Three 5-minute tasks to do today to improve your fitness studio’s SEO
By now, you’ve heard of Search Engine Optimization (SEO.) You know it’s something you should be focusing on to get your business noticed and bring new customers into the studio. But honestly, between running the studio, teaching classes, responding to new inquiries, updating your social media and trying to maintain some semblance of a life outside of work, who has the time? Plus, improving your fitness studio's SEO can seem so complex and overwhelming, it can be hard to know where to even start.
The good news is, you don’t need to be a tech wizard or have hours each day to dedicate to improving your fitness studio’s SEO. By ticking off these three simple, 5-minute tasks today, you can lift your Google game and significantly boost your SEO ranking.
Task #1: Add or update your Google My Business listing
SEO isn’t just about what you do on your website. Creating and updating your Google My Business listing is by far one of the easiest ways to improve your local SEO. For example, say someone is looking for a barre studio in their neighborhood. If they type ‘Barre studio Houston’ into Google and your Google My Business listing has been optimized, you’re going to pop up in their maps results.
Here’s how to do it. Note: steps 1 to 3 are for if this is your first time using Google My Business. If you already have a listing, skip forward to step 4.
Visit www.google.com/business/ and sign in with your Google account, or create one if you don’t already have one (it's free).
You will then be prompted to search for your business. If it’s not already on Google Maps, you can add it now.
To verify that you’re the business owner, Google will send a postcard to the address you’ve supplied for your business. This postcard will take 1-2 weeks to arrive and once it does, it will contain instructions on how to verify that you are authorized to claim your business. However, you don’t need to wait for your postcard to arrive before you update your account — you can start updating straight away.
Make sure your Google My Business account is populated with the following important details: services, photos of your studio, contact details and opening hours. You will also have the opportunity to add search tags to your listing, too.
Task #2 Add your NAP footer
As nice as it would be, unfortunately, this step doesn’t involve taking a nap. NAP stands for name, address and phone number and again, it’s essential for local SEO. This will appear in the footer of your website. The most important thing with NAP is ensuring it’s consistent everywhere it appears — including in the footer you’re about to add, on your contact page and in any directory listings. And when I say consistent, I really mean it — down to the formatting and stylization. This will make it much easier for the Google bots to crawl.
You can watch a tutorial on adding a NAP footer to your Squarespace website below:
Task #3 Title your homepage
This one is such an easy way to improve your Google ranking, yet is something so many businesses neglect. It simply involves adding your primary service and your location (for example, ‘barre studio Houston’) to your homepage title. I find that the majority of studios don’t do this — and if they do, it rarely includes their location. So, by taking this step that takes less than five minutes, you’ll already be one step ahead of the competition!
You can watch a tutorial on updating the home page title on your Squarespace website below: