As you start your personal trainer business, there will come a time when only having a presence on social media is not enough.
You will want to give your audience the best possible chance of seeing your brand. To do this, you will need to create your first personal trainer website.
Your website will become the center of your personal trainer business online identity, allowing your customers to identify your product, services, and brand quickly.
With PT Distinction, you not only have access to robust personal training software but also the opportunity to build your own professional landing page within the platform.
As a busy personal trainer, your time is like gold dust, and so we are not going to waste your time telling you the usual process of creating a website.
We will assume in this guide that you do not have the time to download WordPress or Drupal and install and manage plugins. Instead, this guide will look at all-in-one packages that allow you to buy a domain and create a website all in one simple software.
We have chosen our top 3 providers that not only allow you to create a domain but also contain website builders to help you get started.
Your domain name is your id on the internet. It is where your current and potential customers can find your website.
Making an excellent first impression is vital, and ensuring it contains your brand name or any keywords you want to be indexed for will help you get found by new and existing customers.
Why don't you try using the PT Distinction AI Assistant to help you find a name.
The two main technical elements of creating a website are your domain name and setting up a web host.
In plain terms, a web host is a place where your website data is stored so people can access it at any time. GoDaddy, Domain.Com, and IONOS all offer the ability to host your website with them.
As we mentioned in the introduction, this guide will take you through setting up your personal trainer website with an all-in-one software.
Our recommended software allows you to build your website and get your fitness business live.
GoDaddy - The GoDaddy builder is a speedy solution for creating a website. It is quick and straightforward to use. Finally, GoDaddy is one of the cheaper website builders out there.
Domain.com - The Domain.com interface is attractive, as it puts its AI to work to design your website quickly. This could be valuable if you don't have time to look through hundreds of templates. However, if you like to be in control of your brand, this could put you off.
IONOS - One of the primary, timesaving features you need from a website builder is the ability to choose templates. They have so many templates that you can find a good match for your fitness business.
Choose a simple template for your website. Keep the number of pages you have to a minimum.
Your homepage is like the contents page of a book. It is where you set out who you are and what your business offers, which allows you to link to the other sections of your website.
You could have all of the information on one page, but the majority of small businesses will break this up into the following:
Homepage - A simple but essential page where you can give a brief overview of yourself, your product, and why someone should consider you as a personal trainer.
About Me - This allows you to sell yourself and your services, add your personal trainer journey and make sure you mention your certified qualifications.
Services - The Services page allows you to list your services and have a separate page for each one. This could be 1:1 Training, Group Training, Pre/Post Natal Training, Running Training, and Nutrition.
Pricing & Packages - Your potential client has read your homepage, and looked at one of your services, and now it is time to let them know how much your packages cost.
Again, make this simple and easy to understand. For example, if you are a Face to Face and online personal trainer, list each service you offer and separate the costs for both face-to-face and online training.
Testimonials - This is such a critical section and is one that is often missed. Getting testimonials from your happy customers will showcase your skills, help you retain and get more clients, and also give you content you can use on social media.
Sign up, contact page - Even after reading your fantastic content, your customer’s still could be unsure. Having a contact page allows them to ask you any questions.
You could even add a frequently asked question area or hook up your website with a social chat service, allowing you to answer any questions in real-time.
Show your social channels - A no-brainer, add all of your social media.
Ready for a more advanced landing page for your personal trainer business? Read our 9 Top Tips to Create a Converting Landing Page
One popular aspect of this is the ability to integrate your client's login into your website.
You can also incorporate sign-up forms for free trials, challenges, or any form of an automated program. You can do all of this inside the PT Distinction software
Still unsure if you should create a new website? Maybe you are just starting out or just do not have enough time.
With PT Distinction’s personal trainer software, you can create a free mini-site, which allows you to customize your logo, colors, and branding. Adding information about your fitness brand, qualifications and testimonials will also give your mini-site an advantage.
Start your free trial today to try this out.
Keyword research may seem boring and/or daunting, but without it you’re just relying on guesswork, which will impact your ranking.
It’s important to identify the actual search terms that potential clients use when they’re looking for sites like yours.
Competition for the most popular keywords is fierce, so look for the more niche words and phrases known as long-tail keywords. Hubspot’s Top 15 tools for finding long-tail keywords explains what they are and how to identify them.
Links are a key ranking factor, but many websites don’t have an effective strategy. There are three types of link that can affect SEO - internal, outbound/external and inbound/backlinks.
Internal links improve navigation and help search engines understand your site structure and find new pages (see Mailchimp’s Internal linking for SEO).
External links are good for usability, pointing visitors to useful information, but must be high quality and not overdone.
Backlinks are links to your site from other sites, signifying that your site is trustworthy and relevant
There are several potential technical issues that can affect your ranking if left unfixed.
These include things like slow-loading pages (eg caused by oversized images), broken links and functionality errors (eg forms not working), so check your site thoroughly and regularly.
Analytics tools can help identify some technical issues. One common SEO mistake is accidentally blocking Google from indexing a web page or whole site; see Google’s own support advice on how to fix this.
There are three tags in particular that are vital for SEO but all too often not utilized properly: the page title, the page description and alt tags for images.
The content in these tags may be missing altogether, duplicated (frowned upon by search engines), or simply too short/long/irrelevant or overstuffed with keywords.
It’s important to get them right as the title tag and page description display on search results pages, and the significance of image alt tags for SEO has grown with the increase in image searches.
Any business wanting to rank highly on local search results pages needs to make sure their site is optimized specifically for this, but it’s a part of SEO that is often overlooked.
Our article Local SEO for personal trainers gives guidance about how to get started.
The URL is an SEO asset that is often neglected. Many people don’t realise that you can edit them – you don’t need to stick with the address generated by your content management system.
Tips for optimizing URLs include following a hierarchy, keeping them short and using relevant keywords.
Google favours high quality, relevant, well-written content, and unfortunately many web pages just don’t make the grade; perhaps the information is out of date, the text contains errors, or AI has been utilized poorly.
It is always worth spending time creating good quality content - and keeping it updated.
Finally, remember that SEO requires an ongoing, strategic approach, so use analytics on a regular basis to monitor how effective your SEO efforts are, and try to keep on top of trends.
This post was originally published in July 2022 and has been updated to give you up-to-date information.
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