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SEO, or search engine optimization, is a process website owners use to get their pages to rank higher on Google search results. It is an important part of a complete marketing strategy for many businesses. SEO is partly technical, but a big part of SEO revolves around the content and the message of that content.
To rank well in Google, your content and message need to demonstrate certain attributes about your business. These attributes are typically abbreviated as EEAT, representing experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. The thing is, EEAT isn’t just a good formula for SEO. Your marketing efforts will be more successful if your content and messaging demonstrate your experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. Let’s examine these and how you can demonstrate them in your content and messaging.
Experience
You might be worried that you lack experience as a new coach. Well, put your mind at ease; experience, in this case, isn’t about how long you’ve been doing something. What this represents is sharing your personal experience.
New business owners often make mistakes by being too formal or hiding behind the business brand. As a life coach, you are your brand. People want to know who you are. They want to know how you developed your coaching approach based on your life challenges and how you overcame them.
Putting more of you into your content is powerful. You’re unique, and when you bring your unique outlook, gifts, and strengths to your content, people will relate to you more. Instagram expert, Kat Coroy, calls it your ‘Brand Soul Essence'. The magic happens when you talk authentically about your passion for your business and how you help others.
Expertise
Your content should highlight your expertise in your coaching niche. You can show your expertise by writing high-quality, accurate, and helpful content. You can also highlight your biography. Your coach training and certifications will help establish your expertise and life experience. Share the skills that you used in previous careers before becoming a coach. They’re still relevant and help show your expertise.
Make sure your content is helpful. Expertise is great, but posting many facts about something that isn’t directly relevant to your potential clients won’t help you grow your business. Solve a problem for your potential clients with your content, and you create a new fan.
Authority
Authority is how you stand out from the crowd. You establish authority by creating content that answers your potential customer's questions. This is where you allow your worldview and your perspectives to shine. Another term for authority is thought leadership.
Establishing authority is to build upon your expertise to demonstrate your knowledge and that you’re the go-to person for your coaching niche. Establishing authority often requires longer form content, so I don’t recommend relying solely on social media for marketing. It’s much easier to establish authority with longer videos or written content. Authority content aims to get others to link to or share your content. A common trick is to post a viewpoint that might be controversial. For example, I posted about things I would never do as a business coach. I built the list from my pet peeves from business coaches who have tried selling marketing systems to me. It helped show that I’m an authority on what it takes to build a successful spiritual business and what clients want and need from a business coach.
Trustworthiness
Potential clients want to feel that they can trust you. The most common content coaches create to show trustworthiness is social testimonials. You’ve likely seen coaches that list multiple testimonials from satisfied clients as proof that they are trustworthy and can help solve the problems they claim to solve. As a new coach, you may not have many testimonials. What can you do?
You likely worked with practice clients and peer coaches as part of your coach training. Ask some of your practice clients if they would be willing to write a testimonial for you. You can use these testimonials as part of your marketing content. Even more importantly, you can get more creative at showing your trustworthiness.
Talk about your values. People have an easier time trusting someone who shares their values. Another great way to demonstrate trustworthiness is to offer an intro or trial session. I use my free clarity call to give potential clients a coaching sample. It allows me to establish rapport with them, and when I talk about my free, no-obligation clarity call in my marketing content, it helps establish that I’m trustworthy.
Don’t forget to talk about your credentials. While many marketing professionals will tell you that a potential client only cares whether you can solve their problem, demonstrating that you’ve received training and certification helps establish your trustworthiness.
When creating your marketing content, demonstrating your experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness is considered the best practice for SEO. It turns out it’s best practice to create content that connects you with the people who most need your services.