SEO (search engine optimization) is a long term process, despite what a lot of “blackhat" SEO people and untrustworthy website creation services will tell you. There are some good quality sites out there explaining such as this article in Startupgrind, SEO is Not Hard — A step-by-step SEO Tutorial for beginners that will get you ranked every single time.
There is both on-page and off-page SEO. You can optimize the on-page SEO for your LCH website from your dashboard through Meta Information, and also by content generation (blog writing on LCH). Off-page SEO you can do through link building and social media.
The Meta Information you fill in for your website pages on the Website Content page, especially the TItle, tells Google what your page is about. The Meta Description is geared towards people who see your page come up in the search engine results and decide to click on it.
There used to be another form of Meta Information, Meta keywords, but due to the shady practice of "keyword stuffing," this is no longer used by Google when ranking sites or determining what a site is about. However, the Meta Description field is still very important, as it impacts the "click through rate", or how often a person will be likely to click on your page to view it when it comes up in search results. So it is important to write your Meta Description in a way that is compelling, fully describing this specific page. For instance the Meta Description for the LCH home page is "Find a coach in Life Coach Hub's community of expert independent coaches. Get free life coaching tips. Easy coaching with state of the art software."
Apart from the title, Google and other search engines also use bots to look at your site, and pages on your site, to figure out what it is about. So here is why they say “content is king” on the Internet. If you write blog posts about coaching, Google and your readers will come to know that your site is about coaching. As the SEO article linked to above states, a lot of your search engine traffic will not come from big keywords like “coaching” but from the “long tail.” These are articles aimed at for people searching for much more specific things such as “How can coaching help me improve my relationships?”. If you wrote a blog post on this, and someone searched for it, they are much more likely to click on it and find you!
On-page SEO is important, but it is only one part of SEO. Off-page SEO has even more weight. In a nutshell, Off-page SEO refers to other wesites, as well as social media sites, which link back to you and your content. The links tell Google two things: 1. your site is authoritative in a specific area 2. what that area is (based on who is linking and the context of the link).
Both off page and on-page SEO take time to build and have an impact. Even though Google will index your page almost immediately, there are currently over ONE BILLION websites (http://www.internetlivestats.com/total-number-of-websites/). That is a far cry from the early days when you could just create a website and people would find it. That means for a search term like “life coaching”, there are hundreds of thousands of websites that try to “rank” on the first page. Of course only the most trusted and largest will make it there.
So the best way to start being found by search engines, optimize your SEO and get more traffic is to—
Publishing links to your content on social media is also a good way to get traffic, and one that is not dependent on search engines. But always make sure not to publish the ENTIRE content, just a snippet with a link to the full article on your website. Otherwise, you will be downplaying the importance of your website for the search engines.
It’s a little intimidating, but there really are not shortcuts, despite what some SEO people and shady website generating services will tell you. Every time people try to “keyword stuff” or build shady links or use other blackhat tactics such as blog rings, they get caught by Google and can even get de-indexed! The best way to build authority is over the long term. You will also find social media to be a great way to drive people to your site and increase your visibility.
