How To Climb The Search Engines And Get More Leads For Your Business

As you know, I recently conducted a survey of my fitness professional lists and have come up with some pretty interesting data about what the fitness profession wants from its marketing experts.

Click Here To Take The Survey Yourself

Whilst much of it may be as you'd expect, there were quite a few responses that astounded me, especially when it came to what, to me at least, seem to be the basic fundamentals of business and marketing.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking anyone for not knowing this stuff. After all, you either know stuff or you don't, right?, but I'm just so surprised that with all the great information out there already, that trainers still aren't up to speed with the foundation stuff that can make or break a business.

So...

Over the next few weeks I'm going to be outlining some of the baby steps again, as clearly as I can so that you can take them away and implement into your business immediately.

Sound good?

Thought so! : )

So, one of the questions I got A LOT was related to websites.

Basically, trainers are confused about how to get more people visiting their websites in the first place and then converting them either into subscribers or, better yet, customers.

Well, getting them there is pretty easy.

It starts with a sound website strategy that makes sense to both the searcher and the search engine.

Let's look at the main 7 steps:

First, choose a domain name that most closely matches the specific result that people are searching for.

That means, ultimately, that it'll be keyword rich and in tune with your market.

It's no accident that Personal Trainer Success Academy is called what it is; I read forums and blog posts and saw personal trainers asking questions about success.

There are better names I could have chosen too (and I've already bought most of 'em) but personal trainer success academy is pretty decent in terms of keyword density and description.

So is my fat loss website The Look Great Naked Challenge as it both describes clearly what the public want (I read THOUSANDS of posts and blog entries from people saying that they wanted to look great naked) and they're pretty decent as kewords; though admittedly, not as good as something with the words 'fat loss' in the title.

Take a look at YOUR site now.

Are the keywords (including common descriptors) in the title? If they are then good on ya, you're moving in the right direction. If not, then it's not the end of the world, my MAGIC Hundred site doesn't have anything from a decent keyword list in the title and still does pretty good, though www.onehundredgoals.com would probably work better which is why I just bought it : )

Second, make sure your title tag works for you rather than wasting space.

The title tag is the piece of code that that determines what goes into the header bar at the top of the browser you're viewing your web page in.

Most people waste this valuable real estate by simply putting 'Welcome to xyz training website'.

This is blasphemy!

You can MAJORLY impact the search engines by having a great set of title tags that describe in keyword rich terms what people will find on the page.

For instance, on www.personaltrainersuccessacademy.com you'll find the header 'Fitness Marketing For Personal Trainers | Seriously Efective Marketing Strategies For Personal Trainers'.

Could I increase the keyword density?

Sure.

But I want the decription to make sense, not just pad it out with keywords.

What does yours say?

If it's being wasted then get to it. It's easy to edit, just find the tag
and insert a descriptive, keyword rich sentence here.

Third, pay attention to your description tags

Most people don't use their description tags at all or, if they do, they tend to write 'home of xyz personal training', again, wasting prime real estate on their site.

Real shame, you see it's these descriptions that you see when you're browsing through the search engines and they attract people further into the site... or not!

Not only this, the keywords add massively to the site keyword density too.

Just use the keyword suggestion tool and type in your primary keyword (fat loss, for example) and you'll recive an bundle of keywords coming back. Use as many of the most relevent and popular keywords within your description as possible.

For example "XYZ training in Tempe, Arizona offer the fastest guaranteed fatloss training system around. Simply commit to our rapid fat loss workouts and you could be burning pound after pound of belly fat in no time at all" That was just off the top of my head but you get the message, right?

Check your site and see if your description is doing any work for you or if it's just wasting space.

Fourth, use all relevent keywords in you keyword meta tags

It never ceases to amaze me when I see that personal trainers and fitness professional have neglected their keword meta tags.

This is like opening a business but without putting out a shopfront sign explaining what you do.

This meta tag is how the search engines initially decide what your site is about and, if you don't use it well, you'll find yourself getting overlooked... exactly as you are now, probably.

Again, use the keyword selection tool and put all relevent keywords into the tag.

You might use fat loss, fatloss (they look the same but they're not) lose fat, belly fat, body fat loss and many, many others. Note: Don't put them ALL as this doesn't help and Google will penalise you.

Check yours today, do you have the right ones in place to make it easy to index you?

Fifth, Use Your Headlines

Not only are good headlines vital to your sales copy, but they play a major role in optimising your site for the search engines too. You see, h tags or header tags search as decription indexes for search engines and so any header tag is working hard for you to tell the web what your page is about (though especially a h1 title).

Make sure your page headline is within a h1 field and that any sub heads fit within a h2 which, again, will seriously increase your chances of getting found.

Sixth, Use Your Images!

Google loves indexing images!

Trouble is, most fitness professionals don't bother to make this easy and leave graphics titled 'man running.gif' or 'woman on scales.jpg' on the site rather than using the 'alt tags' to provide an alternate description of the graphic.

Again, this is wasting so much of your potential findability.

Simply by taking your graphics and making them keyword rich with words like, fat loss, lose fat' etc, you give Google a better picture of what your site is about and make them more likely to point internet searchers in your direction.

You using your images to generate traffic?

Seventh, content is king!

We all know that content is king, or at least, I hope we do, and we should always attempt to put as much content into what we write as possible (like this article) but you can help your articles and your findability MASSIVELY by making use of as many relevent keywords as possible in each and every page of your site.

Talk about what you do in terms of the key search terms rather than in vage and general fitness language.

Check your content to see if you're doing this.

Summary

Getting found on the web is no fluke, it's not luck and it's not haphazard. It's easier than most people think, but few people are doing anything near to what's required to help them climb to the front pages.

Put these seven steps in place, however, and you'll see dramatic improvement almost overnight.

In fact, I'd like you to do something about this right now.

First, go to google and find out the following:

1. What page you show up on for your product or service.
2. How many search returns come back for your product/service.

Post them along with you message about this article : ) in the comments section and then take the action steps I've laid out in this article come back here in 1 week and post 'em again.

In effect, it's your chance to show the world what you've done and how well it works.

You up for it?

Go on, I dare ya! : )

To your success!

Dax Moy
www.personaltrainersuccessacademy.com


P.S - If you need a hand with writing good web copy then check out http://www.personaltrainersuccessacademy.com/scientific-advertising.asp for what is probably the most complete copy writing course available for fitness professionals today.

Check it out!