Martial Arts Professional Magazine

In my last few columns, I have focused on the importance of optimizing your Web site content, both for prospects and search engines, and how this process must be finely tuned, so your Web site will be found, and then be effective.

Last month, I introduced the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) concept that makes your Web site search-engine-friendly. SEO is so important to attracting prospects to your site that if you won’t optimize your site with SEO methods, then you shouldn’t both with having a Web site.

SEO is defined as the “active practice of optimizing a Web site by improving internal and external aspects in order to increase the traffic the site receives from search engines.”

In my next series of columns, I will be writing, in detail, about the controllable factors behind SEO. By controllable factors, I mean what you can easily do to make your Web site appealing to search engines. Key phrases and page titles are two of the basic methods I presented in earlier columns, but I want to lead you deeper into the various techniques that will increase the likelihood of your Web site being found.

Previously, I wrote extensively about content. There is a famous adage in the Internet marketing world, “content is king.” Web site content must be developed strategically to attract your target audience and be found by search engines; and, ideally, your Web site content should be so good that other Web sites will want to link to yours. As you develop this content, you must be aware of key phrases you want to utilize (more on this later).

There are three elements you should consider when writing your content.

1.       It should be interesting, useful and, if possible, entertaining. In the martial arts industry, this translates to writing content that educates your prospects and excites them to visit your school.

2.       The content should be unique to your school. Search engines frown upon content that is repeated on more than one Web site, so, if you have written an excellent sales letter with another school owner with a different school, and you both want to use it, then customize it, so it’s unique for your school. For example, change the order of some of the paragraphs, write different titles, etc.

3.       In addition to useful, interesting, entertaining and unique content, search engines are more attracted to content that is updated often. You might be thinking, “Wow! This is too much work!” It can be, if you decide to do it yourself. If you love to write, then it will be a pleasure, but if you don’t, then there are certain tools that can help you keep your content fresh and new. You can always hire someone to write the content, either in-house or from many of the online copywriting services (visit websiteskarate.com for more on these resources).

There are a few other strategies that will help you create and write content.

1.       An FAQ (frequently asked questions) section about martial arts in general, the benefits of martial arts and your school. Write mini-articles based on the most frequently asked questions from your customers and create an individual Web page for each topic. Instead of just a listing all the questions and answers on one page, you have separate articles of each topic, each with its own key phrase to optimize. You’ll increase the credibility of your Web site and school for prospective students as well as search engines. As a result, you might even attract outside links that refer to your articles, due to their scope and uniqueness.

2.       Create a links page. Many Web sites have links pages, some being used to their maximum potential, while others are not. It’s certainly a good idea to put numerous links of related subjects on your “Useful Links” page, but it’s better to create an annotated links page, which means you write and include descriptive paragraphs of those linked sites. If you use the key phrase strategy and optimize your paragraphs wisely, then not only will you attract links to your site, but also your site will possibly appear on searches by keywords you’ve used to describe the links.

Use these easy methods to craft a well-developed Internet marketing campaign, as you expand your Web site to include crucial elements that will make it a more powerful tool to increase prospect traffic and enrollments.