Leads and sales are the lifeblood of gym memberships. People are waking up every day, looking in the mirror and having second thoughts about themselves, searching Google for local gyms to join.
Whether it’s for weight lifting, personal training, or group classes – you need to take advantage of every opportunity to bring on a new customer as soon as they make the decision to visit a gym.
Tips For Boosting Your Gym SEO
There are many forms of gym marketing. Our favorite is Local SEO. Because, what’s better than showing up the second people need you?
While gym SEO may seem like a daunting task, it’s essential for any local business that wants to be visible online. As a gym, the good news is that local SEO is one of the most affordable, and most powerful ways to drive new customers each and every single month.
The higher you rank in search results, the more people click on your website, call, and get directions to your gym. Local SEO is a dependable marketing channel that provides your gym with opportunities to convert leads into customers, and customers into fit, happy brand advocates.
Plus, ranking your Google Business Profile high in local search results helps your gym build trust with people who don’t yet know your brand yet – potential customers. They’re more likely to believe that you’re a credible business if you’re ranking on the first page of Google, especially when you’re out-ranking your competition.
The best part? Local SEO can help you get more visibility and traffic without having to pay for advertising. You’ll be saving a whole lot of money not having to pay for ads to be found in search results.
1. Utilize helpful content, keywords and phrases on your Gym's website
Content is the lifeblood of any successful fitness business. Just like a workout plan, a content plan needs to be strategized, followed consistently and continually optimized in order to achieve true results. Without a plan, you’ll be missing out on ripe prospects and opportunities for growth!
One of the easiest ways to convert leads to members of your gym is to be seen as the authority in your local area. Below are some great examples of content you can create that will ultimately help boost your gym SEO:
- Diet & Nutrition Blog Posts
- Blog Posts on Exercise Truths & Myths
- Videos on any of the above topics
2. Acquire Different Types of Links
There are many great ways to acquire backlinks to your gym’s website. The best types of links are ones that people actually click on and take them to your website. Let’s take a dive into each type of link:
- Guest Post Links
These are when you write an article for another website in your industry, and in that article there is a useful, relevant link back to your website. This is a great way to get exposure to new people, while also helping your SEO. - Resource Links
These are links from other websites that link to your website as a resource for their own content. This could be something like linking to your “10 Tips For Staying Fit” blog post from a blog that is talking about fitness tips. - Press Mentions
These are when other websites mention your gym in an article, but don’t actually link to your website. Google still sees these mentions and it helps improve the overall authority of your website. - Local Business Directory Links
These are when you list your gym in local directories like Yelp, Google My Business, NextDoor and others. It can be tough to build and maintain hundreds of online business profiles, so make sure to use something like Direction Local to simplify the management of your online presence. - Social Media Links These are links from social media sites like Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, and Instagram. Typically, the links are to the homepage of your website on your profile. But another excellent way to build your online presence is to share your blog posts, customer reviews, as well as any other resources on your website to your social profiles.
- Text Message Links: Have a great blog post to share? Text it to your friends! This is typically registered as “direct” traffic in Google Analytics.
3. Optimize Your Gym's Google Business Profile
One of the most important things you can do for your gym’s Local SEO is to optimize your Google Business Profile (GBP). This is the free listing that appears in the “Map Pack” whenever someone searches for a local business like yours. It’s essential to optimize your GBP as much as possible in order to get into the top 3 results.
Tips for Optimizing Your Gym's Google Business Profile:
- Fill out all of the information fields completely and accurately
- Add photos (photos with people, and of the gym itself tend to perform better)
- Encourage customers to leave detailed reviews with photos
- Use relevant keywords in your business description
- Add your business hours
- Add your business website
- Post Updates
- Post Q&A’s
4. Improve your website's experience with Technical SEO
If your website is continually optimized, it’s likely to be easier to use and navigate. This can improve your customer experience and make people more likely to become customers. But, what does it mean to continually optimize your website? Let’s dive into that below.
- Link Out
When you link to other relevant websites (fitness blogs, supplement blogs, etc.) in a way that is helpful to users to better understand your content, users begin to start trusting your site more, in-turn, helping Google’s trust in your website. - Ensure Mobile-Friendliness
Make sure your website is mobile-friendly! This means that it should be easy to use on a smartphone or tablet. Over the past few years, Google has been moving towards a mobile-first index, which means that they will look at the mobile version of your website before the desktop version when determining rankings. - Work on Your Website Speed
The faster your website, the better. This does not mean that you have to load in half a second though. It’s always more important to ensure your website is inviting to the user and engaging, with photos, videos, or whatever else you need to help your website convert. Sacrificing experience for speed is a big no-no.
Your website’s speed is important for a few reasons:
- People are more likely to leave a slow website
- Google considers website speed when determining rankings, especially with mobile rankings
- A faster website ultimately provides a better user experience, and first impressions are everything.
- Optimize your images by compressing them (we recommend using squoosh.app)
- Use a caching plugin (we recommend WP Rocket or Nitropack)
- Minimize your code. If there’s javascript or css that you don’t need or aren’t using, get rid of it.
- Use a content delivery network (CDN) (we recommend cloudflare)
- Upgrade your web hosting plan
Make Sure Your Website is Secure (with an SSL Certificate)
Google prefers websites that are secure, which means that they have an SSL certificate. An SSL certificate encrypts the connection between your website and a user’s browser, which makes it more difficult for hackers to access your website. You can usually tell if a website is secure if the URL starts with “https” instead of “http”.
Build Out Your Structured Data (Schema)
Structured data is code that you can add to your website that helps search engines understand your content. This can include things like your business hours, reviews, and contact information.
Adding structured data to your website can help improve your click-through rate (CTR) because your listing will stand out more in the search results. It can also help you get featured in Google’s “Rich Results”, which are special listings that include additional information beyond the standard blue link.
5. Monitor your website's progress with Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free tool that you can use to track your website’s traffic and performance. You can use it to see how many people are visiting your website, where they’re coming from, what pages they’re looking at, and more.
You can also use Google Analytics to track your website’s conversion rate, which is the number of people who take a desired action on your website (like signing up for a free trial membership or requesting more information).
Using Google Analytics to see how people are engaging with your website so that you can optimize pages based on data will increasingly help your local rankings.
Get Started with Local SEO for Gyms
Local SEO is an incredibly powerful marketing tool that can help your gym in many different ways. From building trust and credibility to generating a consistent flow of leads at a lower cost than most any other form of marketing, if you’re not already using gym SEO services, now is the time to start.
Check out Direction Local – a simple, yet effective tool that will grow your local rankings for only $999/year.
