True Strength MMA

The Challenge

During the COVID-19 lockdowns, plenty of small businesses were harshly affected due to the fact that they were forced to close their doors, thus stripping them away from potential revenues and profits to keep them afloat. The MMA gym I was working out at around this time was also struggling, with the owner informing me that he had to take up a second job just to keep the doors open. So in the beginning, I did what anyone else would have done and assisted financially by taking up more one-on-one sessions with the head coach. But I knew that my $45 per session was not going to go very far. So instead I made a deal with the owner: I’ll revamp the old website (design + SEO optimized) in return for a free membership.

My now-client was using a “marketing agency” who failed to update the gym’s basic Google Business Profile for months. When the gym moved to a new location, the “marketing agency” failed to make the necessary changes to both the gym’s website and Google Business Profile. This was an issue due to the fact that the existing customers didn’t know where to find the gym and new customers we’re visiting a now-defunct location.

All in all, it’s safe to say the gym needed a total revamp on their overall digital presence, and it started with the website.

The Goal

The primary goal with the website upgrade was simple: bring in better traffic. With better quality traffic, we can create more opportunities to convert new visitors into leads. To do this, I leveraged both the website and the Google Business Profile.

I first started with identifying a better website solution for the gym. Considering the marketing budget is very small for a gym of this size, I made the recommendation to move the old site from GoDaddy website builder over to Squarespace. For a small business, Squarespace provides all the essentials to get a site up and running and is very user friendly. I knew that once I moved the site over to Squarespace, I was going to be able to train someone on their staff with the platform to make future updates.

Secondly, I conducted a thorough audit of the existing site (the one on GoDaddy Website Builder). I looked at their titles and meta descriptions, their heading tags and looked to see if any keywords were being targeted. Not surprising, but the titles, descriptions and heading tags were a mess. I knew that I would need to conduct some keyword research to identify opportunities for us to leverage in search.

Next, I decided to create a brand new site architecture for the new website. A new architecture would not only allow me to map out how users should access each page, but it also allowed for search engines like Google to better understand the pages it’s crawling and their relationship to the other pages.

Shifting focus for a bit away from the website, I needed to get control of the gym’s Google Business Profile ASAP. The process was simple: request ownership from Google, except the “marketing agency” needed to either approve the request, or if 14 days lapsed, I would then assume control of the account. They failed to approve within the 14 days and I immediately made the necessary updates to their business profile.

One of the key updates I made for the gym was to connect their Google Business Profile to their new Squarespace site. From Squarespace, they were now able to update their business hours without having any knowledge on how to navigate Google Business Profiles.

Finally, where alot of the SEO work happens is all in the content. I made sure to conduct thorough keyword research to ensure I’m targeting the right keywords with a good mix of monthly search volume and keyword difficulty. Once the content was complete, I was ready to start building the site and submit to Google Search Console to get the ball rolling.

What's The End Result?

With the new website, updated Google Business Profile and every new page fully optimized with proper titles, descriptions, and quality content, the website proved to be an immediate success, with the gym generating 10K+ organic visitors the first year.

This year alone, the gym’s new website has generated 275 leads from the website and has a steady 14K in annual traffic, which is great for a small business.