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SEO

How to market your doula business

January 3, 2022

Image of a woman thinking and planning. The woman is Brown skinned with shoulder length curly hair. She's wearing a white top and is reading a book.

When you’re looking at ways to market your doula business, social media often feels like the best and only option. And sure, social media platforms do offer the opportunity to reach thousands of users. But are the majority of those users your potential customers?

Probably not! Many people follow a great social media page but aren’t local enough to be a client, or are simply interested in the information being shared, with no plan to book your doula services. That may not be the best way to market your doula business!

That doesn’t mean that having a strong social media story isn’t important. It just means that there are lots of other really effective other ways promote your doula business as well. Here are some of our favourites.

1. Harness the power of SEO and optimise your website for local searches

3.5 billion searches are made on Google every day and according to stats, roughly four out of five people  use search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing to find local services. Optimising your website for local search results can make a huge difference to the number of people who discover your business online. And the best news, SEO is free!

Here’s how it works. Search engine ‘spiders’ (automated site visitors) visit and check out your website on a regular basis and use the content to understand who you are, what you do, where you are based and who you serve. To help them understand these things make sure the words on your website make these things ultra clear.

Here’s an example: <Your name here> is a birth and post-natal doula based in <where you live here>, I offer a variety of pregnancy, birth and baby services, including <a few examples here>.

If you’re a local yoga studio offering pregnancy or  baby yoga, make sure Google knows it by using words such as: From gentle pregnancy yoga to bouncing baby yoga classes <Your name or business name> welcomes all to our yoga studio in <your location here>. 

Try to think of phrases that people would use to search for you, and make sure they’re there on the page, as early as possible in the text, and perhaps repeated a few times. It’s important to not over-fill the page with the same search term, though, as search engines will see through that! Make the text sound natural, not as though you’re just trying to pack it with keywords. Balance is important.

2. Try out a local networking event

That’s right, it’s time to go meet some actual people! Local networking events are a great place to market your doula business as well as learn some really useful tips on business management. Pick the right meeting and you might also have the opportunity to investigate potential collaborations and even make some fab new business besties.

There are probably several dozen networking groups within your county and whilst not all might suit your personality or your business there’s bound to be a good fit closer to home than you think.

4Networking offers UK-wide events with over 5000 active groups, whilst BNI boasts over 12,000 members across the country.

Female only and mums networking meetings are also on the rise. BizMums offer small meetups across much of the country, as do the Mumpreneurs Networking Club and the Mums in Business Association. Remember, you’re not just speaking to business people, you’re speaking to people. And people have babies! Perhaps there’s pregnant women or people there in the meeting, or maybe they know someone who is pregnant.

Take along a smile and a fistful of business cards; who knows what might come of it!

3. Offer to write for your local rag

There’s no shortage of free and paid for local magazines and newspapers, all looking for great content. If you’re a dab hand with words you might want to consider offering a regular or semi regular short article on pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding or your particular doula interest. Try to make sure that they include a short bio about you, eg, “Nicola is a postnatal doula covering Guildford. She can be reached on [insert your website, phone number, social media and Nurturing Birth Directory listing!]

These articles are often read by pregnant women and people, or passed to them by friends and family, and you might build a local following of people who then learn more about how your services could be just the thing they didn’t realise they need!

4. Consider advertising in your local paper

Local papers often have a small but very loyal readership which makes print advertising within your local or regional paper potentially worthwhile as a way to market your doula business. If you think your ideal customer might be a newspaper reader, it’s well worth looking into the opportunities on offer. Poppy Rose Matless is an Advertising Agent on the Eastern Daily Press in Norfolk and gave us this advice:

“Local advertising provides lots of great benefits, here at the EDP we reach over 100k readers a day. We treat each client as an individual, when a business buys an advertising slot we’ll design a full colour advert to the exact size they need, free of charge. We feed back to them so they can make changes and have full input in the design process – this service alone can save our advertisers several hundred pounds.”

5. Exhibit at local baby shows

Pregnancy and baby shows can be a great way to get your doula business in front of local mums and mums-to-be. But they can also be costly. There will be an exhibitor fee to pay and then you have to hire a table. You’ll also need plenty of leaflets, business cards and perhaps a pop-up banner to attract attention.

Before you sign up, do your research. Don’t be afraid to ask the organiser questions about expected visitor numbers. If you know similar businesses who have attended previous shows get in touch and ask how it went for them.

You might be able to offset some of the costs of the stand by offering some pregnancy or birth related merch, if that’s your bag. Maybe you like to crochet or knit and could have beautiful baby hats and bootees to offer. Perhaps you sew nappies or slings, or you’re an artist and you can paint or photograph families and babies. There’s no reason why your stand can’t be multi-functional, while still clearly sharing information about your doula services. You can market your doula business and your doula related businesses together!

As you can see, marketing your doula business can be so much more than that next Instagram post and local marketing means you’re more likely to connect with people who are actually going to be able to book you as a doula. Let us know what works for you! What helps you most when you’re marketing your doula business?

Don’t forget to follow Nurturing Birth’s Instagram account and, if you’ve completed your course and you have your certificate, our Nurturing Birth Doulas Facebook page (contact us for access if you don’t know how).

Filed Under: Your Doula Business Tagged With: marketing, marketing your doula business, search engine optimisation, SEO, successful doula business, your doula business

Search Engine Optimisation – A TOTAL beginners guide!

October 24, 2018

Fridge magnet type letters: SEO

SEO… Three little letters. They sound so harmless, but toss them into a chat about your website and suddenly your doula brain is thrown into a frenzy of panic and confusion.

Urgh! What on earth is search engine optimisation anyway?

Is it important? Do I need it? Do other doulas use it?

How can I get started? Can I do it myself or is it going to cost me a small fortune!

Don’t worry lovely doula. SEO sounds complicated, but in fact, it’s not really. And the good news is that with just a few small tweaks and regular updates to your website, you can totally optimise your website yourself in just a few hours. Hurray!

What is SEO?
SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is the technical, geeky term for the variety of little things you can do to help your website feature in search results.  You see, billions of searches are made for services like yours on search engine sites like Google, Yahoo or Bing every day.

And if your website is featured in the top results it can make a real difference to the number of people visiting your website. Even (in fact, especially) if your local market is very small.

Did you know that…

  • One third of all searches that people make online are for local products and services; and
  • Almost half of people who make a local search on their phone will visit the website immediately after.

Which means that your potential customers could be online searching for someone like you right now!

So, how do you go about getting your doula website to feature well in search results? Here’s a quick guide to getting started.

Step 1: Find out how your website ranks right now

If you’re using the Chrome browser, start by logging out of Google, then open a new incognito window by clicking on the icon with three little vertical dots in the right-hand corner of your browser. The result ‘New Incognito Window’ should be the third one down.

If you’re using the Microsoft Edge browser, you’ll need to log out of Google and then click on the icon with the three horizontal dots in the top right hand corner. Next, click on ‘New InPrivate Window’.

Next spend 5-10 minutes using a variety of search terms that a customer might use to find your website and see where you come in the results. For example, if you’re a doula based in Bristol here’s a few examples of what you could use:

  • Doula in Bristol
  • Doula services in Bristol
  • Doula UK doula in Bristol
  • Pregnancy support in Bristol
  • Birth doulas in Bristol
  • Postnatal doula in Bristol

If you’re based in a rural area, try using your village, local town and nearest city in your research. If you feature on page one of results for most search terms then give yourself a pat on the back! If not, then you’ve got a bit of work to do.

Step 2: Pour yourself a cuppa and start SEO-ing your website

So here’s the super secret to simple SEO… search engines are actually looking at just a few vital things on your website and they’re all based around the same thing… Is your site easy for your customers to use?

  • Does your website load quickly or is it slow and clunky?
  • Can your potential customers find what they want quickly and easily or is your website confusing?
  • Is your website interesting and useful, does the content interest potential customers?
  • Does it look good on all devices? Including desktop computers, tablets and mobile phones?

Asking a friend or family member to take a look at these things and feedback to you is a great way to get started. There are also a few free online tools you can use too.

Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights Test or the Pingdom Website Speed Test to find out if your website loads quickly.

Use: https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly to find out if your website looks great on mobile devices.

Step 3: Tweak the words on your website to get more Google love

In order to display your website to the right people, Search Engines need to understand three very important things

  1. Who you are
  2. What you do
  3. Where you are

If you want search engines to show you in relevant local results, you need to make these things crystal clear on your website. Avoid fancy schmancy terms and stick to simple, plain English language that’s easy to understand. And always have in mind: What would someone looking for this service type into Google to find it? So, for most of us you’ll want to have the phrase “doula in [insert your location here]” as well as any other services that you offer such as baby massage or hypnobirthing. The earlier these ‘key words’ or ‘key phrases’ are written in your text, the more important Google will thing they are so it’s great to start your website with, “I’m a doula in [your location] and I also offer hypnobirthing teaching”.

Step 4: Keep your website fresh and updated

Search engines like Google will come back to your doula website and check it out quite regularly. If it’s changed, Google will rank you higher than if it’s the same as it assumed that amendments mean that the site will be more relevant and up to date. Ideally go back and tweak it a bit once a month, and add content such as blogs whenever you can.

Step 5: Build backlinks to your website

A back-what now? A backlink is a link from another website (like this one) to yours. They are important because out of all the things search engines look at to rank your website backlinks are one of the most highly regarded.

You see when another website links to your site, it’s like a little vote for you. The more backlinks you have, the more search engines like you!

But… beware! Your links must always be relevant or natural. So don’t go running off to get your best pals veggie box business website to link to yours!  Try to swap backlinks with other people in the same industry as you who appeal to the same audience. People like…

  • Hypnobirthing Practitioners
  • Pregnancy and Baby Yoga Teachers
  • Independent Midwives
  • Lactation Consultants
  • Birth and baby photographers

One really important link is from your Nurturing Birth Directory listing at nurturingbirthdirectory.com. If you have trained with Nurturing Birth you get a free entry in the Directory so if you don’t have this already, let us know and we’ll get it sorted for you. If you do have an entry, keep it updated and change it every few weeks to keep it high in the search engines.

You can also regularly post your website on your social media to encourage people to visit it, and every time you update it make sure you link to it again.

And that’s it! Once you’ve followed these five simple steps you should start to see your search engine ranking improving.  Give it a try and let us know the results you get.

Filed Under: Your Doula Business Tagged With: doula marketing, marketing, optimising your doula website, search engine optimisation, SEO

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