunity to start putting together your coaching practice.

We have discussed in previous blogs how it is wise to think now
about what services you are going to offer to your customers,
what areas of coaching you are going to specialise in. Think
about the skills that you have, the areas of knowledge and
expertise that you have built up over the years, and match your
areas of coaching as closely as possible to these skills.

We are thinking now about future marketing opportunities. How
are you going to acquire clients? One way, and the best way is
through word of mouth. If you provide coaching services in an
area of life or business where you have a track record of
experience, and maybe expertise, then it will make the job of
acquiring clients much easier for you. It will most likely also
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mean that you are guaranteed to get great results with your so you stand a chance of getting enquiries from your website if
clients as you will certainly be able to add a good amount of you target these type of keywords.
value to their lives. The more value that you add, the more likely
it is that your clients will speak to colleagues and friends about Once you have decided on some keywords that represent what
how good you are, and refer you on to them. you want to offer, are specific in description and location, then it
is time to research these keywords to make sure that they are
One other way of acquiring clients that is becoming more and popular enough to get you some clients.
more successful is by using the internet. There are over 40,000
searches per month on Google for “Life Coaching” in the UK, The free internet based tool that we use to do the research is the
9,000 monthly searches for “Executive Coaching” and 12,000 Keyword tool in Google Adwords.
monthly searches for “Business Coaching.” So, there are plenty
of people searching for coaching services, and if you are at the Just type your keywords into their tool, and google will tell you
top of the search results for these Keywords, then you are going how many people have been searching using those specific
to be doing very nicely indeed. words or phrases. You will be provided with global monthly
searches and local monthly searches. Assuming that you are not
The thing is that it is not going to be easy to get to the top of the selling services internationally, then the local monthly searches is
search results for these Keywords since all the other coaches in the one that we are interested in as that will tell you the number
the UK are going to be competing with you to be there and most of searches that have been made on those keywords in your
of them have got a head start on you! country.

So, start thinking about words that are specific to the services Initially I would recommend looking at keywords that have 1,000
that you are going to offer. For example, what is your location? monthly searches or less, as this will give you the best chance of
What are the specific locations that you are going to market your making a quick move onto the first page of search results for
services? “Executive Coaching Bristol” will get far fewer those keywords. You may need to look at several phrases in
searches per month than “Coaching” or “Training” or order to get the numbers to around 1,000, and that is ok,
“Counselling” but there will be much less competition for these because you can target different keywords with different pages of
Keywords, so you stand a good chance of getting your services your website.
on the first page of the search results, and this is what we are
after. If your keyword phrases are similar in type, then all the better.
For example, “Training Kent” and “Coaching Kent” are similar in
“Relationship Counselling Derbyshire” is another good example, type as Kent is common to both phrases, and this will help the
it describes exactly what your services are, so people searching search engines to get to know what you are offering, and
on these keywords find what they are looking for. It is about therefore which search results to place your website listing in.
being specific and the competition for these keywords is modest,
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“Relationship Coaching” and “Relationship Counselling” again Stage 4 - Choosing a legal structure for your business
are of similar type and this is good.

You will use the Keyword tool then to identify what your services
are going to be specifically, so that you know that there are
people looking for what you are offering, and so that you can
start naming your business accordingly and designing your
website.

Google Adwords has many more facilities than just the keyword
research that we have discussed, and once we have our
business set up and we are looking at marketing options, we
may well be back to this tool to design advertising campaigns
with Google. You have decide to set up your own coaching practice, you are
taking your training, you have decided what services you are
The next stage in the process of setting up your coaching going to be offering, what areas of coaching or therapy you are
business is to choose a legal structure. going to be working in, and whereabouts you are going to call
your business ‘territory.’ The next thing to do is to decide on a
Have you started your coaching training? NLP Training with name for your coaching practice, what sort of legal structure your
Excellence Assured is your perfect starting point. You can start business is going to take and to grab your website address
now by training in NLP Online. before someone else gets it.

In terms of legal structure for your business you generally have
three options depending on which country you are in. You can
operate as a limited company, you can operate as a sole trader,
and you can operate as part of a partnership.

Since we are talking about you setting up your own business,
then we will assume for the purpose of this article that a
partnership will not be suitable for you as that would involve
working in partnership with another person, or persons.
The main differences between a limited company and a sole
trader are to do with the tax treatment and how liabilities are
treated should your business fail.
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A sole trader is responsible for the debts of the business as if company. Limited Companies are limited by the issue of shares,
they were their own debts. So, if you are a sole trader, and your so for example you may set up your business with 100 shares
business fails, then you will be responsible for the debts that you that you own. Your business is then made up of in effect 100
have accumulated in running your business. segments, which you can sell to raise capital.

A limited company operates as a separate entity in its own right Most business owners take money out of their company in the
and therefore has ownership of its own debts. So, if you are form of dividends which come as income from the shares. The
operating as a limited company and your business fails, then tax on dividends is lower in the UK, than tax on income (half at
your liability is “limited” in that the business is responsible for any the basic rate), so this makes sense financially. The business is
business debts. This is the cause of much concern for creditor responsible for collecting and paying VAT if the company is
victims of serial entrepreneurs, who run up business debts, let registered for it.
the business fail and then set up another business and start
incurring debts once again. Some benefits of setting up as a limited company are that some
organisations are reluctant to contract employ sole traders as
It is probably unlikely that this will be a major consideration for coaches, since they view it as a credibility issue. Limited
you since it is very difficult for new businesses to get credit these companies must register accounts with Companies House,
days, and you are not going to be running a business with a vast which means that it is easier to financially appraise and carry out
amount of stock, so therefore you will not necessarily be needing due diligence on a limited company than it is a sole trader.
credit. Limited companies can be sold, or part sold if they build up a
value. This may not be such a benefit in the coaching arena,
As far as tax is concerned, a sole trader is responsible for since you are the main asset of the company, and without you,
income tax on any income that they generate above their usual there is no value in the business.
individual allowance. They are also responsible for charging and
paying VAT if they are registered for it. As a sole trader there are Most coaches set up in business as sole traders at the outset as
expenses that you will incur as a result of your business activities the structure is much less complicated and also the professional
and these can usually be off-set against income before any tax fees (accountants) associated with the business are lower. You
becomes due. You will complete an annual tax return to report can change the legal structure later if necessary.
income and expenditure, just as most higher rate taxpayers are
used to doing in the UK already. The next stages of building your coaching practice:

A limited company is liable for Corporation Tax on any profit that • Choosing a name for your business
is made. You will need an accountant to prepare and submit
• Getting your website address
annual accounts for your business. Once the business has paid
the corporation tax, then you may take an income from the • Web hosting
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• Website design Stage 5 - Naming your practice
• Getting an accountant, business bank account
• Company business cards, letterhead
• Finding some clients!

If you have reached this stage with your ideas of being a
professional coach and you haven't completed your training, then
now is the time to do that. NLP Training Online - Coaching
Training

You have decided to start a business as a coach and you are in
the process of setting up your coaching practice. You are in the
process of completing your training to gain your qualifications,
wisely you have been combining your time training with the jobs
involved with planning and setting up your business.

You have decided what type of coaching services that you are
going to offer, you have done your Keyword research in
preparation for naming your company and getting your website
and you have decided on the legal structure for your business.

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The next steps are to name and register your business, produce presence than I would have done if I had called the business
the stationery, get an accountant, and get a website. NLP Training Excellence for example.

Considerations in naming your coaching business Your business name and the internet
Some things to think about when naming your business. Does it If you think in terms of what people on the internet are searching
tell potential customers what you do? Is the website address for for, people are not going to perform a search on “excellence” or
that name available? Is someone else using that business “assured” if they want some life coaching, are they? They are
name? going to search for “life coaching” of course, aren’t they? Google
and the other search engines want to return search results to
If you are planning on just keeping your business simple, then people based on what they are interested in finding out about, so
you may just opt for YOUR NAME COACHING, or YOUR NAME if someone types in “life coaching” the Google robots will try to
LIFE COACHING. It is important to have the “coaching” or “life find the websites with the biggest presence in terms of life
coaching” part to your title for a couple of reasons, firstly it tells coaching to present in the search results. One of the things that
customers what you do and secondly it is beneficial in terms of the robots take notice of is the title of the website, so the
getting noticed by Search Engines like Google. websites with the words “life coaching” in the titles are likely to
be favourite to appear in the search results.
If you are wanting to keep your options open for future
development of the business into different business areas, or Another thing that search engines look at is the location of the
employ other people then you may choose a different approach. I business if it is stated in the website name and they will match
chose the name Excellence Assured for several reasons: that with the location of the person performing the search. Yes,
• I knew that I wanted to specialise in NLP and NLP is the they know where you are! So, for example a website titled
study of “excellence.” Executive Coaching Bristol is likely to appear in the search
results for people searching for “executive coaching” in Bristol.
• “Excellence” is vague enough as a word for it to work in
It is unlikely that it will appear in the search results for someone
terms of business training, coaching and personal
in Glasgow searching on “executive coaching.”
development.
• I knew that I would not be the only person in the business So, think about what you want to appear in the internet search
and that I may need to employ or contract other coaches, results for in terms of your business name. You can of course
trainers and administrators to fulfill the objectives of the call your business Fred Blogs Ltd and have a website address of
business. relationshipcoachinglondon.co.uk. In fact if you really want to you
can have Relationship Coaching London as a division of Fred
The name Excellence Assured has worked out well for me but it
Blogs Ltd as long as other people are not using the name.
does mean that I have to do more work in terms of website

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I would recommend making the name of the company match If you are setting up as a limited company, then as I said you
your website address as much as possible as I think that it looks must register the company with Companies House. There are a
best in terms of gaining and maintaining trust with people. few ways of doing this but the best two ways are to do it using
Business Link or you can use a formation agent such as
With this in mind have you got a name that you would like to go Companies Made Simple. Using a formation agent is really easy
ahead with for your business? and they do the registration for you. They generally have several
incorporation packages that you can choose from depending on
Is the name available? what you want and their basic packages are normally fine for a
If you have got the name in mind then the next step is to make simple company registration. They will also put you in touch with
sure that the name is not taken. If you have decided to set up as an accountant and other professionals if required.
a limited company and you are in the UK all limited companies
must register with Companies House. You can check your The next step is to buy your Website domain name.
proposed business name with their register here.

If you are going down the sole trader route then you should still
check to make sure that there is nobody else out there who is
using your proposed name, you would do this by:
• Checking your local phone books, business directories
and the internet.
• Making sure that your proposed name - or something
similar - hasn't been registered by a company.
• Making sure that the name isn't too similar to a word or
expression that has been registered as a trade mark.
Once you have your name, then you will need to register that
name.

Registering your coaching business
If you are setting up as a self-employed sole trader there isn't
much paperwork to do and there are no registration fees to pay,
but you must register with HM Revenue & Customs for tax and
National Insurance purposes.

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Stage 6 - Getting a website for your business unique to you, so that anyone anywhere in the world can view
your web pages if they have the correct web address.

Web hosting
Once you have created a website this will consist of various files,
including the pages of the website, your pictures, videos, enquiry
forms and so on. These files are just like the files that you store
on the hard drive of your computer, but we cannot store them on
your computer otherwise nobody other than you would be able to
access them, so we need to find someone to store the files for
you who will enable the files to be visible to the world, this
person or organisation is called your “Web host.”

There are lots of web hosting companies out there, so many with
so many different options that it can be confusing. Unless you
are looking to run training courses, chat rooms, forums, social
networking functions or something similar on your websites then
Stage six in our “Starting your own coaching business” is to get you just need a basic package from your web host. There are
yourself a website. No business can be taken seriously these several web hosts offering free hosting services nowadays, but a
days without a website to showcase the business, and it can be basic paid service is probably going to be more reliable. It
a fantastic source of business for a coach as well. shouldn’t cost you more than £5 per month. The thing to look for
is where the web hosts servers are located.
We have already spent some time in previous articles discussing
how to conduct your keyword research with Google to identify Local hosting
the keywords that you are going to use in your website title and One of the things that search engine robots look for when they
on your website to attract clients. You will now have taken the are compiling search results for someone is where a website is
first steps in officially naming your business and registering it hosted. Imagine that you have a website that is offering
with the appropriate authorities. The next thing to do as quickly Coaching services in London, but your web hosts servers are in
as possible is to purchase your website domain name, you can California, the search engine robot is going to think that
then go about setting up your website. Coaching services London is based in California, I can’t imagine
many people in California searching for “Coaching in London” so
The way that the internet works is that you create a domain on I wouldn’t imagine that your website would show up in many
the World Wide Web and that domain is allocated a specific search results. What is worse is that the people that are in
address, called the web address. Your web address will be London and searching for “Coaching in London” will probably not
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get your website in their search results as Google etc think that Ok, so you’ve bought a website address and you have someone
you are based in California! to host your website. Now all you need is to actually get some
web pages to tell everyone what you do. Easy right? Well yes, it
So you need to choose a web host who’s servers are in your is actually nearly as easy as creating a brochure in Word
country. nowadays once you have a programme to translate what you
write and see in your desktop publisher into web language or
To make it easier for you it is a good idea to buy your domain html as it is called and we shall discuss this in our next article.
name from the company who are going to host your website, so
research web hosting services first to establish where the
website would be hosted and then you can buy your domain
name.

Choose a web address that is local to you
As part of your consideration for your website domain name you
will need to decide on the .com or .co.uk or .mob or .za or .au
or .uk.com etc. For websites that are not offering services
internationally I would recommend going for your local version. In
the UK that would be .co.uk, Australia it would be .com.au If you
are offering services or products internationally, or if you are
based in the US, then go for .com.

There are some people who believe that 95% of internet
searches will be carried out on mobile devices in five years time,
in that case a .mob address would possibly be beneficial,
although you may choose to wait for a few years until you opt for
that. The theory here is that search engines will deliver .mob
websites higher up the search results for people searching on
mobile devices.

.Com addresses will set you back about £20 for two years, .co.uk
addresses will be about £5 for two years. You may choose to buy
both just in case you go global in future years!

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Stage 7 - Creating and designing your website translates what you want to see into what you do actually see on
your website.

The world wide web uses a computer language called "html" in
order to represent your words and pictures etc to the world. In
the past you would have needed to learn this complicated
Many people assume that creating a stunning website is going to computer programming language in order to design your own
cost them a fortune. It certainly used to cost a fortune and there website. This is completely unnecessary nowadays due to the
are many many website design companies out there who will availability of software such as Wordpress.
charge you upwards of £3,000 to design and create a simple
website for your coaching business. Wordpress is free to use under the General Public License for
free software. It was designed by a group of computer
Don’t pay them!!! programmers under this license and they continue to develop the
software for the good of the world computer community.
Just to clarify I mean don’t pay them as long as they haven’t
started working for you. A friend of mine was telling me recently They offer full details on their website of how you can install the
that his business had just spent £40,000 on a new website, program on your servers. It is quite easy. Basically all you need
admittedly they were trading internationally but still that is a to do is download the software to your local computer and then
ridiculous sum of money for what they got, a website. upload it to your website using something called an FTP client.
The FTP client is another piece of software that is like a “My
I think that the thought of this size of investment puts lots of Computer” file manager function for your website. Filezilla is an
people off going into business at all. Believe me, after you have example of a quality FTP client and again this software is free.
done a little bit of practice and study you will be able to create
your website in no time at all and for nothing! The benefits of Wordpress are:
• It is free.
The hardest part of creating a website is probably writing the
blurb for your pages, and even if you do pay for someone to • It is easy to use.
design and create a website for you, writing the pages will still be • It is popular and therefore if you hit a problem, then the
down to you. chances are that someone else will also have had the
same problem and had it answered on an internet forum.
Wordpress Type your problem into a search engine and you will
By far the easiest way to create a quality website for free discover the answer.
nowadays is to use a piece of software called Wordpress.
Wordpress is the interface that you will use which basically

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• It has a What you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) easy it is for the search engines to discover from your website
interface, this allows you to copy and paste documents what you do, and how important that they think your website is.
from your computer onto your website. The higher the perceived importance of your website and the
closer that your website “keywords” are to what people are
• You can easily transfer photos and videos from your
searching for, the higher up the search results your website will
computer into your website.
appear. The free version of the Wordpress All in One SEO plug-
• It is “search engine friendly,” helping your website get in is a must have plug-in for everyone as it does a large part of
seen by more people. the SEO work for you.
• It has many many free “plug-ins” which make your life
We will discuss SEO in more detail next.
easier.
Plug-ins
Because Wordpress is now the most popular website design
software in the world, there are lots of people looking to make
money out of it. One of the ways that they can do that is to
design a special piece of software that plugs in to Wordpress and
performs a useful function, for example a Video Player, a Social
Networking function, a Gallery presenter, this is what a Plug-in is.
The great news is that in order to advertise their services these
software developers put simple free versions of their plug-ins in
the Wordpress Plugin Directory. These free versions of the plug-
in software are in most cases absolutely adequate for what a
coach might need on their website.

You can search for the various services that you might need in
the Wordpress plugin directory. For example if you want an
enquiry form on your website, then just search for “Form” or
“Enquiry Form” in the directory and you can then download the
one that sounds most useful.

Wordpress was originally designed for bloggers but is now used
by business owners large and small all over the world. One of
the things that all business owners want to get right on their
website is their Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). SEO is how
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Stage 8 - Search Engine Optimisation
You are starting a new coaching business and you have
generated your new website and all is looking great. However, it
is all very well having a nice new website to advertise your new
coaching practice but if you do not have any prospective clients
viewing your website then it is not going to do you much good in
terms of your marketing is it?

We are going to discuss how to make sure that your website is
appearing in appropriate search results. Optimising your website
so that it is recognised by search engines and appears in good
order in search results is called Search Engine Optimisation
(SEO). You can spend the next two years googling the term
SEO, getting led up various garden paths and spending a fortune
on SEO consultancy services, or you can just read on through
this article and adopt my simple recommendations to get you
started with your very own FREE website optimisation! As you can see above there are 1.3m results for this search
term, so Google has to prioritise the Websites that it returns in
Search Engines the results in order to attempt to provide the best fit to the
The first step in getting your website recognised by the search customer request (search query).
engines is to register your website with them. A search engine is
basically a very clever robot which scans through every webpage In the screenshot you can note that the first three results and all
that it can find on the internet. It stores the information that it of the results down the right-hand side of the page are adverts.
finds in the webpages on its servers and when someone If you click on one of the adverts, then Google will charge the
performs a search it matches up the search term with the company concerned for redirecting you to their website. This is
webpages that it has scanned and presents the results that called "Pay Per Click." We will discuss advertising with Google
provide the closest match to the customer request. in a separate article. For now we will concentrate on getting your
website on the first page of the search results without you having
So, for example, the screenshot below is what you currently get to pay for it.
if you search for "NLP Training Online" in Google.
You will notice that our website is returned at number three in the
non-advertised results.

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Google Indexing - Registering your website In the screenshot above you can see that in our entry in the
So, how do Google and the other search engines prioritise search results for "NLP Training Online" we have "NLP Training
websites? Since Google is by far now the most popular search Online" mentioned in the page title, the same keywords are
engine we will concentrate on them. Firstly, the search engines included in the page description underneath the title and the
cannot scan and store your webpages unless they know that same keywords are also in the URL (http://
they exist, so in order to let them know that you are there and excellenceassured.com/e-learning/nlp-training-online). Google
allow them to "index" your webpages it is good practice to can be under no misconception over what this page is describing
register your website with them. to people, and therefore is happy to present it to people high up
in the search results and this is obviously what we want.
In order to register your website with Google you will need to
create a Google account and then access the Webmaster Tools If you are using Wordpress then again there is a Plugin that you
function. If you are using Wordpress for design of your website, can download that will enable you to do this "on-page" SEO
then you can download a plugin for your site that will do the rest easily, it is called "All In One SEO Pack."
for you. Otherwise you will need to confirm ownership of the
website by placing some html code that Google will provide you In addition to the URL, the page title and the page description
with on your webpages. You then need to submit a "Sitemap," mentioning your keywords, you will also want to mention them in
which lists all of the pages on your website, again there is a the Website Description that you will find in your website
Wordpress Plugin that will do this for you. Dashboard, and also in the material on the webpage, particularly
in the page and paragraph Headings.
Once you have registered your website and submitted a Sitemap
you will need to wait a week or so for the Google robots to So, if you are providing Life Coaching in Bristol, then get those
"crawl" your website. After it has done this and assuming that it keywords mentioned all over your website so that the search
finds no errors in the code of your website, then it will index your engines know exactly what you do.
Website and webpages. This is the first step to SEO completed.
Number of webpages and content
Keywords The next stage in the SEO process is the one that takes the
Now that Google has indexed your webpages, the next time that longest time. If you have only one webpage on your website,
a search is made the Google robots will consider if your website then the search engines will not really take you too seriously.
is appropriate to return in the search results. We have discussed They are keen to present the most up-to-date and relevant
keywords in previous articles, so you have a basic knowledge of content to people from websites with the greatest "authority",
what we are talking about here. It is a case of who shouts otherwise people will start using a different search engine.
loudest gets heard with the search engines. Basically the greater
the number of times that you are able to mention your keywords The best way to ensure that your website is seen by the search
on your webpage the better. engines as having authority in your keyword marketplace is by
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having a website with a good number of pages (linked pages) these tactics you may find yourself getting banned from the
and to update your website on a regular basis. One way to search engines!
make this happen is to write a blog. We currently have 260+
pages on this website. Social Media
One of the best ways to get your website noticed is to link your
Make sure that you do not copy content from other websites or website to the various social media websites like Linkedin and
duplicate your own content on different pages of your website Facebook. This is also a superb way of letting your contacts
otherwise you will be penalised by the search engines for having know what you are up to and starting your marketing. Wordpress
duplicate content. has plugins that automatically links from your website to
Facebook, Linkedin and Google+ and will post any blogs that
Links you write for your website on your social media pages.
If you write thought provoking articles and you manage to get the
rest of your SEO working so that people are reading your
webpages, then gradually other website owners will link to your
articles from their website. This then creates what is known as a
"backlink" to your website. Backlinks are a very important aspect
to SEO as the more backlinks that you have to your website the
more important your website is deemed to be by the search
engines.

The search engine robots pick up your backlinks as they do their
general trawling of the internet. Once you have a Google
Webmasters account you can see how many backlinks your
website has according to Google in the "Links to your site"
section.

There are many ways of you creating backlinks to your website
to assist in your SEO. The best way is to create organic
backlinks through commenting on blog posts, and writing articles
for publication on other websites. There are so called SEO
"black-hat" tactics that professional webmasters sometimes use
to get mass automated backlinks, however these are becoming
uncovered by the search engines, and if identified as employing

19


Stage 9 - How to get run a successful coaching be entrepreneurial and market yourself, then you have
business and get plenty of clients chosen the wrong career.
2. Pick a niche. It is so much easier to market your services
in a particular niche of coaching rather than as a general
coach. In terms of your internet marketing having a niche
means that you can target your website keywords at this
niche, it also means that when the potential client gets
your website returned in their search results they will be
impressed that you such an expert in exactly the area of
coaching that they require. It is also beneficial to have a
niche in terms of other types of advertising that you may
need. Say you decide to become a golf coach rather than
a general sports coach, you can imagine that all of a
sudden you would know where specifically to hand out
your business cards.
3. Tell everyone what you do. Get on the various social
networking sites, contact everyone that you know and tell
them what you now do and how you can help people.
4. Make it easy for clients to say 'yes' to your coaching.
This might seem like a strange one but some people put
We have focussed in recent blogs on how to go about setting up unnecessary obstacles in the way to clients agreeing to
your new coaching practice. At some point in time you are going become clients. Think, "do I really need a contract?"
to have to think about how to get lots of coaching clients Clients are going to be much more likely to proceed if they
otherwise you will be a very unhappy coach! The time to do that know that they can pay by results. Offer money back
is NOW. satisfaction guarantees. Agree to work on a meeting by
meeting basis rather than agreeing to 10 meetings over
I have listed below 14 key attributes required to run a successful 10 weeks for example. At then end of my meetings I
coaching practice and things that you will need to think about in always ask "When do you want to arrange another
terms of your marketing. meeting?" I find it much better being flexible rather than
sticking to a rigid programme.
1. One of the key attributes of a successful coach is to think
and act like an entrepreneur. If you are not prepared to 5. Become a master of your art. Keep training, keep
developing yourself. The more you learn the more of an
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expert you beome. There will be a time when a client you were going to look for a solution on the internet to
challenges you over some part of your knowledge or over their problem, what would you search for?
your level of development as a human being. If you are
10. People want their coach to be enthusiastic. It might
not continuing to fully develop yourself, then how can you
sound obvious but you need to sound and behave
promote this to a client?
enthusiastically about life and about every moment in this
6. When you first start as a coach and you consider how you beautiful world of ours.
are going to gain clients, then it can seem a bit daunting.
11. Price your coaching services correctly. There is a
The problem is that the mind cannot think of more than
general rule of thumb with coaches that we call the 20%
one thing at a time, and if you are trying to think in terms
rule. If 1 in 5 of your clients complain that you are
of gaining more than one client, then you will get
overcharging then you have got your pricing about right. If
confused. Best to concentrate "how do I get my next
more than one in five are complaining, then you may need
client?" and see what comes into your imagination. You
to think about reducing your tariffs. If nobody complains
will find that the mind accepts the challenge much more
then you are not charging enough!
readily.
12. Think of other ways to get people to hear what you do.
7. When people ask you what you do, what do you say? If
Are there any public speaking engagements that you
you feel less than congruent about what you do then that
can do? Are you a specialist in another field? If so, then
will come across to the other person. Make sure that you
maybe you can do some free public speaking in that field.
are easily able to describe what you do, how you do it
Of course make sure that you take plenty of business
and who you do it for. Practice answering those
cards around with you and broadcast to people exactly
questions to yourself.
how you can help them at these events.
8. In terms of your google marketing, use Google Adwords
13. Get testimonials from coaching clients that you have had
to market to your keywords. Have a benchmark price that
successful results with. People love to read success
you are willing to pay for each click on your advert and
stories, it creates great pictures to them of how their future
stick to that benchmark.
could look. Write case studies and put them on your
9. The more that you shout out to the world about what you website.
do, the more people are going to hear you and the more
14. Do not be ruled by fear. You are at a delicate stage in
energy you are going to put out there. Start blogging.
your progression to be a professional coach, you are out
When you are thinking about how to title your blogs, think
of your comfort zone. You may well find yourself looking
about what sort of problems you solve for your coaching
over your shoulder and wondering what might happen if
clients, and use those phrases for the titles of your blogs.
you do not succeed. Remember that this is fear that you
Put yourself in your clients shoes, if you were them and
are feeling, and remember that you have a choice over

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what you focus on. Get a picture back in your mind of why
you decided to become a coach and what you want to
achieve in your chosen career. Focus on that picture
instead! You can do it!
Thinking of becoming a coach? We provide NLP based coaching
training courses and Anthony Beardsell also offers 1:1 Coaching
Training mentoring. Contact Anthony

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How to set up your new coaching practice