Business Profile
Name: The Vancouver Traditional Martial Arts Dojo
Website: https://vancouverdojo.com
Goal: To increase visibility and traffic to the “free trial week” offer on the website.
The 3 Month Search Engine Optimization Results
I compared the three months after making SEO updates(Dec 21, 2023 to March 19, 2024) with the three months before making the updates (Sept 22, 2023 to Dec 20, 2023) and these are the overall results.
Huge Increase in Organic Search Traffic and Impressions
Overall organic search impressions were boosted nearly 500% compared to the previous period.
The visibility of the home page was boosted by a 34.8% increase in impressions and an 11.81% increase in traffic.
Overall, organic search traffic increased by approximately 54%. The best part was, well over a dozen new search terms led to this new traffic and, as you’ll see further down, these were highly relevant keywords with clear intent.
New Organic Search Keywords, Resulting in Increased Traffic
Organic search query impressions increased by an average of 44.2% on these search terms:
tai chi Vancouver, karate Vancouver, karate classes near me, and tai chi classes Vancouver.
And the organic search traffic on these search terms increased by an average of 31.62%.
Keywords that didn’t exist before, began converting into clicks, for example:
karate, karate schools Vancouver, Vancouver karate, karate class, karate near me, karate classes near me, tai chi, tai chi near me, martial arts dojos near me, family martial arts near me, tai chi lessons near me, adult martial arts
And there are at least a dozen more new, relevant search terms which have resulted in traffic to the site.
Traffic into the site is a key metric, but impressions matter too. The impressions on the keyword, karate, skyrocketed from 20 to 37,288 impressions, an increase of 186,340%. 🤯
Big Impression Increase After Rewriting a Blog Post
On the blog front, I chose one blog post to rewrite and optimize. One article went from 849 impressions to 53,297 impressions, an increase of 6,177.62% with a corresponding 200% increase in traffic.
Keep in mind, all of the results above were achieved with almost no new content, blog posts or otherwise.
Imagine the results if new content was consistently posted to the site. Especially since no other dojo that appeared as an SEO competitor is doing this. 🤔🤔🤔
The results presented here are just the beginning since SEO isn’t a one-and-done activity. That said, the recommendations in this post have a much longer shelf-life than shelling out mega bucks for an ads that, in many cases, drive temporary traffic to your site with lacklustre or zero results.
And if we’re talking about new content, the compounding SEO value can outperform ad spend. Of course, this is dependent on your business, the experience level of the copywriter writing the ad, etc.
If you are a small business with limited budget, I definitely recommend going the content creation route over ad spend.
The Ultimate Result: +3 New Membership Sign-Ups
The goal of the SEO updates was to widen the funnel and get as many students to sign up to the free, one week trial.
The result was 3 new membership sign-ups and 13 new trial sign-ups in 30 days. In the same period of time last year, the business had 1 new membership sign-up and 3 new trial sign-ups.
More membership and free trial sign-ups happened after SEO updates than as a result of any paid ad, Google or Facebook, in the 10 year history of the dojo.
How Was This Website Traffic Increase Accomplished?
Let’s recap what was done to achieve this traffic increase and to bring more membership into the dojo…
In summary, this was accomplished with:
Competitor Research, Keyword and Long-Tail Keyword Research
- Identified the top local SEO competitors in the same space and gathered intel on their keywords, most popular pages, etc.
- Conducted keyword and long-tail keyword research, implementing keywords with achievable difficulty ratings and small to medium monthly keyword volume (don’t shoot for keywords with a huge volume of hits, at least at the beginning.. it’s unrealistic)
Improved User Experience (UX)
- The WordPress template was outdated so I implemented a new template that better suited the business (I don’t recommend doing this if you don’t have to, since it can be a lot of work)
- Simplified the primary navigation which looked better, was easier to navigate and better for SEO
- Improved page layouts and added updated photos
Local SEO Improvements
- Updated the dojo’s Google Business directory
- Added a “How to Find Us” page on the dojo site
- Listed the dojo local directories and linked out to relevant community sites
Page Level Search Engine Optimization
- Added descriptions to photos including relevant titles, alt tags and descriptions
- Rewrote page titles and meta-descriptions of all main pages
- Eliminated 404 page not found results and added 302 redirects
The Backstory
Fitness Clubs in BC Took A Hit During Covid
As far as businesses go, unless you’re Amazon or Uber Eats, the COVID years hurt your bottom line. And because of intermittent mandates forcing closures, one of the hardest hit businesses in BC was the small businesses in the fitness industry.
The Vancouver Traditional Martial Arts Dojo, a mid-sized community dojo in the normally bustling area of uptown Vancouver, managed to stay afloat in what was the most challenging time in recent memory for small business. When Covid hit, the dojo had already enjoyed a decade of residence in the community, with a loyal membership base.
A large part of their success during Covid was their ability to quickly pivot to online classes and eventually to outdoor classes in the warmer months.
However, like many membership-based businesses, they saw some clients drop out during those years. In addition to health concerns, many people faced reduced income or job loss, others were frustrated with the intermittent closures, and others found alternatives with home gyms setups etc.
As the situation stabilized and closures became a thing of the past, it was time for the dojo to start regrowing its membership base.
Therefore, the focus was to achieve increased website traffic for local SEO results in Vancouver, BC.
Assessing Website User Experience (UX)
Without set plans to start a paid campaign, the website needed to do more heavy lifting to bring prospects into the dojo. The website was outdated, not well-tagged and overall not optimized.
Primary Navigation
Without some basic UX modifications to the primary navigation structure, it would be unwise to pile on SEO-related improvements on this shaky foundation.
Over time, the website’s navigation had grown unwieldy, common for growing small businesses. And since the entire point of SEO is to make content easier for users to find and navigate, some reorganization was needed.
This was the original website navigation:
Note that the dojo has three main program offerings: karate classes, tai chi classes and kids karate classes.
The updated navigation below shows a clearer, cleaner and more logical organization, with some pages consolidated or removed all together:
Karate, Tai Chi and Kids Karate Free Trial Offering
The website was in need of a redesign to raise the visibility of their main offer: A one week trial of both adult and kids karate classes and tai chi chuan classes.
In the old website, the main call-to-action was a “Start Training” link in the primary navigation which led to a secondary page, seen here:
In the redesigned website, there are now several calls to action to sign up for the free trial class including a global call to action:
Here’s an example of the global navigation in the karate program page which shows a prominent call to action for the free class trial sign up:
The implementation of a new WordPress template was a good opportunity to make sure all pages had descriptive titles and headers, meta-descriptions and image tags.
For key landing pages, I rewrote or revised copy, adding headers, integrating testimonials and blog posts.
Search Engine Optimization Roadmap
Looking to the future, this is the recommended roadmap for the dojo website to continue to grow traffic and build on compounding SEO lift:
- Optimize all the blog posts
- Post new content on a regular basis
- Regularly revisit site performance and make updates as needed
Achieving Increased Website Traffic in 3 Months
SEO requires time and patience, especially for newer websites, and optimizing for a location requires a few extra steps.
That said, it’s impossible to guarantee results in any specific time frame, for example, getting a website on page one of Google search results in 1 month, much less getting a number one ranking in 1 month.
It’s more realistic to apply SEO best practices and produce a steady and predictable amount of quality content that doesn’t sound like it was written by a robot. In fact, posting original content on a regular basis is arguably the most underrated way to drive traffic to your website, whereas paid advertising often produces high volumes temporarily, but with low impact and low quality traffic.
If you like what you’ve read and you’re interested in a boost for your website, offering or even your advertising, let me help you.
Drop me a line.
