Are you wondering how you can bump up your fitness SEO?
Whether you’re a local gym, an online trainer, or a freelance trainer, you need to be found by your potential customers.
In fact, 78% of local searches on mobile devices result in offline sales.
Putting your fitness business in a position to capitalize on that can mean a big difference to your bottom line.
Keep reading to learn what it takes for your fitness business to appear high in search results.
Do an SEO Audit
Believe it or not, there are a lot of similarities between fitness and SEO.
When you start to work with fitness clients, the first thing you do is an assessment. Well, when you begin your SEO journey, you do an assessment as well.
The assessment is called an SEO audit.
This takes a little research to find out where your website currently stands in search engine results. You can start by using this keyword research tool, and then search Google and Bing to see how your business shows up.
You’ll also want to see how many links you have to your website. The best way to do that is to do a search to find which sites are linking to yours and what anchor text is used.
Finally, you’re going to want to check your online reputation. This tool will show you if there are reviews of your business.
Make a note of your results and put them somewhere easily accessible. You’re going to refer to your notes every few weeks.
Refine Your Fitness SEO keywords
You may already have keywords that you want to rank for. You want to take that a step further and see if there are other similar keywords you can rank for as well.
Start by making a list of every search term and topic your ideal client would look for if they were looking for your gym or training services.
The next step is to research those keywords using this Keyword Planner tool.
You’ll get ideas for other keywords as well. When you’re researching keywords, you want to find terms that have a moderate search volume and little competition.
Get More Online Reviews
Did you know that online reviews influence fitness SEO results?
Google provides search results that are relevant to its users. Let’s say you searched for a gym in Bethlehem, PA. The results showed gyms that had mediocre to poor reviews.
Would you be impressed with those results? No.
If you’re searching for a gym, you want the top gyms to join. Google will show those results based on positive reviews.
How can you get more positive reviews to increase your fitness SEO? Plan out a strategy.
Did you do an online review audit? Did you see any positive or negative reviews?
If you did, respond to them. Thank positive reviewers and reach out to negative reviewers to find out more about their experience.
Maybe there’s some way you can turn that situation around. Those responses will encourage more people to write reviews because they know someone is listening.
Next, ask your clients for online reviews. You can do this in your newsletters or on your blog. Make sure you make asking for reviews a regular part of your marketing strategy.
Write a Blog
Fresh content that adds value to your readers will give people a reason to return to your site. It also gives your site a better chance of being ranked highly in search engines.
Don’t get nervous about writing. If you’re not sure what to write about, ask your clients. Better yet, share your clients’ success stories.
Just make sure that people are interested in what you’re writing about.
Take a look at this blog.
Notice how this post is easy to read and is something that many fitness folks are interested in.
Use your blog to show off your expertise and incorporate your keywords throughout the articles.
It might take a while to build up content, but it’s worth it. Once you get between 21-54 blog posts, traffic can increase as much as 30%.
Make Sure Your Site is Fast and Mobile-Friendly
On the technical side of your website, you need to make sure your website is fast and mobile friendly.
Remember that Google wants to give it’s users the best results. As more people are searching on mobile devices, Google isn’t going to put a site that’s not optimized for mobile at the top of search results.
As a matter of fact, that site probably won’t get ranked at all.
You also want to make sure your website is fast. Not just for Google, but for your users. Just a small delay in page loading could cause people to leave your website
Connect Your Site with Reporting Tools
The most important part of fitness SEO is tracking progress. That’s why you do an audit at the beginning of the process. You have a baseline to work with and you can tell if your site is moving up the search engine rankings for certain keywords.
The way you can track progress is by connecting your website to a few tools.
The first tool is Google Analytics. This is a free tool that shows you how much traffic your site gets, where it’s coming from, and how long people are staying on your site.
This is valuable information that you can use to drive your marketing strategy. You might find out that there are two blog posts that people are reading through. You can alter your marketing to promote those posts more.
The second tool is Google’s Search Console. This will give you in-depth information about your website, including how your site ranks in search results.
Think of Fitness SEO Like Training
What did you do to get lean and strong?
You were motivated to work out, you followed a plan, and you executed it consistently.
That’s what it takes to get great results in search engine rankings. You can’t get in shape sitting on the couch. Nor can you get high search engine rankings by doing nothing.
Now that you know what to do, go get started with this reputation audit tool.
You can still have fun in the process. Check out these SEO comic strips to bring a sense of humor to your work.