You probably already know what a powerful tool your website can be for your personal training business but it can sometimes feel like no one ever looks at it and it is just a glorified digital business card that costs you money every year.
You spent all that time getting a fitness website design, expecting to be overwhelmed with leads, but the flood of incoming queries doesn't seem to materialise.
Don't beat yourself up. This happens to a lot of personal trainers. Sometimes it's a case of making sure that your fitness website is optimised for conversions, but in most cases you just need to make sure that you're positioning your website in the right places.
In this article we will list the top ten tips on how you can drive high-quality traffic to your personal training website.
1. Know Your Audience
Knowing who you're trying to attract is imperative for generating traffic. If you don't know your audience, you won't know where they hang out and where to show off your site.
The easiest way to get to know your audience is to create a buyer persona or an avatar based on your favourite clients. The ones that follow all your advice, achieve amazing results and rave about your services to everyone that will listen. They are your ideal client - if you had 10 more like them, life would be easy.
The easiest way to get to know your audience is to create a buyer persona or an avatar based on your favourite clients. The ones that follow all your advice, achieve amazing results and rave about your services to everyone that will listen. They are your ideal client - if you had 10 more like them, life would be easy.
So before you start working on how to generate traffic to your website, consider all aspects of these people to determine the best strategy for your specific ideal clients. Here are a few specifics to consider to help you narrow it down:
- Population - age, gender, occupation, employment status
- Interests - hobbies, business areas, etc
- Problems - their single biggest issue they want to solve in terms of their fitness
- Where they hang out - specifically in the online scene - Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
Once you know the answer to those points, you'll be able to decide what topics to discuss in your blogs, what type of resources to create and what platforms to use for promoting all your content.
2. Be The Expert
One of the best sources of organic traffic to your personal trainer website is Google. Google favours expert content, where the website is a recognised source of reliable information.
To rank on Google quickly and easily, first, create a piece of “pillar content”. This will be a fully comprehensive, long-form article covering a topic from all angles. It will be extremely detailed.
Next, you write “cluster content” which amounts of supporting posts that are related to the pillar content and include links back to it. The cluster content should contain long-tail keywords which are phrases of 4 or more very specific words that relate to the topic you’re writing about.
For example, we helped The Barracks Gym create a mega post about passing the Australian Defense Force fitness test. Then supported that piece with loads of smaller blogs, like this:
To rank on Google quickly and easily, first, create a piece of “pillar content”. This will be a fully comprehensive, long-form article covering a topic from all angles. It will be extremely detailed.
Next, you write “cluster content” which amounts of supporting posts that are related to the pillar content and include links back to it. The cluster content should contain long-tail keywords which are phrases of 4 or more very specific words that relate to the topic you’re writing about.
For example, we helped The Barracks Gym create a mega post about passing the Australian Defense Force fitness test. Then supported that piece with loads of smaller blogs, like this:
The result was a massive increase in overall website traffic.
This method of pillar and cluster content helps search engines to find and categorise your personal training website's blogs and other content, improving your rankings and your traffic.
It will also help visitors on your website spend more time on it and make sense of the information and the way you present and organise it.
3. User Experience
One of the ways in which Google decides whether to rank your website and give it more traffic is by analysing how people use your site.
For example, if they land on your site and leave straight away, that's a bad sign. So we want to get people on your site and keep them there.
There is software available, such as Hotjar or Crazy Egg, to help you to understand where people are navigating away from your personal trainer website by generating a heatmap of the most popular (and least effective) parts of your site.
For example, if they land on your site and leave straight away, that's a bad sign. So we want to get people on your site and keep them there.
There is software available, such as Hotjar or Crazy Egg, to help you to understand where people are navigating away from your personal trainer website by generating a heatmap of the most popular (and least effective) parts of your site.
Understanding which parts of your website are breaking the chain is a powerful tool because once you have the visitor on your personal trainer website, you will need them to take the desired action (e.g. download a lead magnet, sign up for your newsletter, read the blog post, book a call etc) before you lose them.
4. Guest Posting
A guest post is a post on someone else’s website in order to backlink to your own website. This is one way you can use the higher traffic of someone in a related field to personal training to demonstrate your expertise on a given topic.
If this is something you’d like to try, find a partner that would be a good fit for your personal training service, write a draft blog post, and then pitch it to them. For example, if you are a personal trainer that works mostly with runners, you could connect with a major running magazine and create some content for them.
Make sure that you explain to the person that runs the site why you think this content would benefit their audience, and have it written ready to go. People are far more likely to say yes to publishing your guest content if it’s a well researched, properly constructed article that is in line with the philosophy of their business and you can demonstrate enough understanding of their audience and services that you know how it would benefit them.
Make sure that you explain to the person that runs the site why you think this content would benefit their audience, and have it written ready to go. People are far more likely to say yes to publishing your guest content if it’s a well researched, properly constructed article that is in line with the philosophy of their business and you can demonstrate enough understanding of their audience and services that you know how it would benefit them.
5. All The SEO
SEO means search engine optimisation. It’s key in generating organic traffic to your personal trainer website because it relates to where you rank in the Google search results.
Organic traffic is free traffic that you haven’t paid for and so the more you can optimise the organic traffic, the cheaper each lead becomes for your business. There are a few ways that you might influence SEO to drive traffic to your personal trainer website.
Search Engine Optimisation has a vast amount of tools that can be categorised into three main areas:
Organic traffic is free traffic that you haven’t paid for and so the more you can optimise the organic traffic, the cheaper each lead becomes for your business. There are a few ways that you might influence SEO to drive traffic to your personal trainer website.
Search Engine Optimisation has a vast amount of tools that can be categorised into three main areas:
- On Page SEO
- Local SEO
- Technical SEO
On-Page SEO
Relates to how you format and structure the site itself. It could include adding a page title, header, meta description, image alt-text, and the URL itself. These are likely things that you may not be doing at all at the moment and could be a quick win.
Local SEO
Will be vital if you have an in-person face to face personal training business or own a gym, and people will be making searches based on geographical considerations.
For example, if someone was searching for "best personal trainer near me" on Google, the results are generated by the user's location.
To rank for local searches, the most important thing is to make sure your name, address, and phone number are consistent on your Google My Business and social media pages. You might consider using a directory management tool to monitor directories like Yelp or the Yellow Pages.
You could also use location-based search terms on sites like Google Trends, which analyzes popular search terms based on geographic locations.
Technical SEO
This kind of SEO looks at the hidden parts of your personal trainer website to check how things are set up and organised.
This might include page speed, crawling, indexing, and others. To improve your technical SEO, fix any broken links and redirects for visitors aren’t getting error messages when they click on your links.
Create an XML sitemap for your subdomains - this is like a roadmap to helps Google to the most important pages around your site. Set up language meta tags in the HTML of the site. Finally, consider adding custom headers and introductions to topic pages.
6. Social Media
Social media is probably one of the best tools for generating free traffic to your website. Participating in forums and groups can not only position you as the expert but can also offer loads of opportunities to link to your site.
The easiest way to find these opportunities is to use the search bar. Join as many related groups as you can, make yourself useful, answer questions and where possible, link back to a blog page on your website as a resource.
7. Video Marketing
According to a report by Cisco, video will account for 82% of traffic by 2022. That's a lot of potential traffic for your fitness business.
If you're just getting started with video, the easiest way to get your content ideas is by repurposing your existing content.
If you wrote a great Facebook post that got a lot of interest, make a video about it and post it on your site. If you have a blog that already gets traffic, create a YouTube video and add it to your blog.
If you're just getting started with video, the easiest way to get your content ideas is by repurposing your existing content.
If you wrote a great Facebook post that got a lot of interest, make a video about it and post it on your site. If you have a blog that already gets traffic, create a YouTube video and add it to your blog.
8. Content Offers
These are a great way to generate leads to your website. They might be lead magnets, webinars, guides, downloads, trials, checklists, cheat sheets, infographics, resources, or even demos - and lots more. But the idea is that the promise of this free content is valuable enough that people will visit your website to look at it.
What counts as an appropriate offer for your visitor will depend on what stage of their buyer journey they are in. Ideally, this will be something that you give away in return for their email address. This address then goes into your email software, where you can continue to provide them with valuable information and nurture them as a lead.
What counts as an appropriate offer for your visitor will depend on what stage of their buyer journey they are in. Ideally, this will be something that you give away in return for their email address. This address then goes into your email software, where you can continue to provide them with valuable information and nurture them as a lead.
9. Social Share Buttons & A Call To Action
This might be the most simple suggestion on how to drive traffic to your personal trainer website - and one of the most simple.
First, write something useful that solves a problem that your audience is having. Next, make it easy for people to share the content from your website to social media by including social share buttons on your site and in the blog post.
First, write something useful that solves a problem that your audience is having. Next, make it easy for people to share the content from your website to social media by including social share buttons on your site and in the blog post.
Ask your audience to share, and make that the call to action. Once you’ve promoted the content on social media yourself, ask people to tag a friend or share the post with someone that would find it useful.
Posts that perform well on social media are interesting enough at first glance to stop someone from just mindlessly scrolling. Make it engaging and eye-catching, including videos, images and infographics to illustrate the words. Remember that people will often skim read content on the internet so include headings so that they can skip around to the bits that they need.
10. CTR Optimization
Click-Through Rates is data which compares the number of people who clicked on your post and read it with the number of people who saw the link. Once your content is posted on your personal trainer website and you start promoting it, CTR is a measure of how many people are actually reading the stuff you write. To get more people to click through, take time to write appropriate meta descriptions and titles.
Aim to write good quality, descriptive meta tags that are click-worthy. Write your titles so that they are short and snappy, and your description leaves visitors wanting more. This relates to on-page SEO discussed above. You can measure your organic CTR using Google Search Console.
Getting visitors to spend time on your personal trainer website, actually use the content your write and share it with friends is ultimately the way to drive traffic to your site. Once you start developing useful content which is sharable and optimising your website so that it’s easy to use (both for people visiting and for Google to organise it), it will perform better.
Aim to write good quality, descriptive meta tags that are click-worthy. Write your titles so that they are short and snappy, and your description leaves visitors wanting more. This relates to on-page SEO discussed above. You can measure your organic CTR using Google Search Console.
Getting visitors to spend time on your personal trainer website, actually use the content your write and share it with friends is ultimately the way to drive traffic to your site. Once you start developing useful content which is sharable and optimising your website so that it’s easy to use (both for people visiting and for Google to organise it), it will perform better.
