Why SEO is Important to Your Online Training or Coaching Business
Like most online personal training businesses, you will have many competitors who are going after the same clients. One way that you can stand out is by having a well-designed website that has been optimized to reach your target clients.
As an online personal trainer or coach, you know that seeing results from your workouts takes time. The same is true with SEO. As you make changes to your website, keep in mind that it will take some time before you start seeing progress, sometimes up to 3-6 months.
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a process of choosing the most appropriate targeted keyword phrases related to your site and ensuring that this ranks your site highly in search engines so that when someone searches for specific phrases it returns your site on tops. It basically involves fine-tuning the content of your site along with the HTML and Meta tags and also involves an appropriate link building process.
The most widely recognized and popular search engine is Google According to recent statistics, Google is the most popular search engine with a nearly 90% market share. Others include Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, Yandex, DuckDuckGo, Ask.com, Ecosia, Aol.com and Internet Archive.
Search engines keep their methods and ranking algorithms secret, to get credit for finding the most valuable search-results and to deter spam pages from clogging those results. A search engine may use hundreds of factors while ranking the listings where the factors themselves and the weight each carries may change continually. Algorithms can differ so widely that a webpage that ranks #1 in a particular search engine could rank #200 in another search engine.
New sites need not be “submitted” to search engines to be listed. A simple link from a well-established site will get the search engines to visit the new site and begin to spider its contents. It can take a few days to even weeks from the referring of a link from such an established site for all the main search engine spiders to commence visiting and indexing the new site.
If you are unable to research and choose keywords and work on your own search engine ranking, you may want to hire someone to work with you on these issues.
Search engine marketing and promotion companies, will look at the plan for your site and make recommendations to increase your search engine ranking and website traffic. If you wish, they will also provide ongoing consultation and reporting to monitor your website and make recommendations for editing and improvements to keep your site traffic flow and your search engine ranking high. Normally your SEO experts work with your web designer to build an integrated plan right away so that all aspects of design are considered at the same time.
Why Use Keywords in Page Titles?
It is recommended to use keywords in page titles itself. This title tag is different from a Meta tag, but it’s worth considering it in relation to them. Whatever text one places in the title tag (between the <title> and </title> portions) will appear in the title bar of browsers when they view the web page. Some browsers also append whatever you put in the title tag by adding their own name.
The actual text you use in the title tag is one of the most important factors in how a search engine may decide to rank your web page. In addition, all major web crawlers will use the text of your title tag as the text they use for the title of your page in your listings.
If you have designed your website as a series of websites or linked pages and not just a single Home Page, you must bear in mind that each page of your website must be search engine optimized. The title of each page i.e. the keywords you use on that page and the phrases you use in the content will draw traffic to your site.
The unique combination of these words and phrases and stellar content will draw clients using different search engine terms and techniques, so be sure you capture all the keywords and phrases you need for each program, service, or information page.
The most common mistake made by small business owners when they first design their website is to place their business name or firm name in every title of every page. Actually most of your prospective clients do not bother to know the name of your firm until after they have looked at your site and decided it is worth bookmarking.
So, while you want your business name in the title of the home page, it is probably a waste of valuable keywords and space to put it in the title line of every page on your site. Why not consider putting keywords in the title so that your page will display closer to the top of the search engine listing.
Dedicating the first three positions for keywords in title avoiding the stop words like ‘and’, ‘at’ and the like is crucial in SEO.
What is Keyword Density?
Keyword density is an indicator of the number of times the selected keyword (i.e. Online Personal Trainer) appears on the web page. But mind you, keywords shouldn’t be overused but should be just sufficient enough to appear at important places.
If you repeat your keywords with every other word on every line, then your site will probably be rejected as an artificial site or spam site.
Keyword density is always expressed as a percentage of the total word content on a given web page.
For example, if you have 100 words on your web page (not including HMTL code used for writing the web page), and you use a certain keyword for five times in the content. The keyword density on that page is got by simply dividing the total number of keywords, by the total number of words that appear on your web page. So here it is 5 divided by 100 = .05. Because keyword density is a percentage of the total word count on the page, multiply the above by 100, that is 0.05 x 100 = 5%
The accepted standard for a keyword density is between 3% and 5%, to get recognized by the search engines and you should never exceed it.
Remember, that this rule applies to every page on your site. It also applies to not just to one keyword but also a set of keywords that relates to a different product or service. The keyword density should always be between 3% and 5%.
Checking Your Websites Keyword Density
Nowadays, many website hosting platforms have built-in tools that you can use to calculate your keyword density and SEO score or quality, but if you aren’t utilizing those tools, you can always use a word-processing program to quickly calculate your keyword density.
- Copy and paste the content from an individual web page into a word-processing software program like Word or Word Perfect.
- Go to the ‘Edit’ menu and click ‘Select All’. Now go to the ‘Tools’ menu and select ‘Word Count’. Write down the total number of words on the page.
- Now select the ‘Find’ function on the ‘Edit’ menu. Go to the ‘Replace’ tab and type in the keyword you want to find. ‘Replace’ that word with the same word, so you don’t change the text.
- When you complete the replace function, the system will provide a count of the words you replaced. That gives the number of times you have used the keyword on that page.
- Using the total word count for the page and the total number of keywords you can now calculate the keyword density.
How to Get More and Repeat Web Traffic
Update the pages on your website frequently. Stagnant sites are dropped by some search engines. You can even put a date counter on the page to show when it was last updated.
Offer additional value on your website. For affiliates and partners, you can place links to their sites and products and ask them to do the same for you. You can also advertise their books or videos if these products relate to your industry and are not in competition with your own product.
You can allow clients to ‘opt-in’ to get discounts and special offers. Place a link on your site to invite clients to ‘opt-in’ to get a monthly newsletter, video training, or valuable coupons.
Add a link to your primary page with a script ‘Book Mark or Add this site to your Favorites’.
Add a link ‘Refer a Friend’ so that the visitor can email your website link, with a pre-written title, “Thought you might be interested in this”, just by clicking on it.
Brand your website so that visitors always know they are on your site. Use consistent colors, logos, and slogans and always provide a ‘Contact Us’ link on each page.
Create an ‘Our Policies’ page that clearly defines your philosophy and principles in dealing with your clients. Also post your privacy policy as well so that clients know they are secure when they visit your site.
Create a FAQ page which addresses most of the doubts and clarifications about your product or your company that are likely to be asked. This helps to resolve most of your clients’ doubts in their first visit to your site.
Ensure that each page on your website has appropriate titles and keywords so that your client can find their way back to your site if they lose the bookmark.
Never spam a client, who has opted for newsletters, with unsolicited emails. Later if they decide they want to ‘opt-out’ of the mailings, be sure you honor their request and take them off the mailing list. They may still come back if they like your products. But they will certainly not come back if you continue to flood their email box with mails they no longer wish to receive.
Tips to Increase Ranking and Website Traffic
It is worth noting the basic principles to be enforced to increase website traffic and search engine rankings.
Create a site with valuable content, products, or services.
Place primary and secondary keywords within the first 25 words in your page content and spread them evenly throughout the document.
Research and use the right niche specific keywords and phrases to attract your target clients
Use your keywords in the right fields and references within your web page. Like Title, META tags, Headers, etc.
Keep your site design simple so that your clients can navigate easily between web pages, find what they want and buy products and services.
Use online tools and utilities to keep track of how your website is doing.
Monitor your competitors and the top-ranked websites to see what they are doing right in the way of design, navigation, content, keywords, etc.
Use reports and logs from your web hosting company to see where your traffic is coming from. Analyze your visitor location and their incoming sources whether search engines or links from other sites and the keywords they used to find you.
Make your clients visit easy and give them plenty of ways to remember you in the form of newsletters, free reports, referral specials, etc.
Demonstrate your industry and product or service expertise by writing and submitting articles for your website or for article banks so you are perceived as an expert in your field.
When not sure, use a professional SEO service. Though it may seem costly, it is a lot less expensive than spending your money on a website which no one visits.
Don’t look at your website as a static brochure. Treat it as a dynamic, ever-changing sales tool and location.
How to Start an Online Personal Training Career
As you may know, we are giving away the complete comprehensive training for online coaching and training with the purchase of a certification from NESTA and the Spencer Institute. This training has sold for as much as $2,000, but we’re giving it to you free.
Check out what it takes to start a career in personal fitness training. This is your most affordable and fastest way to become a highly qualified personal trainer.
Is your recertification coming up? Learn more about earning your CEU credits. You can find the full list of CEU courses here.
If you are ready to start your online personal training or coaching business, don’t forget to learn more about our online coaching course.
One of the most popular and fastest ways to get started working with clients while you travel is to coach/train online. You will want to learn more about GymGo. GymGo lets you work with clients and make money in different ways: online, live-streaming virtual training & on-demand training. Use our link to get yourself a free 14-day trial >>> https://www.gymgo.com/nesta
There is always something exciting about earning a new training or coaching certification and applying that new knowledge of how you train your clients. This also helps you hit the reset button.
NESTA and Spencer Institute coaching programs are open to anyone with a desire to learn and help others. There are no prerequisites.
That’s it for now.
Take action!
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