If your personal training business does not have some presence on Google, you will never be able to reach your full potential. It is that simple. After all, 68 percent of online experiences today start with a search engine!
However, you may not know where to begin if you lack experience in search engine optimization. There is no need to panic, though, as we have covered you.
What is SEO?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) aims to expand the presence of your fitness website in organic search results. It is about using different techniques to drive more people to your personal trainer website. More traffic leads to an increase in leads and potential clients.
How does SEO work?
You'll need to perform a set of tasks to ensure that your website ranks high in Google. These include optimizing the content on your fitness website based on keyword research and building inbound links to boost the ranking of your content and your site's visibility.
- Rankings - This is what Google and other search engines use to figure out where to place a specific web page in the SERP.
- Visibility - This describes your domain's prominence in the search engine result pages.
What's an SEO Strategy?
An SEO strategy is a plan to get more people to visit your fitness site via search engines like Google.
Effective SEO incorporates the following:
Effective SEO incorporates the following:
- Off-page strategies - These techniques earn inbound links from other high-quality, relevant websites.
- On-page strategies - These use intent-based keywords naturally throughout your website content.
The Three Areas of a Successful SEO Strategy for Your Personal Trainer Website
There are three key areas you need to concentrate on when it comes to SEO for personal trainers:
Let's take a look at what each of these areas entail.
- Your website's technical elements
- Your content
- Links
Let's take a look at what each of these areas entail.
The Technical Elements of Your Website
Three things need to happen for your website to rank. Firstly, the search engine needs to locate the pages on your website. Next, search engine bots must scan the page to understand your site's topics and keywords. Finally, it must add them to its index. This is a database of all of the content found on the web.
While this may sound simple, challenges arise from the fact that a search engine crawler will not view a website the same way you and I see it. We see text, graphics, colors, etc. A search engine only sees text.
Because of this, you need to ensure your personal training site's content is structured to make it easy for Google to scan and understand.
Some of the most vital areas here are as follows:
While this may sound simple, challenges arise from the fact that a search engine crawler will not view a website the same way you and I see it. We see text, graphics, colors, etc. A search engine only sees text.
Because of this, you need to ensure your personal training site's content is structured to make it easy for Google to scan and understand.
Some of the most vital areas here are as follows:
- Page speed - The longer your website takes to load, the more people will leave and go elsewhere. Google recognizes this and factors it in.
- Simple URL structure - Search engines dislike complex structures and lengthy strings of words. Keep your URLs short.
- Website links and navigation - Search engines will crawl your personal trainer website like a viewer would in the sense that they follow links. Make sure you set the links and navigation as text-only.
- Duplicate content - Google needs clarification when there is overly similar or identical content. Make sure you do not have any duplicate content on your website.
- Robots.txt files and sitemap - Search engines use sitemaps to determine what pages they should crawl and index on your website. On the flip side, a robots.txt file does the opposite, i.e. tell search engines what context not to index.
- Broken redirects and dead links - A dead link will send a visitor to a page that does not exist. A broken redirect sends the viewer to a resource no longer there. Both negatively impact your ranking.
Your Website Content
Whenever someone searches on Google, they are looking for content. Content comes in many formats, from videos and infographics to blog posts and product recommendations.
As content is what people are searching for, you need to provide it to boost your fitness brand's visibility.
For this to be successful, you need to conduct in-depth keyword research. Understand what keywords people use when searching for personal trainers in your location, and incorporate these into your content naturally.
Not only should keywords be incorporated into blog posts, but you need to add them to your meta descriptions, meta titles, ALT tags, image file names, heading tags, URLs, and the post's title.
As content is what people are searching for, you need to provide it to boost your fitness brand's visibility.
For this to be successful, you need to conduct in-depth keyword research. Understand what keywords people use when searching for personal trainers in your location, and incorporate these into your content naturally.
Not only should keywords be incorporated into blog posts, but you need to add them to your meta descriptions, meta titles, ALT tags, image file names, heading tags, URLs, and the post's title.
There are also non-keyword-related factors relating to content optimization. It would be best if you incorporated both internal and external links. You also need to ensure the content length is suitable for the topic and includes multimedia elements, such as images and videos.
Website Links and Backlinks
Finally, links are critical too. We're not purely talking about the links you include in your fitness website's content but about generating backlinks that point back to your personal training website from external pages.
Suspicious or low-quality links could reduce your rankings, so you need to tread cautiously.
When finding valuable places to link back to your website, you need to look at three things:
Suspicious or low-quality links could reduce your rankings, so you need to tread cautiously.
When finding valuable places to link back to your website, you need to look at three things:
- Make sure the site you link from has a high domain authority.
- Choose a website relevant to your personal trainer website, such as a bodybuilding blog or a health and fitness news site.
- Link from a website that is deemed trustworthy.
Check out how one of our Managed Website client Judd receives a backlink from the Best Reviews portal where he's their fitness reviews expert.
You need to tick these three boxes when launching an outreach strategy. When trustworthy, relevant websites link back to your own, it's like they give Google a thumbs up and say that your website is one to be trusted.
You need to tick these three boxes when launching an outreach strategy. When trustworthy, relevant websites link back to your own, it's like they give Google a thumbs up and say that your website is one to be trusted.
Take your online presence to new heights with SEO.
So there you have it: everything you need to know about SEO for personal trainers. This article hopefully has given you a better understanding of how search engine optimization works, why it is essential, and how to use it to benefit your personal training business.
