When it comes to organically generating an increase in traffic and leads to your website, SEO is your key to success. Getting relevant key phrases with high search volumes ranked on Google is super important now more than ever as it impacts how people trust your brand.

A recent study from SEJ (Search Engine Journal) shows that around 93% of online activities start with search engines. Most search engines (for ex: Google, Yahoo and Bing) update their search algorithms frequently to ensure that their customers have the best possible experience. Therefore, it is crucial for you as a fitness business owner and your marketers to keep abreast of the SEO trends and adapt to this ever-changing SEO landscape .

Why is SEO Important?

Organic visibility on Google is vital, so much that organic search, on average, was shown to be the biggest driver of web traffic last year.

To better understand the importance of organic traffic, SEJ conducted a study about it. Below are some stats based on the study:

• Approx. 70% of searchers click on organic results
• Approx. 80% of searchers ignore paid ads

The big deal is not just ranking your website in the top 3 positions of the Search Results Engine Page, known by its acronym SERP, but also having strong visibility especially in the featured snippets section of the SERP. This directly affects the amount of people that will visit your fitness business website. Below are some stats based on recent studies:

• 75% of searchers never scroll past page 1 of Google
• 18% of Google organic clicks are on the first position, 10% go to the 2nd position and 7% go to the 3rd position

Related Reading:

7 Ways To Follow-Up An Old Lead That Will Drive Growth At Your Gym

The Importance of Lead Generation for Fitness Clubs

Clubworx' Top 5 SEO Recommendations:

Here are our 5 powerful SEO recommendations that you can start implementing on your website straight away to generate an increase in organic traffic:

1. Keyword Research - Find Keywords to Target

When identifying which keywords to target, you have to find out what words and phrases a potential customer will use in search engines, so that you can include them on your business website content. This is called Keyword Research, an important step that's required to drive relevant organic traffic to your website.

While you are researching keywords, you will most likely encounter the following issue:

Volume/Traffic versus Search Intent

It is a fairly normal conflict, and although both concepts are key, usually search intent is more important. Nearly all search queries with clear intent follow this classification:

• Informational: How tos, Whats (Ex: ‘how to generate more traffic’)
• Navigational: Branded Queries
• Commercial investigation: Specific Attributes, “vs”, “best” (i.e., ‘best fitness club in my area’)
• Transactional: Buy, Sign up for Free Trial, etc.

A way to generate keyword ideas is evaluating what the potential customer is searching for and asking yourself if you can help them attain their objective.

To uncover keywords / key phrases to create content around, start by checking the following free online keyword search platforms:

• Google Trends
• Answer the Public
• Keywordtool.io
• Google Search Console
• Google Related Searches

2. Make your web pages load faster

One of the signals used by Google algorithms to rank web pages is page speed. This is the length of time it takes a specific web page to load fully. When the load speed of a web page is s low, search engines can crawl fewer pages using their allocated crawl budget. This could potentially harm the rate at which the website gets crawled.

Web pages with low page speed usually have higher bounce rates and potential customers stay less time on the page. All these creates a negative impact on user experience and affects conversions.

Below you can find free web page speed testing tools:

• Google Pagespeed Insights
• Pingdom
• YSlow

In order to improve your webpage loading time, you can follow these suggestions:

• Optimise images
• Improve server response time
• Enable compression
• Minify CSS, HTML & JavaScript
• Reduce unnecessary redirects

3. Optimise your site's mobile version

Although the time people spend online on their mobiles and tablets has increased significantly over the years, most sites are not optimised for all the different devices (screens and operating systems ). To optimise the mobile version of your site, you must take into consideration site design, structure and load speed to make sure you are offering the best experience to your site's mobile visitors.

When you are deciding on your website’s design, think Mobile First. Websites using responsive design perform well both on mobile and desktop devices so you don't have to re- design a different version for mobile webisite. Responsively designed websites serve the same content to mobile and desktop users. A fluid grid and a flexible design is used so that the size of the screen adapts automatically.

When it comes to mobile optimisation, you should consider the list below:

DO’s

• Consider the checkout process on mobile
• Resource optimisation; images, icons, etc.
• Keep calls to action front and center
• Make site search visible
• Keep menus short and sweet. Make it easy for users to navigate back to the Home page.

DON’Ts

• Don't use Flash
• Don't block CSS, JavaScript, or images
• Re-consider the use of pop-ups

You can test your website using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Tool

4. Create Content Consistently

SEO and content marketing go hand in hand. To catch the eye of potential customers, take their journey from brand to sales and boost engagement, create SEO-friendly content consistently.

You can follow these recommendations:

• Write long-form blog posts – think 2,000 words or more.
• Explore topics that have many different facets and angles.
• Write ultimate guides.
• Go further than surface-level research. Instead of a cursory Google search, try Google Scholar, JSTOR, or industry publications to find new data and studies

Here are a few tools that can help you generate content topic ideas:

• SEM Rush Topic Research
• Ahrefs Content Explorer
• Buzz Sumo

Moreover, once you have your new content you can use CoSchedule. This tool is very useful, as it will help you organise, plan and schedule your newly created content to be published.

5. Optimise site content for Google’s Featured Snippets

Recently featured snippets have been getting very popular in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPSs).

According to Google, featured snippets are small blocks of information that show up on the result page when a user asks a question. There are different kinds:

• Paragraph (an answer is given in text). It can be a box with text inside or a box with both text and an image inside.
• List (an answer is given in a form of a list)
• Table (an answer is given in a table)

There are some strategies that you can use to get your site’s content featured in the featured snippets section of the SERP:

• Answer questions definitively in your content.
• Make your content the highest quality possible.
• Use numbered and bulleted lists.
• Include stats and data.
• Structure your content logically.

It is estimated that 50% of searches will be conducted using voice-controlled personal assistants (such as Siri, Cortana, and Google Assistant) next year. That is why it is crucial to optimise your business website’s content for Google’s Featured Snippets because people usually asks questions when using this voice search on their mobiles.

Case Study - Vitality Martial Arts , South Yarra

Our client Vitality Martial Arts implemented SEO changes on their website which resulted in an uplift of organic traffic sessions by over 258% since 2018.

Focus Keywords

Our client’s focus in the last year shifted to being found for local searches and hence our SEO advice changed to accommodate for this shift in the focus key phrases.

Organic Traffic

Since the beginning of implementing our SEO strategies (in April 2018), that include the above mentioned SEO tips, Vitality Matrial Arts’ organic traffic sessions went up by 2,147.2%. This increase has made a noteworthy difference in their conversions.

The above Google Analytics traffic trend shows a steady increase in organic traffic with a significant increase since June 2019. When comparing traffic from September 2019 to September 2018, we see a 257.8% increase in organic website visitors. This is a notable increase that reinforces the success of the SEO strategies that have been implemented

We are excited to continue our valued relationship with Vitality Martial Arts and contribute towards their business growth. Contact us if you would like to know more about how we can help tailor an SEO strategy for your fitness business.

Conclusion

Taking into consideration all the above mentioned recommendations will help improve your website’s organic traffic and leads and therefore grow your fitness business.

Here’s a recap:

1. Research and find keywords to target
2. Make your web pages load faster
3. Optimise the mobile version of your site
4. Create Content Consistently
5. Optimise site content for Google’s Featured Snippets

At Clubworx we are all about helping you grow your fitness business. If you need help with implementing any of the above mentioned SEO recommendations feel free to reach out to us.