Harness the Power of the Internet
By Gary Leung
The best website in the world won’t help you if clients can’t find you. Here’s how to get your website noticed.
Have you done a search for your business lately using Google, Bing or Yahoo? On what page does your site show up? If it’s not the first page, how can you be sure that people will find you before they find your competitors?
Are you lost in cyberspace?
Search engines crawl all the webpages in cyberspace and bring relevant results back to the searcher.
Unfortunately, in many cases your website will appear on the second or third page of someone’s search results, which makes it unlikely that potential clients will find you. This means that your website, no matter how well-designed, is virtually useless from a search perspective.
How do you convince search engines to put your site at the top of a search? Start by discovering the terms people use to find fitness facilities in your area. Luckily, Google offers free access to its database of searches. Use Google’s “Adwords Keyword Tool” and type in the name of your town along with a basic keyword for your business. (For example, if you are in Ottawa, type in “Ottawa gym” or “Ottawa fitness club.”)
The results will show exactly which keywords people use to find gyms, fitness centres, personal trainers and fitness professionals in your area. They will also show how often these keywords are searched every month.
Next, be sure that these keywords appear on your website. One of the best ways to do this is by publishing regularly updated blogs or articles on your website that use these keywords. For example, if “gym equipment” is a common keyword, write a blog post about how you keep your gym equipment up-to-date.
Act locally
Keep in mind that you don’t want the entire world to visit your website – you want local clients who are most likely to use your facilities to train and work out.
That’s where Google Places come in handy. When someone searches for “Toronto personal trainer,” Google Places pulls up a list of relevant websites.
Getting listed is free, and you can list all kinds of information about your business, including operating hours, pictures, special events, coupons and more. Go to Google Places to sign up for an account and list your business.
Get other websites talking about you
You can increase both search engine recognition and traffic to your site by getting other health and fitness websites to link to your site. One of the best ways to do this is with specialized online health and fitness directories.
These reasonably priced directories tend to be highly optimized, get lots of traffic from visitors and are often located on the first page of a search engine query. Even if your business is located on the first page of a search, promoting your business on this type of directory gives you yet another first page ranking – often at the expense of your competitors.
Specialized health and fitness directories also give you inbound links to your main site. The more links to your site from health-related sites, the easier it is for large search engines to notice your site. Find directories that allow you to add content (like pictures, contact information, hours of operation, etc.) directly to their sites, and make sure they provide at least one link to your website.
As more and more people use the Internet to search for health and fitness services, make it easy for them to find you – and watch your business grow.
Gary Leung is the president of Health Local, Canada’s largest Internet directory for gyms, fitness centres, personal trainers and other health-related services. Contact him at www.health-local.com.
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