Why Your Health Coaching Business Needs a Blog (& How to Start One)

Why your wellness business needs a blog (& how to start one) // Four Wellness Co. for health coaches: business tips and resources for health coaches and wellness entrepreneurs // how to start a health coaching business and become an online healt…

Melissa, integrative nutrition health coach and founder, Four Wellness Co. // Four Wellness Co. for health coaches: business tips and resources for health and wellness coaches, fitness instructors, personal trainers and other wellness professionals

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Some health coaches think of blogging as something only professional “wellness bloggers” do.

However, blogging is actually a powerful marketing tool for your health coaching business—and it’s one of my very top recommendations for new health coaches to grow your audience and connect with new clients!

Should your health coaching website have a blog?

Absolutely, yes!

I recommend all (well, okay, most) health coaching websites include a blog.

Your blog can be structured in many different ways, contain different types of content, be comprised of a bunch of different mediums (like writing, videos or photos), and be written by one author or multiple authors.

There are a gazillion different ways to set up and maintain your health coaching blog, and different strategies will work best for different coaches, skillsets and health coaching business types.

But a common thread among most websites in general (and health coaching websites in particular) is that having a blog will help to grow both your website audience and your business overall.

Why blogging is good for health coaches

Here are a few key reasons maintaining a wellness blog can help support and grow your health coaching business:

Blogging improves your health coaching website’s SEO

It’s true. Most websites’ SEO (search engine optimization—the ability of search engines to see and rank your content) is dramatically enhanced by publishing regular blog content.

And, the better your website’s SEO, the more likely you are to show up in the search results for people who are actively looking for exactly what you have to offer.

In other words, better SEO = more visibility to your ideal health coaching clients.

How blogging helps boost your entire website’s SEO:

Each new blog post adds lots more content, titles and keywords to your website that search engines can then crawl to determine what your site is about. For new websites in particular, this means a blog can help search engines better “see” you, as well as better understand the content you provide and who they should send your way. (More health coaching clients, please!)
Because blog posts are able to explore content in more depth and specificity than general pages or product descriptions typically do, they can better position your website’s content to be relevant to specific wellness questions your audience is searching for.
Blog posts are typically published more frequently than other pages on your site are updated. This regular activity helps to show search engines that your website is updated regularly and contains current information—which, in turn, improves your ranking in their algorithms.
Blog posts are organized with categories and tags, both types of metadata that help to communicate your keywords to search engines.
An archive of quality wellness blog posts can keep visitors on your website longer, exploring your related content. This helps SEO because increased dwell time shows search engines that your website visitors find your content useful.
Blog posts tend to be better at incorporating long-tail keywords than other types of pages on your site. Long-tail keywords (multiple keywords strung together) are an important part of your SEO strategy, as they tend to be more specifically relevant to what your audience is searching. (For example, you may think of “vegetarian” as a keyword, but “healthy vegetarian meal ideas” is a long-tail keyword that’s more likely to appear in real life Google searches.)
Blog content gives you more opportunities for internal linking throughout your website. For example, here’s another blog post we wrote on why internal linking helps boost your website’s SEO. ← That’s an internal link.
In addition to promoting internal linking, blog posts provide more opportunities for other sites to link back to your health coaching website, promoting inbound links as well. (And those are particularly good for your website’s search ranking!)

The SEO benefits alone tend to be enough of a reason to start blogging to grow your health coaching website, but there are also other important benefits a wellness blog brings to your health coaching business as well:

Sharing wellness expertise helps establish you as an industry expert

Particularly for new health coaches, publishing blog posts related to wellness topics you have particular expertise in helps to establish you as an industry expert—and, thus, someone your potential health coaching clients can respect and trust.

Aim to specifically share wellness content that your target health coaching audience would find useful, and that’s relevant to the services or products you offer (whether that’s 1:1 health coaching services, online wellness membership groups or programs, other passive income streams, or other wellness products).

Blogging communicates your health coaching voice + brand

Blogging is a simple and effective way to establish a voice for yourself as a health coach.

Whether you’re a formal practitioner sharing science-based evidence; a relatable health coach offering supportive wellness advice; or you communicate complicated health and wellness topics with a sense of humor—your wellness blog is your opportunity to define your voice as a health coach (and, through that, your health coaching “brand” and what potential clients can expect from working with you).

In other words, your blog posts help to establish who you are as a health coach, building rapport and helping your audience (potential health coaching customers!) better understand and connect with you.

Content marketing grows your health coaching audience

Blog content provides an opportunity to promote your wellness expertise (and health coaching business!) via content marketing. And, content marketing just so happens to be my very favorite method of growing your health coaching audience + business.

In particular, I recommend writing quality wellness blog content relevant to your target audience, sharing your blog content on Pinterest, and even guest posting on relevant wellness websites.

Content marketing (basically, blogging + Pinterest) is a great, cost-effective way to promote your health coaching business to new audiences.

How to start a wellness blog as a health coach

So, if I’ve sold you on blogging’s many, many benefits for your health coaching business and you’d like to start a wellness blog to support your broader health coaching biz goals, it’s relatively simple to set up a blog and get started publishing content to it!

As you may know, I’m a web designer (so know a bit what I’m talking about 😉). I use and recommend Squarespace websites—it’s by far my favorite website platform for health coaches and wellness professionals.

These steps will walk you through how to start a wellness blog on a Squarespace website specifically—but feel free to apply them to another website platform if that’s your preference!

Here are four easy steps to start a wellness blog on your Squarespace website:

1. Create your wellness blog

In Squarespace, a blog is simply another “page type” you can add to your website. In your pages panel, click the + and select Blog.

How to create a health coaching blog on your Squarespace website // Why Your Wellness Business Needs a Blog (& How to Start One) // Four Wellness Co. for health coaches

(You can keep your new blog disabled or in your Not Linked pages section until your content is ready.)

2. Style your wellness blog

Design your wellness blog experience with your readers in mind.

Here are some tips for styling your wellness blog:

You can remove certain blog post information that comes standard on Squarespace blogs. For example, you may wish to remove the blog post date from displaying on your posts. (Blog post dates can unnecessarily “date” your evergreen content, making it appear old or out-of-date, even if you’ve kept the blog post updated and its information is all still relevant.)
You don’t have to call your blog “Blog”—feel free to name it anything that makes sense for your particular health coaching business. Some examples: Wellness Resources, Wellness Tips, etc.
All Squarespace templates have some ability to customize your blog style in the Site Styles editor (Design > Site Styles). You can customize the fonts and colors used in your blog posts, the metadata (blog post date, author, category, etc.) that displays on each post, and more.
You’ll also want to think about how you want your blog posts to be organized: it’s a good idea to come up with a few categories (3-6 should do the trick) in which you’ll categorize your blog content. These should be stand alone topic areas; ideally, you’ll apply just one category to each blog post. For example, these are the categories for our wellness blog: Nutrition, Physical Activity, Relationships, Career, Lifestyle, Mindset, Health Coaching.
It’s helpful to set up a blog post template that you’ll work off of to create new posts. This eliminates the need to add more complicated elements (like related post reels or newsletter opt-ins) manually each time you create a new blog post.
And, you’ll choose how you’d like to organize and style your blog archives—the page where visitors can find all of your latest blog content. For example, here’s our health coach blog archives page with all of our latest blog posts and business resources for health coaches.

3. Add wellness blog posts

Now you’ll create and publish your first blog posts!

Your wellness blog posts can take many forms, or some combination of these forms:

formal written articles
conversational stories
videos
photos
how-to tutorials
anything else that’s relevant to your health coaching business!

Regardless of your particular wellness niche or how you choose to structure your blog posts, here are my recommendations for attracting your ideal health coaching clients with your blog content.

To create a new blog post: Navigate to your new Blog and click the + to add a new post.

Be sure each new blog post has:

a compelling blog post title
a descriptive, keyword-rich blog post excerpt
a blog post thumbnail image (you can select free professional stock photography from Unsplash or paid stock photography from Getty Images directly from your Squarespace blog post editor!)
one category
relevant tags (aim for 10-20 long-tail keywords)

4. Promote your blog posts to grow your audience

Once you publish your blog posts, they’ll already be working for you and your health coaching business behind the scenes, contributing to your website’s SEO and giving existing website visitors more wellness content to get to know and trust you as a health coach.

But you can further maximize the impact of your blog posts by using them to promote your wellness website (and thus business!) to new audiences. Here’s more about my favorite content marketing strategy to grow your website traffic.

Health coach blogging FAQs

Help! What should I write about?

Any wellness topics you have expertise on and that your target health coaching audience would find useful, educational or entertaining!

How long should my blog posts be?

Best practice, for SEO purposes, is to aim for around 1,200 words + per blog post (more is better too!).

What’s your favorite website platform for starting a wellness blog?

Squarespace, for sure! Use code PARTNER10 to take 10% off the first year of your Squarespace subscription!

How many blog posts should I have to launch my wellness blog?

I recommend starting with a set of blog posts that can collectively give a pretty comprehensive overview of your health coaching expertise and available services.

If you’re more of a general health coach, that could be one blog post in each of the category areas you work in. Or, if you specialize in a particular area of health (for example, women’s health), you could include a set of posts demonstrating that’s your primary focus.

It’s also nice for your readers to have access to other blog posts they may find interesting after reading one. (How often have you read a blog post you loved and not clicked through to read more content from the same author?)

How frequently should I post on my wellness blog?

The magic number varies based on your particular health coaching business—and, quite frankly, your capacity to create and publish quality blog content. Some large websites post several times a day (eek!), and some smaller sites post once a month or so.

I recommend starting with a weekly or bi-weekly post and adjusting from there based on what works best for you. Of course, the more often you can publish new blog content, the better… but it’s also important to be sure your blog posts are well-written and valuable, so I’d focus more on quality than quantity as you get started.

How do I choose a good blog post title?

Easy! Use my favorite tool for assessing which blog post titles will drive traffic, shares and search results: the CoSchedule Headline Analyzer.

What else should I know about blog post SEO?

Check out my SEO tips for health coaches. And, if you’d like to really do it right and amp up your website’s SEO, check out SEO Basics for Business Owners (and use code HEALTHCOACH for 20% off!).