A Beginner’s Guide to SEO for Gym Owners
Delving into the health and fitness industry can be challenging. Gym owners not only need to provide fitness services, but they also need to consider aspects such as facility maintenance, employee and customer retention and gaining new gym members.
In order for a gym to be successful, it needs to have members and for this to happen, people need to know your gym exists. Having a solid marketing strategy is arguably one of the best ways to ensure people find out about your gym
SEO in a nutshell
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.
The goal of implementing SEO? Help you dominate the health and fitness space and reach #1 on Google and other search engines.
By implementing SEO strategies, it is possible to influence your rankings on SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).
Being at the highly coveted top spot on search engines matters. It can make or break your business. After all, Google captures much as 92% of search traffic — and not a lot of people bother to look past its first page.
SEO strategies for gym owners
SEO is multifaceted and in order to maximize your efforts, it is important to acknowledge that. It is possible to hire a SEO company but there are also ways in which you can improve your websites rankings alone.
Make sure your website is user friendly
Put simply, a user-friendly website is a website designed to accommodate users effectively and give them a positive user experience.
It’s important to ensure gym websites are user-friendly, otherwise, visitors are unlikely to stay on the website or return to it. A user-friendly website will achieve two things; it will keep users happy and therefore keep Google happy.
Given that 55% of internet users are on a mobile device, in order to have a user friendly site, it is imperative to ensure it is mobile friendly. A few ways of doing this include:
- Avoid pop-ups
- Choose a mobile responsive theme or template
- Change button size and placement
- Use a clear, readable font.
Another important factor of a user friendly website is page load time. The goal is to keep load time below three seconds as 40% of users will abandon a page if it takes longer than this to load.
Start a blog
Starting a blog is a great way to improve a website and bring greater visibility. Blogs benefit websites because they position your business as an authoritative and credible source in the industry. Having an authoritative blog will also build trust meaning your target audience are more likely to take advantage of your services.
Another benefit of starting a blog is that it is great for improving search rankings. It is possible to use techniques such as keyword research, and tools like Clearscope to optimize any content you produce to ensure it ranks highly.
Some tips for starting a blog include:
- Create content that aligns with wider company goals
- Know your target audience and write with them in mind
- Optimize content for SEO
- Post content regularly
Consider local SEO
Local SEO is considered as a local marketing strategy and is about implementing SEO strategies with the main goal of performing exceptionally well on local SERPs. Did you know 72% of people who searched online for a local business (and found it), visited its physical location?
Whilst local SEO is not essential for all businesses, it is important for businesses that require customers to visit a physical location. A gym is one of these businesses.
In order to get started with local SEO, you will need to set up a Google My Business account. Once you have control of your listing, you will be able to optimize your local SEO.
Firstly, check if the information about your gym is accurate. If not, edit it to ensure people can view the correct details. Pay close attention to the accuracy of your business’ name, address, and phone number. This will make it much easier for people to find your business, and for Google to rank your website higher in SERPs.
Build backlinks
Backlinks are acquired links from other websites that point to your website. They’re considered a significant ranking factor and can provide useful information to users and search engines alike. For these reasons, they help improve SEO.
If you have a blog on your site, it is likely that you have already got backlinks. However in order to improve your SEO efforts, there are things you can actively do to gain more backlinks.
A good way of building backlinks is by collaborating with other authoritative websites. It is possible to reach out to these sites and ask to write a guest post that features your business; it is also a good idea to offer to make this a mutually beneficial exchange.
Conclusion
SEO will gear up your business for a dramatic and positive result. Take note, though, its impact isn’t instantaneous and generally takes between three and six months to start seeing results. However, if you are patient, SEO will drastically improve how many visitors you get to your website, and therefore your gym.
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Author Bio:
Rebecca DiCioccio is the Marketing Manager at Paperform. Outside of work, Rebecca can be found exploring the outdoors or with a book in hand. Rebecca’s background in copywriting and keen interest in SEO and digital marketing mean she understands the importance of staying up to date with the latest trends in a dynamic and ever changing industry.
Author’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-dicioccio/
Gravatar email: rebecca@paperform.co
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