Local Health and Fitness Marketing Essentials

  By guest author Logan Strain

If own a local personal training business or health club and a website, you already know the challenges of trying to draw traffic from your general geographic area. After all, if you run a fitness center in Albany, getting hits from the UK doesn’t do you any good. There are lots of things you can do to draw valuable local traffic, but these few steps I consider essential.

Get Links from Local Organizations - If you are a member of the chamber of commerce, get a link. If you If you sponsored a local little league team and the star catcher happens to run a website, get a link.  Links from other local websites let the search engines know to point potential local customers to you.

Sign up with Local Registries in the top Search Engines -  Registering with maps.google.com, local.yahoo.com and cityguides.msn.com will help you get customers who already know that they want a local business.

Reference your Geographic Area Often in You Web Copy -  Every time you mention the nature of your business, include some geographic keywords.  So don’t just say you are a “chiropractor,” always mention that you are a “Philadelphia chiropractor” or “Bay area chiropractor.

Take Advantage of Free Classified Listings – Online classified listings such as craigslist can let you advertise your services while getting a link from a reputable website.

Participate in Local Blogs, Groups and Forums -  Most forums allow you to have “signature” which will allow you to include a link to your site with every post you make.  Social networking can also help you keep in touch with other local businesspeople, which might lead to referrals.

Don’t Forget the SEO – Besides having SEO friendly copy, you need to make sure all your meta tags mention your geographic area at least once.

This has been a local personal training marketing techniques post by guest author Logan Strain