How to set up your new coaching practice

Save hours and hours. Learn from our experience. 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!

Brochure Contents

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Page 2 Introduction

Page 2 Training & Qualifications

Page 4 Which services to offer

Page 6 Keyword Searching for your new coaching business

Page 8 Choosing a legal structure

Page 10 Naming your practice

Page 13 Getting a website

Page 15 Creating and designing your website

Page 17 Search Engine Optimisation

Page 20 Running a successful business and getting clients

Introduction

Our NLP based training courses provide many marketable skills and we get asked all the time about the practicalities of individuals setting themselves up in a coaching/therapy practice.

One of the things that deters people from going ahead is the perceived cost and complexity involved.  In order to support the students of our coaching and NLP training courses we are going to produce a series of blogs on how to practically go about setting up a practice and marketing your services/networking, website construction, design and getting recognised by search engines. Most importantly we are going to

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 qualificationsThe 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.

There are many providers of coaching and coaching related courses, each offering different levels and titles of coaching qualifications.

So, which is the best provider and what is the best qualification for you?  The best thing to do to answer that question is to think about your desired outcome.  What is the outcome that you desire from your coaching qualification?  Think about that question now and jot some thoughts down.

Ultimately you want training that is going to allow you to be a 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 coaching career?

There is one thing that stands above everything else in terms of what will facilitate your success, that is, how good you are at coaching! You can have all the qualifications in the world but if you do not get successful results with your clients, then you will fail in business because you will not have any clients.Successful coaches, running successful businesses all have one thing in common, they get great results with their clients and these clients are happy to tell other people about how good they are. Referrals (one client referring you, your services to another person) are a major source of business for coaches and will form a massive part of your marketing plan.

So, picking a training course that will enable you to be a great coach is your first and foremost consideration. This is why NLP Training is so popular amongst the coaching community. NLP provides skills that are a perfect fit with coaching, enabling you, the coach to develop your own excellence, and providing skills and techniques that will enable you to help others to do the same.

Your second consideration is probably to ensure that you have a qualification that is recognised by the appropriate professional bodies.  Whilst as I say, coaching is an unregulated industry, in terms of acquiring clients it is possible that some corporate clients will require you to be a member of a recognised national or international body. The largest recognised coaching membership organisation in the world is the International Coaching Federation (ICF).  Our NLP Training courses provide you with “coaching specific training hours” that are required by organisations like the ICF in order to become a member, and

our courses provide recognised professional qualifications that are accredited by the NLPEA, an international body of NLP.There are two stages of professional qualification in terms of NLP. The NLP Practitioner qualification is the first stage, the second stage being NLP Master Practitioner.  These two qualifications combined are recognised now throughout the world of coaching as being a stamp of coaching excellence and I would recommend any wannabe coach to complete these qualifications.

Our popular online NLP Training courses are perfect for International and UK based students alike.

Setting up in businessWhilst you are completing your training you can also be in the process of setting up your coaching/therapy business.There are many things to think about at this stage, here are just a few that we will be writing about in this ebook:

• What services will I offer specifically? Eg, Life Coaching, Business Coaching, Executive Coaching, Relationship Coaching, Performance Coaching, a combination of services etc

• What sort of business do I set up?  Sole Trader/Limited Company/Partnership

• Name of your company/trading name? Incorporating/registering your company

• Designing a logo, getting your business stationery.

• Getting a business bank account

• Getting an accountant?

• Website - a major consideration. Getting a web address, web hosting, web design

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• Website optimization

• 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?"

Stage 2 - Which services to offer?

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

• Health

• Leadership

• Motivation

• Parent Coaching

• Personal Development

• Relationships

• Retirement

• Spirituality

• Stress

In addition to that there is Executive Coaching, Performance Coaching, Business Coaching and Mentoring...the list goes on.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. The beauty of coaching is that a coach does not necessarily need to have any knowledge of or skills in the area in which they are coaching.

The whole idea of coaching as we know is that the person being coached (the coachee) has all the skills and knowledge inside them already, or they are able to get them, in order to reach their potential, or solve their problem. The skill of the coach is to be able to facilitate the coachee in releasing, discovering that potential, in facilitating the coachee in looking inside themselves for the resources to solve their own problems.

Having said that it definitely helps from a credibility point of view with potential clients if you are able to provide some evidence of having skills in the specific area in which you are coaching.

For example I decided to offer an Executive Coaching service. The reason for that was because I have worked at a senior management level in business and so in the eyes of my clients, I am able to empathise from experience with many of their challenges, eg work/life balance, challenges in managing others (including your boss!).

So, for another example, you may be a mother, in which case offering Parent Coaching would make sense, as you have a perceived level of experience in that area.

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 business coaching, so it may be that you offer a full range of coaching services, but you specialise in one or two particular areas.

As well as the credibility aspect of specialising, it will also make your marketing easier, as you can target a specific market or a specific group of people, rather than marketing to the whole population. Marketing to specific groups of people is considerably less expensive as you have less competition.Thinking ahead to your website, and thinking about acquiring clients using your website, it is much easier to get on the first page of google, for “Executive Coaching Sheffield” for example, than it is for “Life Coaching.”

The next stage of the process in setting up your coaching practice will be to investigate these “keywords” or key phrases on google, and I will explain how to go about that in another blog. Depending on the popularity or not of your keywords, you may need to change your mind over specifically what areas you are 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 your potential marketplace is too big and too competitive.

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.

Stage 3 - Keyword Searching for your new Coaching business

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 clients as you will certainly be able to add a good amount of 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 how good you are, and refer you on to them.

One other way of acquiring clients that is becoming more and more successful is by using the internet. There are over 40,000 searches per month on Google for “Life Coaching” in the UK, 9,000 monthly searches for “Executive Coaching” and 12,000 monthly searches for “Business Coaching.” So, there are plenty of people searching for coaching services, and if you are at the top of the search results for these Keywords, then you are going to be doing very nicely indeed.

The thing is that it is not going to be easy to get to the top of the search results for these Keywords since all the other coaches in the UK are going to be competing with you to be there and most of them have got a head start on you!

So, start thinking about words that are specific to the services that you are going to offer. For example, what is your location? What are the specific locations that you are going to market your services? “Executive Coaching Bristol” will get far fewer searches per month than “Coaching” or “Training” or “Counselling” but there will be much less competition for these Keywords, so you stand a good chance of getting your services on the first page of the search results, and this is what we are after.

“Relationship Counselling Derbyshire” is another good example, it describes exactly what your services are, so people searching on these keywords find what they are looking for. It is about being specific and the competition for these keywords is modest,

so you stand a chance of getting enquiries from your website if you target these type of keywords.

Once you have decided on some keywords that represent what you want to offer, are specific in description and location, then it is time to research these keywords to make sure that they are popular enough to get you some clients.

The free internet based tool that we use to do the research is the Keyword tool in Google Adwords.

Just type your keywords into their tool, and google will tell you how many people have been searching using those specific words or phrases. You will be provided with global monthly searches and local monthly searches. Assuming that you are not selling services internationally, then the local monthly searches is the one that we are interested in as that will tell you the number of searches that have been made on those keywords in your country.

Initially I would recommend looking at keywords that have 1,000 monthly searches or less, as this will give you the best chance of making a quick move onto the first page of search results for those keywords. You may need to look at several phrases in order to get the numbers to around 1,000, and that is ok, because you can target different keywords with different pages of your website.

If your keyword phrases are similar in type, then all the better. For example, “Training Kent” and “Coaching Kent” are similar in type as Kent is common to both phrases, and this will help the search engines to get to know what you are offering, and therefore which search results to place your website listing in.

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“Relationship Coaching” and “Relationship Counselling” again 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.

The next stage in the process of setting up your coaching business is to choose a legal structure. Have you started your coaching training? NLP Training with Excellence Assured is your perfect starting point. You can start now by training in NLP Online.

Stage 4 - Choosing a legal structure for your business

You have decide to set up your own coaching practice, you are taking your training, you have decided what services you are going to be offering, what areas of coaching or therapy you are 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 name for your coaching practice, what sort of legal structure your business is going to take and to grab your website address 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 they were their own debts. So, if you are a sole trader, and your business fails, then you will be responsible for the debts that you have accumulated in running your business.

A limited company operates as a separate entity in its own right and therefore has ownership of its own debts. So, if you are operating as a limited company and your business fails, then your liability is “limited” in that the business is responsible for any business debts. This is the cause of much concern for creditor victims of serial entrepreneurs, who run up business debts, let the business fail and then set up another business and start incurring debts once again.

It is probably unlikely that this will be a major consideration for you since it is very difficult for new businesses to get credit these days, and you are not going to be running a business with a vast amount of stock, so therefore you will not necessarily be needing credit.

As far as tax is concerned, a sole trader is responsible for income tax on any income that they generate above their usual individual allowance. They are also responsible for charging and paying VAT if they are registered for it. As a sole trader there are expenses that you will incur as a result of your business activities and these can usually be off-set against income before any tax becomes due. You will complete an annual tax return to report income and expenditure, just as most higher rate taxpayers are used to doing in the UK already.

A limited company is liable for Corporation Tax on any profit that is made. You will need an accountant to prepare and submit annual accounts for your business. Once the business has paid the corporation tax, then you may take an income from the

company. Limited Companies are limited by the issue of shares, so for example you may set up your business with 100 shares that you own. Your business is then made up of in effect 100 segments, which you can sell to raise capital.

Most business owners take money out of their company in the form of dividends which come as income from the shares. The tax on dividends is lower in the UK, than tax on income (half at the basic rate), so this makes sense financially. The business is responsible for collecting and paying VAT if the company is registered for it.

Some benefits of setting up as a limited company are that some organisations are reluctant to contract employ sole traders as coaches, since they view it as a credibility issue. Limited companies must register accounts with Companies House, which means that it is easier to financially appraise and carry out due diligence on a limited company than it is a sole trader.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, since you are the main asset of the company, and without you, there is no value in the business.

Most coaches set up in business as sole traders at the outset as the structure is much less complicated and also the professional fees (accountants) associated with the business are lower. You can change the legal structure later if necessary.

The next stages of building your coaching practice:

• Choosing a name for your business

• Getting your website address

• Web hosting

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• Website design

• 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

Stage 5 - Naming your practice

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 the stationery, get an accountant, and get a website.

Considerations in naming your coaching businessSome things to think about when naming your business. Does it tell potential customers what you do? Is the website address for that name available? Is someone else using that business name?

If you are planning on just keeping your business simple, then you may just opt for YOUR NAME COACHING, or YOUR NAME LIFE COACHING. It is important to have the “coaching” or “life coaching” part to your title for a couple of reasons, firstly it tells customers what you do and secondly it is beneficial in terms of getting noticed by Search Engines like Google.

If you are wanting to keep your options open for future development of the business into different business areas, or employ other people then you may choose a different approach. I chose the name Excellence Assured for several reasons:

• I knew that I wanted to specialise in NLP and NLP is the study of “excellence.”

• “Excellence” is vague enough as a word for it to work in terms of business training, coaching and personal development.

• I knew that I would not be the only person in the business and that I may need to employ or contract other coaches, trainers and administrators to fulfill the objectives of the business.

The name Excellence Assured has worked out well for me but it does mean that I have to do more work in terms of website

presence than I would have done if I had called the business NLP Training Excellence for example.

Your business name and the internetIf you think in terms of what people on the internet are searching for, people are not going to perform a search on “excellence” or “assured” if they want some life coaching, are they? They are going to search for “life coaching” of course, aren’t they? Google and the other search engines want to return search results to people based on what they are interested in finding out about, so if someone types in “life coaching” the Google robots will try to find the websites with the biggest presence in terms of life coaching to present in the search results. One of the things that the robots take notice of is the title of the website, so the websites with the words “life coaching” in the titles are likely to be favourite to appear in the search results.

Another thing that search engines look at is the location of the business if it is stated in the website name and they will match that with the location of the person performing the search. Yes, they know where you are! So, for example a website titled Executive Coaching Bristol is likely to appear in the search results for people searching for “executive coaching” in Bristol. It is unlikely that it will appear in the search results for someone in Glasgow searching on “executive coaching.”

So, think about what you want to appear in the internet search results for in terms of your business name. You can of course call your business Fred Blogs Ltd and have a website address of relationshipcoachinglondon.co.uk. In fact if you really want to you can have Relationship Coaching London as a division of Fred Blogs Ltd as long as other people are not using the name.

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I would recommend making the name of the company match your website address as much as possible as I think that it looks best in terms of gaining and maintaining trust with people.

With this in mind have you got a name that you would like to go ahead with for your business?

Is the name available?If you have got the name in mind then the next step is to make sure that the name is not taken. If you have decided to set up as a limited company and you are in the UK all limited companies must register with Companies House. You can check your 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 businessIf 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.

If you are setting up as a limited company, then as I said you must register the company with Companies House. There are a 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 Companies Made Simple. Using a formation agent is really easy and they do the registration for you. They generally have several incorporation packages that you can choose from depending on what you want and their basic packages are normally fine for a simple company registration. They will also put you in touch with an accountant and other professionals if required.

The next step is to buy your Website domain name.

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Stage 6 - Getting a website for your business

Stage six in our “Starting your own coaching business” is to get yourself a website. No business can be taken seriously these days without a website to showcase the business, and it can be a fantastic source of business for a coach as well.

We have already spent some time in previous articles discussing how to conduct your keyword research with Google to identify the keywords that you are going to use in your website title and on your website to attract clients. You will now have taken the first steps in officially naming your business and registering it with the appropriate authorities. The next thing to do as quickly as possible is to purchase your website domain name, you can then go about setting up your website.

The way that the internet works is that you create a domain on the World Wide Web and that domain is allocated a specific address, called the web address. Your web address will be

unique to you, so that anyone anywhere in the world can view your web pages if they have the correct web address.

Web hostingOnce 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 you just need a basic package from your web host. There are several web hosts offering free hosting services nowadays, but a basic paid service is probably going to be more reliable. It shouldn’t cost you more than £5 per month. The thing to look for is where the web hosts servers are located.

Local hostingOne of the things that search engine robots look for when they are compiling search results for someone is where a website is hosted. Imagine that you have a website that is offering Coaching services in London, but your web hosts servers are in California, the search engine robot is going to think that Coaching services London is based in California, I can’t imagine many people in California searching for “Coaching in London” so I wouldn’t imagine that your website would show up in many search results. What is worse is that the people that are in 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 you are based in California!

So you need to choose a web host who’s servers are in your country.

To make it easier for you it is a good idea to buy your domain 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 youAs 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!

Ok, so you’ve bought a website address and you have someone 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 is actually nearly as easy as creating a brochure in Word nowadays once you have a programme to translate what you write and see in your desktop publisher into web language or html as it is called and we shall discuss this in our next article.

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Stage 7 - Creating and designing your website

Many people assume that creating a stunning website is going to cost them a fortune. It certainly used to cost a fortune and there are many many website design companies out there who will charge you upwards of £3,000 to design and create a simple website for your coaching business.

Don’t pay them!!!

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 that his business had just spent £40,000 on a new website, admittedly they were trading internationally but still that is a ridiculous sum of money for what they got, a website.

I think that the thought of this size of investment puts lots of people off going into business at all. Believe me, after you have 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 hardest part of creating a website is probably writing the blurb for your pages, and even if you do pay for someone to design and create a website for you, writing the pages will still be down to you.

WordpressBy far the easiest way to create a quality website for free nowadays is to use a piece of software called Wordpress. Wordpress is the interface that you will use which basically

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 computer programming language in order to design your own website. This is completely unnecessary nowadays due to the availability of software such as Wordpress.

Wordpress is free to use under the General Public License for free software. It was designed by a group of computer programmers under this license and they continue to develop the software for the good of the world computer community.

They offer full details on their website of how you can install the program on your servers. It is quite easy. Basically all you need to do is download the software to your local computer and then upload it to your website using something called an FTP client. The FTP client is another piece of software that is like a “My Computer” file manager function for your website. Filezilla is an example of a quality FTP client and again this software is free.

The benefits of Wordpress are:• It is free.

• It is easy to use.

• It is popular and therefore if you hit a problem, then the chances are that someone else will also have had the same problem and had it answered on an internet forum. Type your problem into a search engine and you will discover the answer.

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• It has a What you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) interface, this allows you to copy and paste documents from your computer onto your website.

• You can easily transfer photos and videos from your computer into your website.

• It is “search engine friendly,” helping your website get seen by more people.

• It has many many free “plug-ins” which make your life easier.

Plug-insBecause 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

easy it is for the search engines to discover from your website what you do, and how important that they think your website is. The higher the perceived importance of your website and the closer that your website “keywords” are to what people are searching for, the higher up the search results your website will appear. The free version of the Wordpress All in One SEO plug-in is a must have plug-in for everyone as it does a large part of the SEO work for you.

We will discuss SEO in more detail next.

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Stage 8 - Search Engine OptimisationYou 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!

Search EnginesThe first step in getting your website recognised by the search engines is to register your website with them. A search engine is basically a very clever robot which scans through every webpage that it can find on the internet. It stores the information that it finds in the webpages on its servers and when someone performs a search it matches up the search term with the webpages that it has scanned and presents the results that provide the closest match to the customer request.

So, for example, the screenshot below is what you currently get if you search for "NLP Training Online" in Google.

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 the results in order to attempt to provide the best fit to the customer request (search query).

In the screenshot you can note that the first three results and all of the results down the right-hand side of the page are adverts. If you click on one of the adverts, then Google will charge the company concerned for redirecting you to their website. This is called "Pay Per Click." We will discuss advertising with Google in a separate article. For now we will concentrate on getting your website on the first page of the search results without you having to pay for it.

You will notice that our website is returned at number three in the non-advertised results.

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Google Indexing - Registering your websiteSo, how do Google and the other search engines prioritise websites? Since Google is by far now the most popular search engine we will concentrate on them. Firstly, the search engines cannot scan and store your webpages unless they know that they exist, so in order to let them know that you are there and allow them to "index" your webpages it is good practice to register your website with them.

In order to register your website with Google you will need to create a Google account and then access the Webmaster Tools function. If you are using Wordpress for design of your website, then you can download a plugin for your site that will do the rest for you. Otherwise you will need to confirm ownership of the website by placing some html code that Google will provide you with on your webpages. You then need to submit a "Sitemap," which lists all of the pages on your website, again there is a Wordpress Plugin that will do this for you.

Once you have registered your website and submitted a Sitemap you will need to wait a week or so for the Google robots to "crawl" your website. After it has done this and assuming that it finds no errors in the code of your website, then it will index your Website and webpages. This is the first step to SEO completed.

KeywordsNow that Google has indexed your webpages, the next time that a search is made the Google robots will consider if your website is appropriate to return in the search results. We have discussed keywords in previous articles, so you have a basic knowledge of what we are talking about here. It is a case of who shouts loudest gets heard with the search engines. Basically the greater the number of times that you are able to mention your keywords on your webpage the better.

In the screenshot above you can see that in our entry in the search results for "NLP Training Online" we have "NLP Training Online" mentioned in the page title, the same keywords are included in the page description underneath the title and the same keywords are also in the URL (http://excellenceassured.com/e-learning/nlp-training-online). Google can be under no misconception over what this page is describing to people, and therefore is happy to present it to people high up in the search results and this is obviously what we want.

If you are using Wordpress then again there is a Plugin that you can download that will enable you to do this "on-page" SEO easily, it is called "All In One SEO Pack."

In addition to the URL, the page title and the page description mentioning your keywords, you will also want to mention them in the Website Description that you will find in your website Dashboard, and also in the material on the webpage, particularly in the page and paragraph Headings.

So, if you are providing Life Coaching in Bristol, then get those keywords mentioned all over your website so that the search engines know exactly what you do.

Number of webpages and contentThe next stage in the SEO process is the one that takes the longest time. If you have only one webpage on your website, then the search engines will not really take you too seriously. They are keen to present the most up-to-date and relevant content to people from websites with the greatest "authority", otherwise people will start using a different search engine.

The best way to ensure that your website is seen by the search 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) and to update your website on a regular basis. One way to make this happen is to write a blog. We currently have 260+ pages on this website.

Make sure that you do not copy content from other websites or duplicate your own content on different pages of your website otherwise you will be penalised by the search engines for having duplicate content.

LinksIf 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

these tactics you may find yourself getting banned from the search engines!

Social MediaOne of the best ways to get your website noticed is to link your website to the various social media websites like Linkedin and Facebook. This is also a superb way of letting your contacts know what you are up to and starting your marketing. Wordpress has plugins that automatically links from your website to Facebook, Linkedin and Google+ and will post any blogs that you write for your website on your social media pages.

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Stage 9 - How to get run a successful coaching business and get plenty of clients

We have focussed in recent blogs on how to go about setting up your new coaching practice. At some point in time you are going to have to think about how to get lots of coaching clients otherwise you will be a very unhappy coach! The time to do that is NOW.

I have listed below 14 key attributes required to run a successful coaching practice and things that you will need to think about in terms of your marketing.

1. One of the key attributes of a successful coach is to think and act like an entrepreneur. If you are not prepared to

be entrepreneurial and market yourself, then you have 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 unnecessary obstacles in the way to clients agreeing to become clients. Think, "do I really need a contract?" Clients are going to be much more likely to proceed if they know that they can pay by results. Offer money back satisfaction guarantees. Agree to work on a meeting by meeting basis rather than agreeing to 10 meetings over 10 weeks for example. At then end of my meetings I always ask "When do you want to arrange another meeting?" I find it much better being flexible rather than sticking to a rigid programme.

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 challenges you over some part of your knowledge or over your level of development as a human being. If you are not continuing to fully develop yourself, then how can you promote this to a client?

6. When you first start as a coach and you consider how you are going to gain clients, then it can seem a bit daunting. The problem is that the mind cannot think of more than one thing at a time, and if you are trying to think in terms of gaining more than one client, then you will get confused. Best to concentrate "how do I get my next client?" and see what comes into your imagination. You will find that the mind accepts the challenge much more readily.

7. When people ask you what you do, what do you say? If you feel less than congruent about what you do then that will come across to the other person. Make sure that you are easily able to describe what you do, how you do it and who you do it for. Practice answering those questions to yourself.

8. In terms of your google marketing, use Google Adwords to market to your keywords. Have a benchmark price that you are willing to pay for each click on your advert and stick to that benchmark.

9. The more that you shout out to the world about what you do, the more people are going to hear you and the more energy you are going to put out there. Start blogging. When you are thinking about how to title your blogs, think about what sort of problems you solve for your coaching clients, and use those phrases for the titles of your blogs. Put yourself in your clients shoes, if you were them and

you were going to look for a solution on the internet to their problem, what would you search for?

10. People want their coach to be enthusiastic. It might sound obvious but you need to sound and behave enthusiastically about life and about every moment in this beautiful world of ours.

11. Price your coaching services correctly. There is a general rule of thumb with coaches that we call the 20% rule. If 1 in 5 of your clients complain that you are overcharging then you have got your pricing about right. If more than one in five are complaining, then you may need to think about reducing your tariffs. If nobody complains then you are not charging enough!

12. Think of other ways to get people to hear what you do. Are there any public speaking engagements that you can do? Are you a specialist in another field? If so, then maybe you can do some free public speaking in that field. Of course make sure that you take plenty of business cards around with you and broadcast to people exactly how you can help them at these events.

13. Get testimonials from coaching clients that you have had successful results with. People love to read success stories, it creates great pictures to them of how their future could look. Write case studies and put them on your website.

14. Do not be ruled by fear. You are at a delicate stage in your progression to be a professional coach, you are out of your comfort zone. You may well find yourself looking over your shoulder and wondering what might happen if you do not succeed. Remember that this is fear that you 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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