Marketing: The Importance of Local SEO

When your members search for “gym near me,” a number of options likely pop up in their results. Is your gym one of them? If not, then you need to need to focus on your gym’s local SEO to ensure you’re on your local residents’ radar. Otherwise, you could be missing out on a huge demographic of people who’d love to get fit at your gym, if only they knew about you.

With this in mind, here are some steps to begin improving your local SEO.

Optimize your “Google My Business Page.” Google provides steps for how to do so, here.

Publish locally relevant content. To improve your SEO, it’s imperative that you have a blog of some sort that posts regularly, at least once per week. Making sure the content is relevant to your customers should give you an SEO boost. A great example would be a blog on how to shop at your local Kroger, or the best workout you can do at your nearby park.

Ensure your business name and address is listed consistently on your website, social media pages, Google Business page, etc. According to HubSpot, “Consistent spelling of your business name, address and phone numbers is critical for local SEO. For example, if your address is 401 Fort Point Road, then use that spelling on all of your listings. Avoid variations like 401 Ft. Point Road. Moz.com/Local is a useful tool to check for the consistent spelling of your local citations across the web.”

Get local newspapers/magazines to write about your business. The more local websites – other than your own – that talk about your business, and link to it, the better your ranking on social media will be. This is where creating press releases on events you’re hosting, gym news, etc. can be very beneficial. To forge a positive partnership with local journalists, be sure to be responsive to their requests. Oftentimes they’re on tight deadlines, so if they know they can rely on you for a quick comment/image, they’re more likely to go to you.

These are just a few tips for boosting your local SEO. To ensure you get good results, consider consulting with an SEO or website expert, or see if you have one on staff. You may be surprised to find out one of your front desk people has a degree in SEO or website design and may be able to help.