Google might seem intimidating, but it’s really just a big library that anybody can look at whenever they feel like researching a topic. And, if you are a personal training studio that wants to be on top of everyone’s reading list, you need to place your business high on the list.
The trick to ranking 1st on Google, is finding a consistent mix of strategies that get your gym or personal training studio found easily on the biggest search index of all time. Connecting with your target audience, and generating leads, will be much easier with my top 15 organic and paid SEO strategies
- USE SERPS
What does SERP mean? This nerdy search engine jargon simply standards for Search Engine Results Pages.
SERPS are promotions that you see every time you hit ‘search.’ They are the results you receive from Adwords, Google Shopping, or featured snippets.
To get your personal training studio ranking higher in the search engines, you’ll need to replace a few Google competitors. Setup specific words you think would pinpoint new leads and type them into a site like Moz Pro Keyword Explorer
Assess your keyword rank and narrow down the ones that trigger a SERPS feature. This will help you to find the words that get recognised in non-organic traffic results (those that show-up without advertising.)
Google SERPS include:
- Adwords (Bottom)
- Adwords (Top)
- Featured Snippet
- Image Pack
- In-depth Article
- Knowledge Cad
- Knowledge Panel / Graph Data
- Local Pack
- Local Teaser Pack
- News Box
- Related Questions
- Reviews
- Shopping Results
- Site Links
- Tweet
- Video
It’s likely that you’ll be closer to the top of the page with SERPS paid promotions, but don’t pay for what you can achieve organically.
- CHECK YOUR SITE SPEED
Google has used page speed as a ranking factor since 2010 and it was reinforced as a vital site metric when Google updated it in 2018.
Website speed often flies under the radar as a ranking metric. Especially if you’re a gym owner using a drag and drop site like Wix, Squarespace, or GoDaddy where the appearance is streamlined, modern and beautiful, but the pages often lack faster loading times due to advertising in the code.
Connect people to your website online and mobile by doing a quick website speed check.
Here are the top websites to check your gyms website page speed:
Improve your site speed
When you evaluate the website speed it will give you a score out of 100% across a number of different metrics including: the webpage itself, the file size and the image compressor. If you’re current personal training website doesn’t get above 85% and, ideally above 90%, you can solve this issue with a few different maintenance options.
Plug-in’s may be available for your WordPress platform, some online software companies offer monthly memberships to boost website speed, and another option is to outsource this issue to a web-developer.
Are you a personal trainer building a website for your new gym or studio? Make sure to get an SEO specialist who not only makes things aesthetically pleasing, but will also make the site fast. Do a check-up on their past clients to ensure they deliver.
- GET ORGANIC TRAFFIC
Shatter the glass ceiling of your website traffic and win organic leads without advertising! Blog regularly, use unique service descriptions, and give people the opportunity to make reviews. Long-tail keywords will also rank you higher. Honestly, this makes a huge difference to get organic website traffic and generate organic leads. Repeating these strategies over time should absolutely boost rankings!
Optimise for your ideal personal training clients, not the search engines. Customer personas are key to positioning yourself in search engines using long-tail keywords that strengthen your position in the market.
Why is it important to plan your personal training keywords? A study from Bright Edge showed that organic search traffic made-up 51% of B2B and B2C search results, whereas non-organic traffic only got 5-10%.
This makes organic results the cheapest way to market your personal training business online. Organic Search results were shown to be the highest source of revenue for every industry except media and entertainment.
- USE INFORMATIONAL KEYWORDS
There are 3 main types of keywords — Informational, Transactional, and Commercial. We’ll take you through each of them, minus the heavy marketing jargon.
Informational keywords are used to find information about a particular topic, person, product, or service. Usually, when people use informational keywords, they might not yet know what they are really looking for. That’s why you’ll often see high-ranking blog posts listed under; why, how, mistakes, things, and pros and cons — to find background information to assist them with the decision-making process.
Check out the image below for some pointers.
- USE TRANSACTIONAL KEYWORDS
Transactional keywords are used to ignite things to purchase or sign-up for. They are simply used to rank the intent of doing business. They are particularly effective if you are doing paid advertising on Google or other search engines. Common transactional keywords include; buy, coupon, discount and shipping. Personal training studios may specifically choose to include; book-in, sign-up, register, or try.
- USE COMMERCIAL KEYWORDS
Commercial keywords directly align your personal training services with customer demand. They could be exclusive to your geographic region, include statistics about your results, or establish the kinds of training programs that you offer. Commercial keywords are likely to be ‘long-tail’, meaning they consist of more than one word. Here are a few samples:
- How to lose weight with Pilates.
- How to navigate the MindbodyOnline client app.
- Make money online for free.
- Free ebook download.
You will need to find-out what your competitors are currently using, and what they aren’t, in order to position yourself for both kinds of customer opportunities in the market. Keep in mind that most of the people who use commercial keywords are pre-educated and have already been sold on the idea of using a product or service.
- USE UBER SUGGEST / IMPROVE SEO WITH KEYWORD SEARCH
Keywords can be very competitive. Once you have done your own research, that is, simply going through the internet for meaningful topics and things your customers might like. You can then double-check your desired topic keywords on a software platform like Uber Suggest
You don’t need to create content that’s based around a single keyword. Sometimes people do this as a starting point, but this strategy alone often supplements knowledge with bland and invaluable content the internet could read anywhere.
Even though people always recommend to do basic beginner style content with keywords, don’t necessarily rely on these to convert new leads. Try to keep things directly relevant to your brand — for example, recommending healthy food stores within your suburb of operation could lead to finding new personal training clients.
8. USE KEYWORDS THAT ARE GOOD FOR THE SOUL
Your content will be far more valuable to a reader if you give them knowledge you feel passionate about. Keyword research will show you what terms are most and least popular, but should ultimately only be used to support your creativity.
For example, will you use the keyword: Fitness or Workout? Personal Trainer or PT? Yoga or Stretches?
Whatever soul-driven content you choose to create can still be highly ranked.
Keyword research will simply assist your mission to influence new leads. Remember, Google also uses reading time as a metric to pull-up results.
- CREATE PERSONAL TRAINER SPECIFIC CONTENT
Creating your own personal training philosophy and building your customised content around it will assist you to pinpoint new leads. Think about what people might like to read about on the way to work and plan-out how you might win their time.
Seasonal content is a good way to start. For example, at Christmas, you might choose to share foods to avoid, or how to keep fit during the silly season; all under the authority of your own personal training brand.
Custom workouts could also position you as an expert in your field, accompanied with before and after stories, you will be sure to inspire people to succeed with your business.
Before and After pictures remain the most popular style of content on Instagram for Kayla Itsines.
- CREATE INFOGRAPHICS FOR YOUR PINTEREST ACCOUNT WITH LINKS TO YOUR BLOG.
We all know how addictive pinning Infographics for fitness can be. Gaining traction might seem a little difficult at first, but with a little sponsorship and some help from friends, it is possible that, within 2-5 years time, you could be one of the most pinned personal trainers on the web.
11. TARGET INFOGRAPHICS FOR YOUR PERSONAL TRAINING AUDIENCE
You’ll want to ensure there are strategies in place to target your ideal personal training audience.
Different audience levels include
- Novice
- Generalist
- Managerial
- Expert
- Executive
Novice are people with zero knowledge, but executives might only want snippets of the most important information, so those two audiences could be more similar than you think. Generalist content will present more ‘why’ than ‘what,’ as you would with a beginner.
Both Managerial and Experts would do well with statistics and genuine scientific information to back-up why things work. Keep in mind that ‘Expert’ in the fitness context would be more likely to relate to other personal trainers, whereas ‘Managerial’ would be for nerdy fitness clients.
Target audiences might include; stay-at-home mums, young adults, executives, active workers *tradespeople, women under 25, males under 25 and gym enthusiasts.
You will then choose to build the appropriate content for the audience around a personal training focus point; such as using dumbbells or toning belly flab.
12. CREATE THE PERFECT TEMPLATE FOR YOUR INFOGRAPHIC
Once you’ve gathered your information, you can then create an eye-catching template. Canva offers the ability to create Pinterest Infographics for free, but you may choose to differentiate and upgrade your personal training aesthetic by paying for some less frequently used graphics.
According to Hubspot Different Infographics include:
- Side by Side comparison Infographic: Explain the difference between two competing entities proving the advantage of one concept over another.
- Image Heavy Infographic: This design caters to content creators who are trying to reveal trends and information from shapes, designs or photography- Rather than just numbers and figures.
- Flow Chart Infographic: This design is perfect for presenting a new workflow for your organization, or how a linear or cyclical process works across your industry.
- Timeline Infographic: This design can tell a chronological story, or history, of a business, industry product or concept.
- Graph-based infographic: This design is suitable for content creators publishing a high volume of data and statistical information, making it a good fit for expert-level audiences, too.
These can be used to bolster up your blog too, with a bit of help from a web-developer? They could be ranking in Google Images presto.
- CREATE HEALTH AND FITNESS LISTS FOR PINTEREST
If you want to try going broader than an Infographic, it could be more competitive, but there’s plenty of ways to do things that are specific to your own personal training ethos:
- “99 easy ways to improve your health”
- “28 day flatter belly challenge”
- “Indoor Cardio Workout”
- “50 self-care ideas for a bad day”
- “100 Healthy actions that help you get fit”
- USE LOCAL BUSINESS LISTINGS
It’s likely you’ve already got a local business listing on Google. Though, adding yourself to a few other local websites can assist the search engines to crawl for your own listing faster and more frequently.
Local Guide websites can work, but if there are none available in your area you can also try contributing to local blogs. Keep in mind, these blogs don’t have to be gigantic influencers (they could be) but simply creating content shows that you are authoritative and trustworthy on the subject of personal training.
Google prefers to rank businesses that include a name, address and phone number — and the more it can find data that supports these details, the more likely your personal training business rank first. These are my favourites:
- linklocal
- True Local
- Yelp
- Start Local
- WOMO
- Business Listings
- Aussie Web
- Yellow Pages
- HotFrog
- Aussie Web
- Local Store
- Yalwa
- Super Pages
- Local Business
Over a set period of time, try to get at least 25 listings on fitness related pages or popular directories.
- ADD A CALL TO ACTION
Every story must have an ending. Once you capture your readers attention, they will expect you to let them in on the solution. After all, your story is supposed to solve a problem, not nurture it.
Use a call-to-action with a link or button to lead people to your funnel and convert them. Match Office increased its conversion rate by 14.79% by changing its CTA copy to ‘get information and prices.’
And now you can ‘get’ ours. If you’re ready to transform your personal training business; smash sales targets and build a well know brand – Get in contact with me below