Rank Higher in Your City: Local SEO Tips for Tai Chi and Martial Arts Instructors

Location is the number one factor that most Americans consider when choosing a gym, fitness center, or studio. If your martial arts school can rank highly for searches with local intent, you are far more likely to book a steady stream of new students. 

Independent dojos remain popular in the United States, but face increasing competition from franchise models, cheaper online instruction, and even other fitness options. While the overall number of martial arts practitioners in the U.S. is steadily growing, your school needs a strong digital martial arts marketing strategy to ensure that local students can find you. 

We’ll break down local SEO services: what they are, how they attract students to your academy or studio, and how you can use them to keep your business growing. 

Ready to get started now? Get a free comprehensive analysis of your current local SEO performance to see how your online presence stacks up to your competitors! 

The Best Digital Marketing Strategies to Help Martial Arts Instructors and Schools Attract More Students

As a martial arts instructor, you’ve had to navigate everything from facility rental and insurance to liability waivers for minor students! Your marketing needs are just another facet of business ownership that needs to be in place to help you do what you do best — instruct your students. 

As a full-service marketing agency, SEO Design Chicago has helped hundreds of service-based businesses grow. We’re here to tell you that optimizing your website for local searches is one of the most effective ways to help students who are already interested in booking your class find you more quickly. 

Our marketing experts tend to recommend three areas of focus to get your enrollment and revenue for martial arts studios growing for the long term:

• Google Business Profile Optimization
• Bing Places Optimization
• Google Local Service Ads 

Once you master these, you are poised for future marketing success on social media channels or email marketing, because you will have a strong base of local leads coming in, no matter what. 

Google Business Optimization for Martial Arts Schools

One of the best ways you can see an immediate improvement in your local traffic is by optimizing your Google Business Profile. You may have already set up this page under its former name, Google My Business, or it might be completely unclaimed, as is the case for many small businesses.

This listing functions like the phone book of the olden days. Google considers it your “official” listing for your business and will rank businesses with relevant, fully completed profiles more highly. This makes it one of the single most important pieces of your online real estate, aside from your own website.

Here are some SEO best practices for optimizing your Google Business Profile:

• Consistent info — Ensure your NAP (name, address, and phone number) information is correct and consistent with your website and social media profiles. 
• Add links — Link to your website, social accounts, and external listing websites to build a consistent profile of your school across the internet.
• Include photos and reviews — People want to learn in a safe, clean environment. Posting positive testimonials and photos of your school will help potential clients picture themselves as students, too.

Your Google Business Profile is completely free to claim and update. Our team can integrate management of your GBP into your marketing campaigns for martial arts instructors to make sure you’re getting the most out of this critical marketing tool. 

Bing Places for Tai Chi Schools

Bing Places is the local business directory owned by Microsoft. It functions similarly to Google Business Profiles and helps your business reach local searchers who use Bing or Yahoo instead of Google.

For fitness centers, gyms, and martial arts schools,  Bing can be one of the most effective tools for driving visibility. When combined with an optimized Google Business Profile and a solid foundation of general SEO, it helps direct local traffic straight to your website. 

There’s another reason why a completed Bing Places listing is important. Having your school listed on as many relevant local directories as possible can dramatically improve your marketing strategy.  These listings are called local search citations, and they communicate to search engines that your website is accurate, active, and helpful. 

So, making sure that your practice has consistent contact information, descriptions, and links on local directories, Bing and Google, your local BBB, and even Yelp can help improve your online reputation. 

Google Local Service Ads for Martial Arts School Owners

When working with martial arts marketing agencies, it’s best to make sure that they can expand when you’re ready to grow. Once your organic SEO is generating a steady stream of new students to your business, that’s a good time to expand into Google Local Service Ads. 

Google Local Service Ads is a subset of Google Ads that enables businesses in specific industries to pay for sponsored ads targeting local customers. Your studio or school will appear above the organic search results with a small “ad” label. This boosts your visibility even further, which can attract new students.  

SEO Design Chicago is a great martial arts digital marketing agency to do this because we create integrated, holistic internet marketing solutions. While we always recommend getting a solid organic lead generation strategy in place first, we customize our digital marketing solutions based on your needs and goals. For some schools that want (or need!) to see an immediate boost in traffic, integrating Google Local Service Ads right away can give you that short-term boost while your SEO is gaining speed.

For others, we can expand digital marketing services as your capacity, number of instructors, or studio space grows — it’s all up to you. 

FAQ: How Does Local SEO Help My Studio Get More Students?

As a full-service digital marketing agency, we’ve helped hundreds of businesses of all sizes boost their online presence and establish marketing systems that generate steady, ongoing leads. 

Throughout all our marketing efforts, we’ve learned a few things about the world of martial arts digital marketing. Check out what our marketing professionals have to say. 

Request a free discovery call today to learn more.

What is local SEO for martial arts and Tai Chi schools?

Location and convenience are the most important factors for most people when choosing a martial arts gym or school. Like with other fitness marketing for gyms or dance studios, local SEO strategies bring new leads to your school by creating a strong online presence that matches location-specific searches. This includes updating keywords, code, and online directory information to signal to search engines the precise location of your studio and your target service area. 

This helps prospective students who are actively searching for martial arts instruction find you at the top of their local search results for searches like “jiu-jitsu classes near me,” “taekwondo in city_name,” or “tai chi for beginners near neighborhood_name.” This gives you an edge over larger competitors, because your school is now the top result for the most important attributes — location and convenience. 

How can my dojo or Tai Chi school show up in Google Maps?

Make sure your Google Business Profile includes an up-to-date phone number, website address, hours, contact information, and relevant keywords. This is the best way to make sure your dojo or school shows up on Google Maps for “near me” and geographically local keywords searches.

Google Maps features the three best results on the Google 3-Pack. This displays with a small map at the top of users’ search results, and it’s one of the best spots you can earn in online marketing. A complete GBP with plenty of positive reviews is one of the best ways to win that coveted spot, which will send more searchers your way and increase revenue and enrollment. 

Do online reviews really help my martial arts school rank higher?

Client testimonials, especially on your Google Business Profile, are a powerful way to generate leads to your school without having to do any cold outreach. Positive, detailed reviews send signals to Google and other search engines that your school is a good match for what people are looking for, which can improve your rankings. This helps you achieve maximum results from your martial arts SEO efforts. 

Reviews help real people in the decision-making and sales process as well. Eighty-one percent of people report using Google to evaluate local businesses before they make a decision. A school with no reviews and minimal online presence will have a hard time generating the quality leads they need to grow their business. 

What’s the difference between SEO and local SEO for martial arts instructors?

SEO is important to elevate your overall brand and visibility online. SEO best practices include everything from updating your background data to making sure your website displays properly on mobile devices — and of course, keyword research and integration.

Local SEO is a set of marketing tactics that focuses specifically on generating local leads for martial arts academies, schools, and individual instructors. By focusing on the unique needs of the potential students in your target demographic and service area, you can boost online visibility and attract the students who are most likely to try out a class or purchase a membership. 

How long does it take to see results from local SEO for a martial arts school?

As a small business owner, you probably already know that organic lead generation has the highest ROI. Establishing your local SEO presence can take between three and six months to see steady lead generation, but over time, that’s far more affordable than generating all your leads exclusively through PPC campaigns or Facebook ads. 

SEO efforts build on previous successes. As you drive more traffic to your website, search engines like Google will rank your site even higher, boosting your domain authority and increasing your return on investment. 

 

Grow your martial arts business with effective marketing campaigns customized for the martial arts industry! Get started today with a free comprehensive local SEO analysis.