Martial Arts Webmasters

By Eric Gehler

A few months ago I was looking through the search engines tosee if my website www.aimusainc.com was even found for certainkeywords. Well it wasn’t. I knew something needed to be done,because I was losing potential customers to my Martial Art andSelf Defense Classes. As the Internet grows exponentially, theimportant of a web presence is important.

After reading countless articles, spending hours optimizingevery aspect of my site, I finally started to see the results.Targeted geographical keywords hit # 1 in Google. The name of mycompany has over 9 million references on keyword searches forthat name and My url is currently number 7 out of 9 million. Notbad huh?

Well lets take a minute to discuss the basics of SEO (SearchEngine Optimization).

Search engines like Google, MSN, and Yahoo use spider-webcrawlers to seek out text content of WebPages. Spiders alsofollow links both internal to a site and external of the site togather their information. The information they gather is usedand to create the information you see when you do a search in asearch engine. A complex logarithm based upon textual content,keyword density, inbound and outbound links, alt text, metatags, etc are used to determine the SERP’s (Search EngineResults).

Step one to Optimize is reviewing your Meta Tags. Meta tags tellthe search engines spiders what information to report, ratherthan the spider guessing. Review your meta tags for Title,Description & Keywords.

Your Title should be somewhat descriptive of you website orproduct, rather than jus the name of the company. Instead ofJoe’s Dojo as the title of the site, it should be something likeJoe’s Martial Arts Dojo in XYZ, USA. This title will also act asa “keyword” to match a search engine inquiry for “Martial ArtsXYZ USA”.

The Meta Description



should also use significant words todescribe your style, geographical location, as well as the nameof your website. This description also acts as “keywords” tomatch a search engine request.

Keywords are words that you wish your site would be referencedwhen someone does an Internet search engine inquiry. Yourkeywords should phrases that include geographical locations.Instead of Self Defense as a Keyword, the phrase “Self DefenseYour city” will be more effective an appropriate. People 1000’sof miles away form your location will not be taking classes atyour location. Your goal is to maximize and be # 1 for yourgeographical area. Regardless if you have no direct localcompetition, search engines will create competition for you ifin the real world none exist.

Once the Meta tags are optimized it time to review the contentof your page. Website with tons of picture and graphics andsmaller amounts of text content, may look nice, but are notsearch engine friendly. If you have java scripts, tons ofgraphics, and few words then you need to re-design your page.The more words the better, the more KEYWORDS that you cannaturally included in your content even better. Spread thegraphics to other pages. Your homepage should be content rich,graphic light, and summarize your “product”.

Once you have a well written, keyword friendly content on yoursite, must make sure the internal linking and navigation isoptimized. The entire website should have a site map, that islinkable from each page. Additional WebPages should have naturallinking between topics and links back to the homepage. TheseInternal Links should be descriptive. Instead of classes, itshould be “self defense classes” etc. Links and the wording ofthe links are the most important aspect in order to achieve yourgoals.

Finally after your web page is internally optimized, your focusmust shift to external sources to improve your results viasearch engines. Here are several Key steps

1)Submit to DMOZ (Open Directory Project). Submit only once. Itmay take 6-9 months before you get listed, but wait 6 monthsbefore submitting again. 2)Submit to “free search engines”, dothis manually rather than the “submit to 10K for X $” 3)Look forlink exchange partners to do reciprocal links. 4)Write andsubmit articles. 5)Use signature tags in all emails, Forum postetc that include your URL. 6)Keep updating content, adding newpages, and getting links.

If you follow these basics, do additional research on the termSEO, then your Martial Arts website will be seen in the searchengines, increase your web traffic and your website could bringyou customers to your Martial Arts Location.

About the author:Eric Gehler

Eric has been in the Martial Arts business for over 15 years.

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