How to Optimise Your Personal Trainer Website For Free

The personal trainer market capitalises at just under $13 billion just in the US - and it is forecast to continue growing at an incredibly fast rate of 5.4% year on year. Oddly enough, the Covid-19 pandemic has fueled and sped up trends that were already in motion. Namely, finding and training more clients online.

More personal trainers rely on technology more than ever, and the right website can open up a world of opportunities. An optimised personal trainer website is not only essential to grow your audience, reach your clients and obtain new leads. Today’s personal trainers need the right digital presence to communicate who they are to their audience, provide accessible services, and stay competitive. Learn how to optimise your personal trainer website for free in this My PT Guide.

Here’s Why Optimizing Your Personal Trainer Website is Essential

The personal training industry is booming - and just in the UK, the sector was worth almost£700 million in 2020. This impressive growth has created endless opportunities for fitness experts and qualified personal trainers. At the same time, these unprecedented opportunities have made the competition within the industry fiercer than ever.

Additionally, the industry suffered a severe blow when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, causing many PTs to resort to online classes, video tutorials, Zoom calls, and virtual reviews. Now the industry is bounding back - but it is an industry that is radically different from the one in 2019. 

If you have been just fine without worrying about your personal trainer website optimisation before, now you won’t be - especially if you manage your clients, operations, and appointment scheduling via your site!

Optimize Your Personal Trainer Website for Free

Now you know that your business needs an optimised site to thrive. And yet, govern how expensive marketing decisions can be for a small business, we wouldn’t be surprised to know you worried about investing in SEO.

Luckily, there is a lot that you can do cheaply - or even for free! Here are the strategies to take to improve your personal trainer website’s ranking and show up on Google’s SERP. But remember - SEO is an ongoing commitment and long-term game!

1. Keywords Are Still Essential - Find The Right Ones!

Whatever you’ve heard… no, keywords aren’t dead! Google is just smarter and it can recognise synonyms of keywords to give a page a topic. They are still important to search terms that users use. And, when you start to accumulate content with the right keywords on your website, you make your whole personal trainer online presence more visible and accessible by your users. 

So, it is essential for you to find those keywords that are relevant to your niche and highly searched on Google. To do this you'll need a list of short, medium and long tail keywords.

Once you have your list, you should focus on those keywords that many users use to search on Google but don’t have a lot of competition (meaning that not many other sites are going after them). For this search, you will need to use a free or affordable keyword search tool.

Remember that stuffing your content with keywords is no longer the way to get on page one of Google!

2. Focus on Site Navigation and Accessibility

Your website’s architecture can determine the experience your users will have on it. And, understanding how to create a complex but smart site structure can be very challenging for first-time site owners. 

Since ease of navigation should be a priority for your site, you should opt for a basic or minimalist site. This will help you improve the experience of the users of your site (UX) - which, also thanks to the recent Google Core Web Vitals algorithm update, can improve your ranking. 

The choice of a basic site also comes with some other important benefits, including:

• Increased usability and accessibility, which are essential for SEO and UX
• Increased cost-effectiveness
• Increased crawlability - or the search engine’s ability to discover and index a site
• Increased site’s speed - another of the important indicators valued by Google.
  

3. Use Landing Pages To Communicate With Your Audience

You can think of landing pages as the place where your users will land when following a link. If you are driving traffic to your site through social media pages, affiliate marketing, or other SEO campaigns, your users are bound to become interested in your offer and click on a link, which will direct them to your landing pages. 

Since these often represent the first thing your users will see of your site and your brand as a whole, you need to put some thought into creating the perfect ones. Here are some tips:

• Highlight your unique selling points
• Keep your voice tone and verbiage consistent
• Be clear in your message
• Use media, photos, and videos
• Ensure your landing pages are accessible by all of your users
  

4. Enhance The Responsiveness and Mobile-Friendliness of Your Site

Nearly55% of the world’s internet traffic now comes from mobile. And, always more users report abandoning a site if its mobile version is too slow or does not provide the feature available via laptop. The recent Google Core Web Vitals update also reports that the search engine is valuing mobile-friendliness more than ever. 

Here's what a none responsive website looks like on dektop:

Then on mobile:

And here's what it looks like on desktop after we redesigned it:

 
Then on mobile:

Creating a mobile-friendly and responsible website is easy, especially if you work within the boundaries of a decent designer platform.

5. Pay Attention To Your Page Speed

As mentioned on Google Core Web Vitals guidelines, page speed is an essential component of your users’ experience on your site. Luckily, you can check your website and page loading speed using basic free tools. 

Generally, if your websiteloads in under 3 seconds, you are within a positive range - around 50% of website load at this speed. However, by optimizing your content and media and reviewing your website’s code, you can increase its speed.

6. Know What Free Optimisation Tools To Use

Cheap and free tools - such as Google Search Console, Moz, GoogleAnalytics, ScreamingFrog, and Answer The Public - can help you deploy a winning SEO strategy without having to spend a penny. These tools allow you to review your website’s performance, find the right keywords, and answer the questions that your users are asking. 

In the video below, you can learn more about free optimisation tools and how to use them to your advantage:

Find Expert Help At My Personal Trainer Website

At My Personal Trainer Website, we know that optimising a site is vital for all website owners - but it is particularly crucial for personal trainers! However, we also know that the competition can be fierce in the industry, and we want to equip our clients with all the SEO tools they need to create a thriving business. 

From carrying out a competitor analysis to searching for the best keywords, to creating the right media for your company, we can help you with those SEO aspects that you might not feel so confident with. Get in touch today to find a personalised SEO solution.