Where do people find their favorite spot to work out? Maybe they walk past a local gym that looks interesting or get a referral from a neighbor. But increasingly, the path to finding a new gym starts with sitting on a couch and using a search engine.
If you’re a fitness studio or gym owner, getting your business to score high on search engine results pages (SERP) for relevant queries is an important way to build clientele. A strong search engine optimization (SEO) strategy can therefore be crucial to your success.
Here’s what you need to know to improve the search engine rankings for your gym or fitness business, and to get potential customers to land on your page—and walk through the door.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for “search engine optimization”—the process of strategically improving your ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs). SEO is an inbound marketing strategy businesses use to generate new leads for their products and services with techniques like keyword analysis and backlinking.
SEO helps local businesses like gyms and yoga studios be more visible online. By developing a focused SEO strategy, business owners can create web pages that appear closer to the top of a SERP and inspire conversions, whether for membership subscriptions, personal training sessions, or individual classes.
How to build your gym’s SEO strategy
- Create local business profiles
- Do keyword research
- Organize your website
- Start content marketing
- Generate backlinks
There are a variety of techniques that gym owners and fitness instructors can use to build an SEO strategy designed to generate leads for their businesses. Here are a few approaches worth trying:
Create local business profiles
Unless you run a purely online gym, local SEO is an effective way for customers around you to find out about your business. With this strategy, you can increase your visibility on platforms like Google Maps and Apple Maps—places where potential customers often turn to when looking for location-specific services.
For Google, set up a Google Business Profile by adding some essential information about your fitness business on their website. Request ownership of your business name and profile and fill in your business address, phone number, accurate business hours, high-quality photos related to your business, and a description of your business and offerings, like classes or equipment.
When writing your business description, avoid links and any words that feel like promotions. Don’t use dollar and percent signs or phrases like “sale” or “buy one, get one free.” That type of content is prohibited. Instead, use local keywords that customers may be using to search for a business like yours. So, if you’re a local business offering Pilates classes at a studio space in Cleveland, Ohio, you could use keywords related to local searches like “Cleveland Pilates studio,” “Pilates classes in Cleveland,” or “local Pilates teacher in Cleveland.”
Do keyword research
Keyword research is the process of analyzing which fitness-related keywords relate most specifically to your business. So, if you run a martial arts studio teaching Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in San Diego, you might consider keywords like “self-defense classes + your neighborhood,” or “your target audience + Jiu-Jitsu classes.”
Search engines like Google consider the use of relevant keywords when ranking results. This relates not just to the type of keywords and how often you use them, but also how you use the words. Do they make sense? Are they in the right context? Search engines use intelligent algorithms to scan web pages and analyze keyword use.
To target highly searched keywords relevant to your business, you can use a variety of free keyword research tools, like Google Keyword Planner and Google Search Console. Paid tools like Semrush or Surfer SEO are also useful, and Google Analytics can give you important information about your website’s on-page SEO like bounce rate and other metrics related to user behavior on your website.
Organize your website
The organization and user experience of your website play a critical role in how well your web pages rank on search engine results pages. One of the ways you can improve the technical SEO of your gym website is by breaking information down into sections that help search engine algorithms make sense of web pages.
For example, suppose you’re crafting service pages for your indoor cycling gym. You may want to start with a page listing all the types of fitness services you offer. Create a title that includes relevant keywords, and write meta descriptions of your web pages to summarize the content and help readers understand the main focus of a particular web page. Use headers (like H2 and H3 tags for specific types of cycling classes offered) within your web page’s HTML code to delineate subheadings and sections. This makes it easier for search engine site crawlers to scan your content, understand it, and rank it higher on results pages.
Your website’s loading speed and mobile-friendliness also impact your technical SEO. Building your gym or fitness center’s website with a reliable platform can provide a high-quality user experience with your website. For example, Shopify allows gym owners and fitness entrepreneurs to easily set up an optimized website for their fitness services with reliable booking management and secure payment processing features.
Start content marketing
Another strategy for improving your visibility on search engines is through blog SEO, which is a form of content marketing. Blog SEO involves publishing useful, relevant, and entertaining blog posts related to your business. For example, you could launch a blog on your fitness website featuring instructions for different types of exercises or meal plans.
Successful blogs can help SEO by improving your website’s authority in a specific niche and creating more chances for potential clients to find out about your business while searching online. This type of content can drive organic traffic and gradually turn curious readers into committed followers or clients.
Generate backlinks
Another way to perform SEO for gyms is to develop a robust backlinking strategy. Backlinks are hyperlinks from other websites that link back to your website. You can reach out to bloggers, journalists, influencers, and other authorities in your field, and suggest yourself or your website as a resource they can use and feature. You can also offer to write guest posts for them in exchange for links back to your page, suggest that they replace any broken links with links to your website or blog, or publish studies or data they can link to as a source.
Backlinks signal to search engines that your website is reputable and relevant, which helps with its placement on results pages. This is not just good SEO strategy but also has the advantage of setting you up as a knowledgeable authority in your line of work.
Gym SEO FAQ
What is SEO in fitness?
SEO stands for search engine optimization, a strategy businesses use to increase their placement in search engine rankings. A fitness business or gym owner can use SEO techniques like keyword research and backlinking to improve their visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs).
How do I implement SEO for a gym business?
If you’re running a gym business, you can implement SEO techniques like keyword optimization, well-written meta descriptions, a robust backlinking strategy, or maintaining a blog.
Why is SEO important for a gym?
SEO is important for a gym because it can help your website and business rank higher on search engines. When potential clients search relevant keywords related to your business, SEO can result in more memberships and increased revenue for your fitness business overall.
