Does your local fitness or wellness business have a local search plan? These local search tips get you started.
Ever searched for your city’s health clubs on the Internet? You probably found generic directory sites full of junk links and sleazy ads. If you were lucky, you spotted an actual health club website….only to find out that the Miami club you discovered is really in Florida –- nowhere near your Miami, Ohio facility.
You wouldn’t post a sign for your business in an alley. Yet failing to optimize your website for local search means that even people who search for a club or wellness center in your city probably won’t spot you.
Implement just one of these tips each month, and before long you’ll reap the benefits of better Internet visibility:
1. Make your website friendly to search engines
These spiders crawl websites gathering the information that search engines like Google and Bing use to create their indexes and provide search results to users.
Confirm with your web developer that your site has unique meta tags and keywords on every page. Use heading tags to format headlines and sub-headings on every page.
2. Include key business location data on every page of your website.
Display your business name, street address with city, state and zip, and your business telephone number with area code on every page. Present this data as text, not embedded in images, because search engine spiders can’t “read” images. And present it consistently. If you say you’re at 1115 Main Street on your site, don’t suddenly describe your location as “The Pavilion” in search engine business listings, for example.
3. Encourage members to review your business online.
Google, Yahoo and Bing allow users to submit ratings of local businesses they’ve patronized. Businesses with more ratings tend to appear higher in search results. Avoid the temptation to “stuff the ballot box”. It’s easier to detect than you think and the search engines may demote your business in search results.
4. List your business on the websites of local organizations.
Examples include local civic groups, the Chamber of Commerce, tourism and convention bureaus, and more. Make sure they provide an actual link to your website. More inbound links to your site increase the chance that your club or fitness center will show up higher in search results.
5. Trade relevant links with other local businesses.
Increasing the number of inbound links to your website improves the likelihood that you’ll show up higher in search results. Don’t swap links with “link farms” that offer no local content of value. That can actually push your business down in search results.
6. List your business on vendor websites.
Check with your vendors and suppliers to see if they maintain a list of current customers on their websites. If so, make sure they include your wellness business.
7. Complete your social media profiles
Fill in every field available, especially when it’s location-oriented.
Implement just one of these tips each month, and before long your wellness business will reap the benefits of better Internet visibility.
