Fitness Center SEO (23K Percent Growth In 24 Months)
Hey all, Richard Hale here back for another case study. In this SEO case study, I’ll be discussing how to grow your fitness business or gym with SEO.
Over the course of 24 months, Hometown Fitness’ organic traffic (SEO traffic) grew by 23,996 percent. Now, don’t focus on that because when I started working with the fitness center, they didn’t have no organic traffic at all.
Even so, it’s still substantial growth. It’s still SEO growth and it has been tens of thousands of locally targeted users visiting their website.
This fitness center is a local one, located in Plainfield, Illinois. I’ll be covering fitness center SEO tips, what I did to see huge growth and what you can do to get the same results.
(1) Focus On Local Keywords First
If you have a local fitness center or gym, you have to focus on local keywords first. Why? Your customers are local, not 200 miles away.
You need to start by researching local keywords your target customers will use. For those who know me, I always recommend Ahrefs, especially since Google took Keyword Planner away.
Check out all the local keywords we’re ranking in the first page of Google for. This is only a few of 100+ local keywords I have them ranking first page for.
Notice the keyword difficulty on them, very low. These are the types of keywords you want your local fitness center to rank for. Even if you’re a national fitness center brand or national gym, start with the local keywords first. If you have multiple locations, each location should have a website.
Not only did Hometown Fitness rank on the first page of Google for 100+ local keywords, their brand name grew in popularity. With each passing month, more and more people were searching for Hometown Fitness. This is another benefit of search engine optimization.
(2) On-site SEO – Only On What Matters
First, I recommend WordPress because Yoast makes on-site SEO easier. WordPress is a content management system that is friendly to SEO. Most hosting companies allow you to easily add WordPress to your website.
Now, once you have all your keywords, you need to make sure you use each one of them on your website. The page that has the highest SEO value is your homepage. You can rank hundreds/thousands of keywords on just one page if you want. That’s your call. What you need to do is make sure they’re listed at least once.
For higher difficulty keywords, you can target a specific page for that one keyword. If you have a KD rating of (20) or higher, you’ll probably want to have a specific page to rank that keyword on the top of Google.
(3) Local Citations (NAP Listings)
Local citations are important for a local business. These are websites like Yellow Pages, Yelp and others that allow you to list a profile on their site that includes the name of your business, address, phone number and website.
There’s literally thousands of them out there. The more you can focus in your specific region, the better. None the less, they add authority and SEO value to your website.
Warning: You want to make sure to use the same name, address, phone number and website URL. If you’re changing the address or numbers, it will do more harm than good.
(4) High Quality Backlinks
Lastly, you’re going to need a few high quality backlinks from relevant websites. It only takes a few to really help your keyword rankings.
You need to focus on websites that have an equal or higher (UR) rating. That is URL rating and it’s a Ahrefs metric.
You do need to be aware of your anchor text and exactly what you’re using to point back to your website. A lot of people try to go exact match on most anchors and that will get you in trouble. Focus on variations and you’ll see a lot better results.
(5) Building Relationships With Others
As a SEO strategy? You bet. I have an unfair advantage when it comes to SEO. I’ve been building relationships with other SEOs, entrepreneurs and business owners for 10+ years. In fact, this is my best SEO strategy.
You need to start building authentic relationships with others in your niche, industry and market. You see, while others need to take months to reach out to relative web owners, I have friends I can contact and hear back from quickly. My network is one of my most important assets and it’s smart for you to get started on this as soon as possible.
Reach out to others and ask them if you can submit an article to their site.
That’s how I was able to help this website rank on top of Google for all their local keywords. By doing so, I was able to bring in hundreds of targeted local users each month to their business.
While there’s thought to be over 200+ SEO ranking factors, all you need to do is focus on the few listed here or hire a SEO that knows what their doing. You know, one that gets results.
