1. Answer Your Visitors “SEARCH” in less then 10 Seconds.

Hopefully, if you have read any of our material on search engine optimization, you are getting some traffic to your site from the search engines. The key phrase here is SEARCH, meaning someone came to your site because they were SEARCHING for something, possibly “personal trainer your city”. Statistics say you have less then 10 seconds to get you message across to a site visitor. If you don’t they will leave!So right now, read your headline and first paragraph. Do you clearly state what it is that you do, and how you can help the visitor (potential client)? If not, fix this as soon as possible.

2. Call to Action

A beautiful site with great sales copy is nothing without a Call to Action. It needs to be obvious that you want them to contact you, so you can help them get into shape. Don’t be foolish and think you can just ask them to call you or fill out a form without telling them with words why they should.

3. Easy Navigation

Ask someone you know who is not familiar with your site to find a specific page of your site (program options or rates page), and time them. Also keep track of the number of clicks it takes for them to get there. Remember, people are lazy and easily frustrated, if they don’t find what they are looking for in a few clicks they will jump ship and find your competitor.

4. White Space

The human eye sees things in small groups, and it is important that you display your information with appropriate amounts of white space in and around your content. Otherwise, the important things like your “Free Personal Training Session” offer will go less noticed.

5. Collect Info Properly

If you meet a nice looking person in a bar, it is quite common to ask for a phone number. But, what if you asked for his or her address, home phone, fax, secondary email address and job title. You probably would get a smack and a restraining order.Your website is no different, only ask for the info you are going to use. Your contact form should not ask for the address unless you plan on sending direct mail in the future. When creating your contact forms, remember the more you ask for the less likely you are to recieve. Typically, name, address, phone (*don’t require), will work well.

Now, I do recommend adding one or two things to your “name and email” form like “what is the best way to reach you”. This way, if they prefer to be called they will let you know and you don’t have to waste time calling people who don’t want to be bothered.

6. Credibility

There needs to be some form of credibility on your website. People would much rather hear how great you are from your clients. Use testimonials and expert reviews to establish trust and credibility on your website. Do not make up testimonials, if you can not get your clients to say a few nice words about your services… you have bigger issues to deal with then your website. If you are new and have no clients, ask associates to say a few words about how knowledgeable you are on the subject. You can also use your own story as credibility if it applies.

Make sure your site is using these 6 factors, and you will be well on your way to having a KICK BUTT PERSONAL TRAINER WEBSITE!

More website optimizing lessons to come….Keith

Google’s adwords program is like the New York Yankees, you either love em’ or you hate em’. If you know what you’re doing you can use google words (aka. Pay Per Click) to your advantage, if you don’t know what you’re doing it could cost you a small fortune.  It is by far the most targeted form of advertising ever invented,  and the best part is that it is all under your control. You control how much you spend, what keywords your ads appear in front of, and how often they appear.

If you work on your adwords skills you can even somewhat control how much you pay per click. The reason why I’m writing this post is because I was just searching and saw a former client (who stole from us) running google ads. I got a good chuckle when I saw his ads appearing for totally irrelevant keywords. I’m not going to get into the math of it all, but basically he’s totally wasting money and he doesn’t know it. Maybe I should tell him…. Nah!

If you are using adwords, you need to be aware of negative keywords.   These are keywords you don’t want your ads to appear for. For example, there are at-least two Hollywoods in the U.S, one in Cali and one in Fla. If you have a pet store in hollywood florida and you are running google ads for the words “pet store hollywood” your ad will appear when people do that search. However it will also appear when someone searches for “pet store hollywood california” unless you are using negative keywords for “cali”, “california” “CA” etc. This is a very basic example, so please don’t reply to this post saying duh, I knew that already. If you look carefully you will see HUGE, multi million dollar companies making this same mistake. The difference is they don’t know it and it doesn’t effect their wallet like it does yours.

This is just one of many adwords strategies that you need to know about and I will continue to share many of them with you.

If you are not using adwords, I suggest you create an account and get in there and fool around. Don’t turn the ads on untill you have an idea of what you are doing. If you would like to learn more, let us know and we will try to accommodate you.

Good Luck!

Keith