- Last Updated
- Tricia Johnson
- June 19, 2024
Unless you’ve been training under a rock, you’ve probably heard about the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) for promoting your business. It may surprise you that only 63% of small businesses invest in SEO.
Since many fitness pros rely heavily on website marketing for new clients, that gap is a golden opportunity for trainers like you.
If you’re new to SEO, we’re here to spot you with practical personal trainer SEO tips you can start using today. Get our simple steps to boost your search rankings and stand out to those who matter most—your future clients.
What Is SEO?
SEO is a marketing strategy that makes websites more visible to users on major search engines like Google and Bing.
The goal of SEO is to raise (or rank) your website higher on the results page when people search for businesses like yours or topics in your industry.
Why does a higher ranking matter?
- The first 10 search results get 75% of all clicks for that search. That means three-fourths of potential clients won’t even know you exist if your page falls in spot 11 or further down.
- The top three search results get 55.2% of all clicks. So over half of all students searching for a trainer won’t see your business if you’re in spot 4 or further down.
- The top search result nets 28.5% of all clicks. That means over one-quarter of all potential clients end their search on the personal trainer page with the best SEO.
Imagine someone in your area searches “personal trainers near me”. You want to appear in that search! If your website is the top result, you have an excellent chance of grabbing their attention and their business.
If your site isn’t in the top 10 results, it might as well be invisible. That’s where SEO optimization for personal trainers comes in.
Why SEO Is Important for Your Personal Training Business
Building a steady client base can feel like an uphill climb. An Association of Fitness Studios study found that it costs three times more to gain a client than to keep one, with an amount of effort that keeps pace.
Since most clients end sessions after a few months, this expensive, time-consuming process is ongoing. The good news is that personal trainer SEO is a low-cost but effective marketing strategy. Interested in attracting more clients for less? Let’s dive in.
How to Get Started With SEO
Let’s walk through the main steps of SEO for your personal training business.
Create Your Content Strategy
Start by filling your website with helpful and engaging content clients want to see. But how do you know what fitness content is trending, or what will make clients click? Enter SEO.
Like any marketing method, you’ll get the most out of SEO if you start with a strategy.
Keyword Research
What are personal training clients searching for?
Keyword research reveals what people ask about when they go to a search engine like Google.
If you know which words and terms come up most often when people talk about personal training online (literally, which words are key), you have a good idea of what kinds of topics should appear in your content to attract people.
There are many ways to conduct keyword research. Here’s our advice for beginners:
1. Brainstorm Seed Keywords
List words and phrases clients might search to find a personal trainer or learn about fitness training.
If you need inspiration, type your topic into Google and see what autocomplete suggests. Gym hashtags on social media, workout forums, and chats with your clients can be a goldmine for learning how people talk about personal training.
Consider seed keywords like bodybuilding coach, gym trainer, or fitness class.
2. Input Your Seed Keyword into a Keyword Research Tool
Many keyword research tools offer limited free searches and much more on paid plans.
Platforms like Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz pull keyword ideas from databases of past user searches. Type in your seed keyword, and they’ll show you how many people search for that exact keyword plus related searches around that topic.
3. Weigh Search Volume, Relevance, and Competition
A keyword research tool can return hundreds of thousands of results, but no one expects you to read all of them. The data they provide about each keyword helps you sort out which are worth your time.
Pay attention to these important areas of personal training keywords:
- Search volume: The average number of monthly searches a keyword receives. High search volume means more people are typing this into their search bar, so these keywords can bring in more views.
- Relevance (or search intent): How closely a keyword matches the user’s goal. “Buy kettlebells” has a high search volume, but unless you sell or review kettlebells, people who show up expecting that content usually won’t sign up for training instead. Match your content and keywords to what searchers hope to find.
- Competition (or difficulty): How hard it will be to top the search results. With tens of thousands of searches, “personal trainer” is a hard keyword because it’s so broad—everyone from certificate programs to fitness software could rank. A more specific keyword (like “personal trainers in Albuquerque”) can get your site found by potential customers.
To keep your process quick and easy, only consider keywords with a medium to high search volume, high relevance to searcher intent, and low to medium competition like these:
- Personal trainer near me
- Fitnesses classes in [fill in your city]
- Local gym trainer
- Fitness for [specific client specialty]
- Online [your training specialty] class beginner
4. Check Which Personal Training Keywords Your Competitors Are Using
Why reinvent the wheel? Do a quick search for other personal trainers or gyms with training programs in your area, and take a look at the top five results.
Some keyword research tools let you see top competitor keywords just by inputting their URLs. It might feel like looking at someone else’s homework, but there is no reason why you can’t just reuse their best ideas. Help yourself!
Competitor Research
Where else can clients in my area find fitness advice?
Along with your competitors’ keywords, get familiar with their websites. Their content and resources can give you an idea of what you’d need to take or exceed their spot in the search results.
As you evaluate your competitors and their content strategy, consider:
- What kind of content do they include? Is there any content they don’t offer that you could?
- What do they present as the unique features of their personal training service? What do they offer that you don’t and vice versa?
- How do you stack up against them on price, hours, services, credentials, and experience?
- What inspiration can you take from their strategy?
Client Research
Who are my potential clients, and what do they need or want?
To appeal to clients, you need to get to know them. Market research gathers information about current and potential students to understand who they are and what they want.
Try personal fitness market reports from research institutions, or see if your gym or certification program collects any data.
You could even create your own survey using a free survey builder to learn:
- Demographics: Identifiers like age, gender, race, salary, education, and more help you anticipate students’ needs. For example, if most of your clients are women in their 30s with at least one child and a full-time job, they may prefer flexible scheduling and online classes to sidestep childcare conflicts.
- Pain Points: What problems are clients hoping to fix, or what keeps them from hiring a trainer? Understanding the motivation behind their search lets you market yourself as the solution. For example, if clients in your area are hesitant due to bad training experiences, set their minds at ease with testimonials and success stories.
- Goals: What are clients hoping to achieve through personal training? Sharing your strong understanding of their motivations and aspirations can help clients feel you’re the right fit for their fitness journey.
Create Content
Once you’ve gathered some context, it’s time to start filling your pages. Use the keywords and insights you’ve collected to brainstorm a list of pages that should appear on your website. You can create content yourself or use freelance sites like Fiverr to connect you with SEO writers.
A well-designed website should include the following pages:
Home
This is the first impression of your business, so make it count. Describe your services and highlight what sets you apart. Navigation features like menus listing your pages, clickable links, and high-quality images make your site attractive and user-friendly.
Contact
Let potential clients know how to contact you, including your professional social media accounts, phone number, email, a contact form, and other details.
If you set up a contact form on your site, check it regularly and make sure to respond.
About Me
This is the place to make business personal by discussing your values and commitment to your clients. List the following info to show that you’re a trusted professional:
- Certifications: Provide your personal trainer certifications and education to demonstrate to clients that you know your stuff.
- Experience: Do you work with high school athletes? Do you specialize in clients with low mobility or existing injuries? Let readers know so your ideal client base can find you.
- Testimonials: Highlight your customers’ feedback for future clients who trust reviews from real people.
- Insurance: Many gyms require insurance to train on their premises. Showing proof of coverage on your site (like the insurance badge available to our policyholders) tells clients you’re ready to train just about anywhere.
Not insured? Insurance Canopy can cover you with personal trainer insurance in minutes.
Fitness Niche Pages
Show off your expertise in your specific style or field of training with pages that discuss the types of services you provide.
Design pages around your services and strengths, such as:
- 1-on-1 Strength Training
- Customized Workout Plans
- Nutrition Advice
Blog Posts
Blogs, videos, and other resources from your unique perspective establish you as an authority and help your SEO. Blog pages provide more opportunities to get new users to your website, which propels it upward on relevant results pages.
Here are a few blog ideas to get your wheels turning:
- How to Stay Motivated in Your Fitness Journey
- How to Choose the Right Personal Trainer for Your Goals
- Exercises to Do at Home in Between Gym Days
- X Foods I Recommend for Losing Weight
- X Benefits You Can Only Get Working With a Trainer
Submit Your Sitemap
Once your site is ready to publish, you’ll need to add a sitemap to Google Search Console to start ranking in search results.
A sitemap is a file (usually XML) that shows how each page in your site is connected to the others. Submitting a sitemap speeds up the process of Google recognizing your site, discovering your pages, and promoting them, a process called indexing.
With good sitemap submission instructions, it only takes about two minutes or less to upload your file.
It’s tempting to skip this step, but sitemap submission is an important part of SEO for personal trainers. Google accounts for 91.54% of the global search engine market, so following their advice is vital to keep you visible to future clients.
Optimize Your Website
Once your website is built, published, and indexed by Google, you’re ready to start the ongoing process of optimizing.
Because user search habits change constantly, your SEO needs to keep up by adjusting details based on your site’s performance and how it’s connecting—or not connecting—with your audience.
Where to Use Keywords
To help your website rank higher, consider the placement of your personal training keywords. Review old pages and ensure the main keyword is in your title, page URL, and meta tags.
Meta tags are part of the backend code of your site that tells search engines what your page is about. Naturally, keywords help you do that.
Beyond those basics, adding related keywords can help Google conclude that your content is a good fit for searches with those keywords.
Important: Keywords should fit into your content naturally—Google won’t like it if they feel forced and unhelpful for real people.
Technical Considerations
How your website functions can also make search engines believe it’s more or less valuable to users—and, therefore, affect its visibility.
Consider these aspects of technical SEO to make sure your site is in peak condition:
- Use HTTPS formatting to encrypt your site for greater visitor safety.
- Make sure it works well on mobile devices using a free mobile website grader.
- Pick a readable font size. For most fonts, that’s around 16px, minimum.
- Speed up your site’s loading time by optimizing images and limiting large files and videos.
- Organize the pages and sub-pages of your site. Planning with a mind map can help.
- Use logical, consistent URL structures that describe the content of each page quickly and clearly.
Look for Link Building Opportunities
Along with keywords and site performance, link building showcases your site’s authority and relevance to search engines.
Let’s say you write a comparison review of fitness-tracking apps for your blog. A popular fitness influencer adds a clickable link to your post in her personal blog about how she logs her daily workouts. This is a backlink.
Because it comes from a popular, credible site in your industry and happens naturally, it also boosts your website’s authority.
Think of a backlink from a high-authority domain as a client referral from a well-respected trainer. It’s a vote of confidence that you’re capable.
Ideally, top-notch content will naturally earn links. But, you can also make that content more visible to people who might want to feature it on their site, a process called link building.
How to Build Links the Right Way
- Don’t pay for links ❌
- Don’t ask for links from sites that don’t make sense ❌
- Don’t agree to link exchanges if they’re unnatural ❌
- Do focus on creating original content with your unique point of view ✅
- Do partner with other local small businesses and fitness professionals ✅
- Do spend time sharing your content on social media ✅
Don’t Forget Local SEO
According to Google internal statistics, 46% of all Google searches have local intent. You could miss out on a ton of searches for in-person training sessions if you’re not thinking about local SEO!
To get listed in local map search results, fill out your free Google Business Profile. This helps your business appear when customers search something like “personal trainer near me” or “personal trainer in [their city]”.
Commit to SEO for Long-Term Wins
Like the healthiest routes to weight loss and fitness, SEO gains rarely happen overnight.
Search engines constantly update their algorithms to serve searchers better results, which means the criteria for what makes a “good” website is constantly changing.
But if you continue adjusting your SEO to be a great match for your target customers, your strategies can have a massive impact in the long run. (In case you were wondering, the average return on investment for SEO is about $2.75 for every dollar you invest.)
How to Track Your Progress
If you view your SEO as set-it-and-forget-it, you’re missing out on major insights that draw in more clients. To understand why some efforts succeed and others fail, you’ll need to analyze user behavior on and around your site.
You can view user habits data points, or metrics, on free tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics, or paid options like Ahrefs.
While these tools collect more data than you’ll have time to read, the following metrics will help you identify what’s working and what to optimize for better results:
- Keyword rankings (Ahrefs): Checking how well your site ranks for its target keywords helps ensure your strategy is working as intended and measures your progress toward position 1.
- Organic sessions (Google Analytics): Organic is another word for SEO. This metric tells you how well your SEO strategy attracts potential clients.
- Engagement rate (Google Analytics): This is the ratio of people who visit longer than 10 seconds, take a desired action, or view at least two pages.
- Backlinks (Ahrefs): To see how well your site is gaining authority in the industry, keep track of statistics like backlinks lost, earned, and the domain authority and number of referring domains.
- Conversions (Google Analytics): A conversion is any action you want a site visitor to take. If your goal is new client signups, you can track first-time appointment scheduling as a conversion. If you want to measure how engaged clients are with your business, try a conversion like newsletter downloads.
Much like training, there are no guarantees in SEO. But if you work at it and learn a few healthy habits for your online presence, you’ll see steady gains that can bring your personal training business into the winner’s circle.
Want to do another rep? Learn more about promoting your business with even more marketing tips for personal trainers.
