It's Liam here from InternetFitpro.com.

I've just been over in Warrington visiting one of our clients, Stu Mackenzie from GS Elite Fitness.

One of the things we got chatting about today was whether it's worth doing SEO as a personal trainer or a fitness professional.

What is SEO?

For those of you guys who don't know what SEO is, it is basically Search Engine Optimization which is basically how people generally try and manipulate the search results and try and get a little bit higher up on the Google search rankings.

Search Engine Optimization for a personal trainer is something that can work really well in terms of helping to get you more clients. In fact, when I had my personal training business in Manchester, it was something that worked really well for me. I had the number one position on Google for the search term “Personal Trainer Manchester”, which basically meant that I got unlimited clients.

The thing is, though — the big difference and what I really want to try and explain to you is that there were over 1,000 searches per month for the search term “personal trainer, Manchester”.

So, if you live in a little town, for example if you live in Leigh or if you live in a little town like maybe Hazlingdont or somewhere that's quite small, just solely relying on search engine optimization, could be a fatal mistake in your fitness business.

The reason why is because there basically isn't enough people who are looking for what you do and actively searching for your fitness business.

So, how can you get around this by not paying someone to do this for you?

So, there are lots of companies who will essentially charge you a monthly fee for building links, for setting up your website in a way that means that you will rank higher, however it's all stuff that you can outsource to someone or you can do it pretty easily yourself. Firstly, if you use WordPress, you want to be using a plugin called Yoast WordPress SEO. That is a free plugin. It doesn't cost anything.
Get your web guy to upload that to your website for you.

The second thing you guys need to do is to get yourselves, as a business, registered on Google+ for business. So, get your business registered on a Google+ page.

What that will do is it will increase your chances of getting on the little map listings when you search for a local business. Usually there's a group of three, five or seven businesses with their reviews and with a little pin on the Google map. Now, if you can get your business registered with having an actual physical address — so, what'll happen is you go onto Google+ and they'll send you a little postcard to your address with a code on it. You need to fill the code in and then it lets Google know that you're a real bona fide business.

Then, all you need to do from there is make sure that you have the address on your website so that Google knows who you are. Google needs to know what sort of a business you are, so tell them that you're a personal training business.

Then, after that, all you need to do is go and ask your clients and people that you've worked with to leave you some testimonials. Testimonials on Google+, or Google Local Business, or whatever they are calling it these days, they always change the names, are the key to ranking on Google for local searches.

Also, you ideally need to be in the town that you want to try and rank in. So, have an address in the town that you want to rank on.

So, if it's Manchester, our address was in Central Manchester because that's where our gym was. The reason why we were able to outrank everyone on the Google searches — and, if you want to go and look for this, just type in personal trainer Manchester into Google and see if we're still ranking. I think we were ranking number one or number two and it's because we have 56 reviews.

Do what other trainers wont

Now, most personal trainers won't even take the time to do this. Most personal trainers won't ask their clients for reviews.

They won't chase them for reviews.

This will put you at the top of the rankings in your town. Every client that comes through the door, guys, just send them the link and say, “would you mind if you sent me a nice review? And, if you could mention the word personal trainer in that review, that would be even better.”

So, don't depend on guys to do your SEO for you because they can't guarantee it for starters. Anybody who tells you that they can guarantee to get you at the top of Google is a downright liar. Don't depend on web guys to do it. Do it yourself. It's a five-minute job to set this up. It's a two-minute job to put in the code once you get your postcard through from Google.

Then, it's a two-minute job to send an email to a client and say, “Would you mind giving us a nice review?” If you've got a boot camp, it's even easier because you've got all of your clients. If you've got 20 or 30 clients on a boot camp session, you can get them all to do it at once.
It’s simple and if you live in a large town or city it could really boost your fitness business.

If you want to check out a little bit more about what we do, visit our website at internetfitpro.com Take it easy and have a good day, Cheers.