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The Ultimate Guide to a Fierce Martial Arts Website

Written by Halle Heying | 1/29/19 6:24 PM

As martial arts business owners, you know that every time a person lands on your website they could turn into a potential student/paying customer. Now more than ever, it's important to make sure your martial arts website has these crucial items added to see improved success, business growth, and to beat your competitors, like Conor McGregor! 

 

  1. Basic Search Engine Optimization
  2. Responsive Design
  3. SSL Certificate
  4. Google Analytics
  5. Google Search Console
  6. Lead Forms
  7. Easily Navigable Sitemap
  8. Google My Business Listing

 

This list is important because it will help increase sessions to your martial arts or BJJ website, increase lead conversions, and make reporting on year-over-year growth much simpler. We’re going to break down each item more in-depth.

1. Basic Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization is a strategy to improve your martial arts website’s rankings in search engine results. When someone types in Google, “Martial Arts Near Me” or “Jiu-Jitsu Gym,” it’s crucial that your business shows up near the top of the search results. Just having a website isn’t enough. You need to optimize it to make sure search engines know and understand what your website is about.

 

Here are some basic ways to make your martial arts website SEO friendly:

  • Add unique Titles/Meta Descriptions to every page. A title and meta description are what show up in the search results when someone sees your website. The title and meta descriptions are a great opportunity to include keywords you want to rank for and compelling enough to make searchers click and visit your martial arts website.

                     

 

  • At least 250 words on each page. In order for search engine crawlers to understand what your website is about, you need to have enough written copy that includes keywords throughout your text. Make sure to add a clear description of who you are, what you do, and where you are located.
  • Alt text on images. Because search engines can’t read images, it's important to write a description on each image to increase rankings.
  • Put the featured call to action or form at the top of the fold. This isn’t necessarily to improve search engine optimization, but rather improve the user experience. Putting your lead contact form above the fold can significantly increase lead conversions.
  • Add an SEO Plugin to your website. If your website is built on WordPress or built by our partner martial arts website company, then we recommend using the Yoast SEO plugin. It’s free and great for someone who needs simple assistance with on-page SEO for their martial arts website.
  • Create a sitemap and a robots.txt file. A sitemap is a file that allows search engines to find all the pages on your website. The robots.txt file gives instructions to tell crawlers which specific parts of the website to index. For example, you would not want crawlers to index any user login pages or admin login pages to your website.  

2. Responsive Design

We live in a world where people are coming to our website from different devices and screen sizes. Someone might first come to your website from their mobile phone, then decide to check out the website again on their desktop. It’s important that your website layout changes depending on the screen size, and that it is also consistent. Google also rewards sites that are mobile-friendly with increased search engine rankings.

 

3. SSL Certificate

An SSL Certificate offers protection and security to visitors on your website. It is essentially just switching your site from HTTP to HTTPS. HTTPS correlates with higher rankings, and Google can label websites without an SSL certificate as “Not Secure” to a user. Getting an SSL certificate is simple and affordable, so we highly suggest it.

 

4. Google Analytics

Setting Google Analytics on your website is important because it helps track improvement month-over-month, year-over-year, and so forth. Do you really know how your website is performing if you don’t see the data behind it? Getting Google Analytics set up on your martial arts site can help you understand where people are coming from, how they’re finding your website, and identify your top performing pages.

 

Setting up goal tracking can also help you monitor which months are the best for lead submissions and how you’re comparing year-over-year. We recommend syncing your goal tracking with your martial arts software to make sure the leads coming into your martial arts software are reflected as goals within Google Analytics. Google Analytics is free to use, you just need help from a martial arts website developer to add a script to your website.

 

5. Google Search Console

Google search is also another free service that can help you monitor your martial arts website’s presence in search results. It notifies you of any errors and also gives you insight into what keywords people are searching to find your website.

 

6. Lead Forms

What is the point of having a website if it doesn’t bring you any leads? One of the most important aspects of your website is including lead forms on every page, so a person viewing your website can easily fill out their information to learn more about your programs. We recommend adding a general “Contact Us” form and also a lead form with a free trial of your martial arts school or Brazilian jiu-jitsu gym that will sync with your martial arts software system. No need to chase prospective students or make cold calls.

 

With the Kicksite martial arts software lead campaign feature, you have the ability to add a widget straight to your website that collects important information you need about a prospective student including their name, email, phone, comment section, area of interest, etc. The lead forms are also specifically made for taekwondo, mixed martial arts, and other traditional martial arts disciplines.

 

In Conclusion

We guarantee if you implement these items to your website it will increase sessions to your website, increase lead conversions, and make reporting on year-over-year growth much simpler for your martial arts school or BJJ gym. And, of course, help you beat competitors like Conor McGregor. :)