Why Every Yoga Teacher Needs a Website and How to Start One

You’ve completed your 200-hour YTT course and have started teaching at a local studio. You’re hitting it off with students, creating interesting and dynamic classes, bumping up your playlist, and starting to make a little money. It feels great – but you know there is a piece missing.

You already have an IG page filled with beautiful yoga pictures and insight. Hell – you might even have some YouTube videos with quick yoga tutorials or a 30 minute flow.

So why don’t you have a yoga teacher website?

Think about it this way. Have you ever had a student ask you when you teach next? Is your answer complicated, like “well on Tuesdays I’m at this location, but on Wednesdays I’m across town and Friday’s I teach at a local gym…”?

I’ve been in this situation a lot. When I start my schpeel about which location I’m teaching at, I can see my student’s eyes instantaneously glaze over. They aren’t following anymore.

Here’s an easy solution.

Create a yoga teacher website for yourself and your schedule.

Yep, it’s as simple as that. Now when students ask when and where you’ll be teaching next, you can let them know that your schedule is always updated online.

There are other reasons to create a yoga teacher website, though, in addition to hosting your schedule.

Why Every Yoga Teacher Needs a Website

Let’s face it – in today’s world, patience is a rarity. Everything is instantaneous and at our fingertips, from scheduling a dentist appointment, to ordering groceries for delivery, even to depositing money into our savings account.

Your yoga students want the same from you – instant and easy access to your schedule, thoughts, tips, and more. For your students, you are a wealth of knowledge around yoga, the human body, the history and philosophy of yoga, and living a healthy lifestyle. Creating a yoga teacher website is more than just a fun place to blog; it’s about providing important information for students, studio owners, community organizers, and more so they know exactly where to find you, what you stand for, and how to contact you.

6 steps to get started with your personal website

The first thing you must do when creating your personal business website is consider the purpose of your site.

Do you want to direct people to your upcoming events or classes? Do you want to be a source of inspiration with yoga photos and recipes? Are you thinking about creating a vlog of your online yoga classes?
After you’ve discovered your website purpose, think about what types of people will be visiting your site.

You may have mostly local traffic coming to your site if you are promoting your local events. On the flip side, if you’re publishing YouTube yoga class videos to your website you could get traffic from all over the globe. This step is important as your audience will determine the content on your site.
Where should you host your website? As a professional graphic designer who creates tons of yoga teacher websites, I have a lot of opinions in this area! I recommend three different website platforms, in this order:
1. Squarespace: Squarespace is my #1 recommendation to yoga teachers, solo entrepreneurs, or small business owners because it is so. easy. to. use. It’s the most expensive out of the bunch, but you get what you pay for.
  
  There are several beautiful website templates to choose from categorized by the type of website. If you’re selling yoga tank tops, there’s a storefront option. If you’re focusing on blogging, there are plenty of lifestyle templates. If you’re doing all of the above, there is a template that does it all. You get the picture.
  
  Squarespace’s user interface is simple and organized and allows you to build pages quickly, plug in your content and images, switch up the colors and branding, and more all within a simple menu. If this sounds intimidating, let me help you out.
2. Wix: Wix is a good option for someone who wants to DIY their own website. There is a free option if you use their URL and allow for some advertisements. Wix is great because there are several templates to choose from and you can drag and drop elements around your page.
3. Wordpress: Wordpress is my least favorite out of the three but is still a very viable option for companies of all types. The only reason I rank it last is because while it can be a good experience, I’ve also seen Wordpress sites quickly evolve to a hot mess.
  
  Here’s why.
  
  Wordpress’s greatest feature is also it’s greatest downfall. Wordpress allows you to do basically anything with their huge array of Plugins. Want a new form? Install a form plugin. Want a rotating photo strip? Install a rotating photo strip Plugin. Want a pop up? Install a pop up Plugin. And so on. This is great because Wordpress is highly customizable…but problematic when you get into Plugin overload mode.
  
  The easiest solution is to have a professional help you set up your Wordpress site and then train you how to use it as they pass it off to you. I can help with this as I’ve used Wordpress a lot in the past.
Get branding. I can’t stress this enough – your yoga teacher logo will be the one piece of branding that ties it all together. Having a strong, unique, and personalized yoga teacher logo will separate you from the sea of yoga teachers, will connect your online presence together from Instagram to Facebook to your website, and will give your students a sense of professionalism to show you know what you are talking about.

Creating a logo is a huge task and unless you’re a designer or artist, you may want to get someone to help you out! If you’re ready to move to the next step in your yoga career, I’m here to help.
Colors, Fonts, and More. To complete your website and brand, you’ll need a strong color palette and font choices. Like the logo design, this is a bigger task than most think.

It’s not about picking blue and yellow and calling it a day. It’s about selecting a color palette that speaks to your personality, your yoga teaching style, your brand, and your offering. It’s about picking typefaces that are easy to read, reflect your style, and set you apart from the rest.
SEO - Search Engine Optimization. How are you supposed to gain new students, blog readers, and website visitors if no one finds your website to begin with? Implementing SEO is a huge task and is often hard to monitor.

Here’s the gist on SEO: Google crawls the web every single night. It looks for new information, highly visited pages, helpful and relevant content, and keywords.

Stick with me.

Let’s say you are trying to get on the page of search results when someone types in “private yoga lessons in Charleston.” This becomes your long tail keyword or key phrase. You want to make sure you have a page on your website that relate to this exact key phrase. That may mean having a section about private yoga lessons and what that entails; yoga lessons in Charleston and where you are located; rates for private yoga lessons, and more. You’ll want to include your main key phrase (remember, that’s “private yoga lessons in Charleston”) a few times throughout the page.

The thing is, even if you implement this correctly, it could take 6 months to actually work. SEO is a beast and is always changing. Keep trying new techniques, keep track of your key words and key phrases, and if you want help, just ask.

Phew, that was a lot of information! Now that we’ve established why you need a yoga teacher website and the first few steps to set it up, it’s important to note what kind of content should exist on your site.

So, what needs to go on your yoga teacher website?

Publish Your Teaching Schedule Online

First and foremost, your website should host your current teaching schedule and any upcoming events. It’s your easiest piece of marketing and can be shared to your social channels at the tap of your finger.

Your yoga teaching schedule should live on one single page on your website with a clear header or page title, “Teaching Schedule” (or something similar).

If you have a lot of events, I’d suggest making a separate page “Upcoming Events.” Otherwise, you can put it all on one page to make it easy on your site visitors.

Create an Easy Contact Method

Perhaps you’ve connected with a student who comes to your class often, but you’ve never exchanged IG handles or phone numbers. If they come across your website and have a question on your upcoming event, make it easy for them and include a contact form on that same page.

Better yet, put a “Contact Me” form in your footer so it lives on every single page.

Tip: Keep your form simple. Stick to name, email, and subject as the only fields needed. If you’re asking for their phone number, social media handles, city, state, and zip, users are more likely to abandon your form.

Share Recipes, Blog Posts, and Insight

This is where it gets fun! You have ideas, thoughts, and inspiration, right? Post it on your blog. Your blog can be a stream of consciousness or an organized collection of daily yoga tips. Whatever you choose to do, do it with heart so it feels authentic.

If you’re particularly interested in something, I’d suggest starting there. For example, if you are an amazing cook or make beautiful buddha bowls, focus your blog posts around how to make delicious and healthy meals.

If you are really into alignment, think about posting a new alignment tip once a week. The key to blogging is to make it interesting, relevant, and useful to your website users.

Tip: this is where SEO techniques can come in handy. If you’re aiming to rank for “yoga teacher in Chicago”, you’ll know there are probably hundreds of websites with that same key phrase. So, use your blog and videos as a way to stand out and show Google that you are consistently providing relevant, useful information and content to people who are searching for “yoga teacher in Chicago.”

Eventually, Google will see that not only are you a yoga teacher in Chicago, but you are one that knows a lot about yoga, the human body, healthy eating, and sustainable shopping. With this information, Google knows you’re going to resonate with people using that search phrase more than someone who simply lists their teaching schedule online.

I could go on and on about this… if you’d like to chat about SEO just reach out.

What You Can Do Today to Start Creating a Website

I know this is a lot of information and the task of creating your own yoga teacher website can feel… overwhelming. Take it one step at a time and have patience.

Start by defining exactly what makes you you, what your message as a teacher (and human being) is, who you want to attract to your site, and main purpose of your website.

From there, start with your brand. I always ask my clients to think of 3 words that describe their brand personality as if their brand is a human being.

You might say, “approachable, creative, and enthusiastic.” Maybe it’s “down to earth, gentle, and authentic.” Whatever it is, this will be the base of your brand. Your color palette, font choices, and logo stem from here.

Once you’ve selected your mission and look and feel, you’re ready to start creating your website.

Be on the look out for another blog post from me relating to setting up the site structure for your personal website. I’ll be covering what pages you need to include on your website and how to properly link them together.

This will apply for yoga teacher websites, hair stylist websites, massage therapist websites, retreat leader websites, and everyone who offers a service to others.

As always, if you’re ready to get branding and create your unique and personalized website, I’m here to help.

I'm ready for a website

What are your biggest challenges when setting up your own website or brand? Let me know in the comments.

Love + Light,

Kim

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The First Steps To Creating a Yoga Teacher Website