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The typical candidate for a coaching school has a job, years of experience and a comparison spreadsheet open. They put four or five schools side by side: length, price, format, supervision, “certified” label. They read comparisons, rankings, paid ads, and they also ask an AI for its opinion. Their decision takes weeks and commits several thousand euros, sometimes paid by their employer. For a school that trains several intakes a year, SEO is a real commercial matter, and I handle it as one. Your website must give them clear answers, line by line, and lead them to request an admission interview.
15 years in SEO
4 books on SEO and GEO
200+ sites tracked every day
1M / month visits to my e-commerce site
They trusted me with their visibility
Darty
Eurofins
Cegid
EBP
CNP Assurances
Ingram MicroTwo lines in Google, neither of them informative
A manager in Charente types “certified coaching school”. Your school appears in third place with the title “Home | Coaching institute” and a description that says welcome. She sees no length, no format, no town. Rewrite those two lines.
Fig. 1. Three results for a coaching school. Only one says what its certification is worth. (Your programme contained all these facts. Your two lines in Google gave none of them.)
What this means for you. I rewrite your titles and descriptions with verifiable facts: the programme, its length, its format and where the certification is explained.
SEO for a coaching school aims to put your programmes in front of people looking for professional coach training, on Google and in AI answers alike. It's built around one page per programme, one page per town or format, and an accurate description of what your qualification and certification are worth. Its effect is measured in admission interview requests, information session sign-ups and completed applications.
The problem
On “certified coaching school”, every school, every directory and every comparison site wants first place, and many pay for it. The word itself covers very different realities. A mid-sized school won't win this search on budget alone. It can answer it with precision: saying exactly what its certification is, and what it isn't.
Some websites publish lists of coaching schools. Some are paid listings, others are old. You sometimes appear with a price or a length that's no longer yours. Candidates read them before your website, and so does AI.
Coaching school pages love big words: potential, presence, alignment. The candidate is looking for hours, dates, a number of supervised sessions and a price. Google looks for the same thing to know which search to show you for.
An audit, for real
The site below doesn't exist, but its flaws do: they're the five I spot most often. Hover over a number.
Discover the coach within you
Speakers who listen, from the first day to the last.
Get the brochureFig. 2. Fictional site, reconstructed. Any resemblance to yours would be a good reason to call me.
What your customers type
Six typical searches, to be read as examples. Your school's own, with their volumes, are in the audit.
What works
Full programme, team coaching specialisation, module for managers: each one has its page. It lists the teaching hours, practice hours, supervised sessions, assessment, dates and fees. The candidate compares figures. Give them yours.
Coaching isn't a regulated profession, and there are many titles in the field. Your page describes the real recognition of your qualification, the conditions for obtaining it and what it doesn't entitle anyone to claim. Google and AI read this topic carefully. A school that's precise on this point shows its seriousness exactly where the candidate is looking for it.
Almost nobody pays for a coach training programme online without having talked to the school. The expected action is a request for an interview or a sign-up to an information session. I put this action on every page, with the next dates and the name of the person you'll meet.
An experienced candidate looks at who teaches. Each speaker has a page: their corporate background, their experience as a coach, the modules they teach. These pages also help Google link your school to identifiable people.
The HR manager who approves an employee's request doesn't read the same things as the candidate. A short page is meant for them: programme objectives, calendar, expected absences, invoicing arrangements, contact.
What costs dearly
Announcing a business launched in under a year commits the school to a result that depends on the student and the market. A well-informed candidate is wary of it. Describe the programme and the support for setting up, if there is any, without announcing an outcome.
Some pages present coaching as an answer to distress or burnout. It's not a school's role to write that, and it puts your website in a category Google examines strictly. Stick to the client's professional and personal goals.
The word on its own in a title wins clicks and loses the trust of an attentive reader. Behind the word, there has to be a page that gives the facts. Without that page, I'd advise rewording.
Asking for a phone number before sending a price drives away candidates who are comparing. They find the amount elsewhere, on a sometimes outdated comparison site. Show it, with what it includes.
The method
Four phases. The certification page comes first, because the rest of the website refers to it.
One-minute test
Five frank questions to find out whether support makes sense in your situation. Sometimes the answer is no, and I'll tell you.
What it brings in
A ranking doesn't pay a salary. What counts is what it brings: enquiries, customers, revenue. Move your page up and see what it could bring in.
Example assumptions, open to challenge: 350 searches a month for professional coach training in your region, 2% of visitors make an enquiry, one enquiry in three is signed (this varies a lot from one industry to another), €7,000 per client. Click-through rates by position are orders of magnitude, and they've been shifting since Google started showing AI answers above the results. Redo the calculation with your figures
Possible revenue€0
Close to home
A coaching school based in Charente can train managers, small business owners and freelancers who live in Angoulême, Cognac or the small towns of the département. Video conferencing has shrunk the distance, for you as for the big-city schools. Your website must say what your location brings, and to whom: a venue, group days, access by road and by train.
If your group sessions take place in Angoulême, describe them: the venue, the number of participants, access by road and by train. A candidate from a neighbouring town may prefer a small intake they can reach within the day. First they need to know it exists.
A company in Angoulême, Cognac or a small town that wants to train a manager looks nearby first. A page dedicated to short programmes for managers, with examples of situations found in companies of that size, speaks to these employers. I write it without naming any company.
Fully remote schools address the whole of France, and their pages name no town. Yours can show what's specific to you: a room, a group that meets up, local alumni who agree to be contacted.
Beyond Google
Coaching candidates are comfortable with AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Mistral and use them to compare. A typical request looks like this: “compare coaching schools I can reach from Angoulême, with the length, the price, the format and what their certification is worth”. The AI builds a table from what it finds online.
If your website gives these four pieces of information clearly, the line about you is correct. If they're missing, the AI takes them from an old comparison, or leaves the box empty. On certification, it often tells the reader to check for themselves. An accurate, dated page on this point lets them do so in a minute.
Question asked to an AICompare coaching schools I can reach from Angoulême: length, price, format, value of the certification.
Three schools stand out. Check each one's certification yourself:
Fig. 3. Reconstruction, names hidden. This is the spot we aim for: on the list, with the most precise description.
Three typical cases
I made up these three cases. They describe schools that are already up and running, with regular intakes. I build your school's plan once the audit is done.
Its alumni recommend it, but its website gets almost no visits from Google.
It recruits all over France and comes up against the ad budgets of the big online schools.
Almost all its students pay for themselves, and some give up because of the price.
In practice
Pricing
The fee depends on four things. I give you a precise amount after a free first thirty-minute conversation.
Fancy a game?
Clickbait titles, fake reviews, copied pages: your market is a jungle. Grab the piece and slide it into the slot.
INSERT COINSLIDE THE COIN INTO THE SLOT
Fig. 4. Sixteen seconds. Ten snakes for one spot, as usual.
Together, let's devour your competitors.
One by one, and in order. Every spot gained makes the next one easier to take: that's why it keeps growing. See the method
Who you're talking to
My name is Kévin Papot. More than fifteen years in the job, four co-written books, and the Newp agency, co-founded in Charente. I also run my own online shops, in France and internationally: one of them went from zero to a million visits a month.
Before we talk tags, we talk margin, average basket and profitability. When you book a call, I'm the one who picks up.
FAQ
You can answer it; I don't promise you'll be first. The search is contested and the word carries weight. I start by checking with you what you can write on the subject, then I build a page that explains it. It also ranks for more specific searches, which bring in already well-informed candidates.
I favour established schools, with several intakes a year, a teaching team in place and annual turnover of around €300,000 to €400,000. The price of a programme then makes it possible to fund ongoing work. For a school that's just starting, I recommend beginning with an audit.
First check what they publish: price, length, format, qualification. When a piece of information is wrong, I prepare the correction request for you. Before paying for a featured listing, look with me at what it really brings in terms of applications.
What you can demonstrate, with documents to back it up. I don't characterise your qualification myself and I name no organisation without your approval. The page shows the date it was last updated, because these situations change.
Yes, with their written consent and without turning it into a success argument. A former student can say what the training taught them and how they practise today. The page states that every path is personal. It shows neither session rates nor client numbers.
Soberly. You list the current funding schemes the school accepts and, where relevant, the certification required to access them. The page for employers explains the steps on the company's side. I handle the format; you vouch for the substance.
Only for the towns where you actually bring your intakes together. A town page with no room and no dates misleads the reader and adds nothing. For the rest of France, one page about the remote format is enough.
Yes, if each date has a stable page and the recording stays available afterwards. These pages answer the questions candidates type, and they give a simple reason to leave contact details.
Fixes to existing pages sometimes have an effect within a few weeks. A new page on a contested topic takes several months. The candidate also thinks for a long time. So I present results to you intake by intake, with no promised deadline.
You have a single point of contact, who reads your pages himself. I'm an independent consultant, I've worked on more than 200 websites in fifteen years and I also run my own online shops. When large volumes of writing or integration are needed, I rely on Newp, my agency.
See also
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Together we look at where you stand on Google and in AI, and what should change first.
