If you own a yoga or dance studio or offer in-person personal training, exercise, or fitness classes, getting foot traffic into your studio is crucial to the success of your business. But how do you reach people who may not already know about your business?
Local SEO.
You need local traffic to your website! And local SEO is so often missed by many designers when they’re creating their clients’ websites. You can have a gorgeous website but without local SEO, you’re hiding your website from Google. And the best part? It’s free, it can be done in about a half an hour, and can get you consistent traffic from Google withOUT having to pay for ads.
Connie Holen of Pixality Design is an expert in website design for fitness, wellness + yoga studios. Check out my interview with her where we talk all about local SEO for fitness and yoga studios.
Why you want your business on Google Maps
Connie has seen a big uptick in people searching for one-on-one services or smaller group settings. So if you’re a personal trainer or you offer private sessions (independent pilates teacher, massage therapist, etc.) having a Google Business profile and getting onto Google Maps can be super beneficial for getting found by those people.
I’m in the fitness/wellness space – How do you find out what people are looking for on Google?
Give up that expert mentality and put yourself in the shoes of when you first started your business. What would you type into Google? Ask some of your clients what terms they’re using to describe the services you offer.
You can also go to Google and start searching for some terms like “fitness classes near me” or “personal trainers near me” and see what Google thinks other people are typing in to find similar similar stuff to you. Google will also give you other prompts like related keywords, similar search terms, etc. There are tools that you can use to do this keyword research, but these are two easy ways to get an idea.
Keep your keywords simple
If you’re trying to reach people who are brand new to yoga, you’re not gonna want to come out and be like, “I teach Vinyasa, but not Ashtanga” – people who are new to yoga aren’t using specialized keywords like these.
You’ve got the keywords – now what?
Tell Google where you are and what you do
On your Google Business profile, you want to list your services, prices, and as much information with those specific words that people are searching for. You want to make it easy for Google to show you to potential clients.
The second place you want to be descriptive is your website homepage. Think about when you go to someone’s website and you have to click around a bunch of tabs in order to find their location – it’s annoying to the person visiting your website and it makes sure Google also can’t find that information. The worst thing you could do is not have your location on your homepage.
“If you’re hiding that from people visiting your site, you’re hiding that from Google too.”
You also want to make sure to put that very simple term that you want to get found for (like “I’m a reformer Pilates instructor in Sacramento, California”) in one of the headlines on your site. And putting your location info on every page of your site somewhere, like in the footer, helps Google to prioritize what you do and where you’re located.
Another thing to take into consideration is that if you do offer events or classes, put the addresses of those throughout your website. So if you’re doing bootcamp in the park or Saturday morning yoga sessions over at the rec center, make sure to include those addresses or towns that you’re working in.
Another great way to sneak in those locations is with testimonials. If you have testimonials from some clients, sprinkling those in on your website is great, too! (Bonus: This is great for credibility!!!)
Get people from a click to a conversion
Just because your website is found doesn’t mean it’s going to convert. So how do you get someone who’s clicked through to your site, to actually sign up for a class with you?
Have very client focused messaging throughout your site
To really make them feel like you understand them and their needs.
Have clear navigation with pricing
Including your pricing (or at least a “starting at” pricing) in your navigation is important so that they’ll know if your services are affordable or not. If they don’t see pricing, they’re probably going to assume it’s out of their price range.
Display a clear schedule or class times
The next thing clients are gonna ask themselves is, “Does this fit in my schedule?”
So if you offer preset class times, you need to have a preview of those class times or at least show the available hours that you’re available for appointments.
Have a clear call-to-action
A lot of websites you visit, they tell you what they do and what they offer – and then you’re like, ” Now what?” There’s no clear call-to-action.
So having a button somewhere like in the top right of your navigation that says something like, “Get Started” or “50% off your first session” will make people feel like they know exactly what those next steps are going to be.
If you want to learn more about this step-by-step process, Connie and I have teamed up to create a self-paced course just for fitness and yoga professionals who have their own websites to learn the local side of SEO.