The One Ranking Factor You Can't Buy

Someone looking for somewhere new to train wrote this on Reddit, and it's the whole of local SEO in one sentence.

"I always use Google maps to find new gyms since location is one Of my top priorities."

Location comes first for him. Google counts it too: distance is one of the three things it says local results are based on. Worth knowing before you pay somebody for it.

Does local SEO work for a martial arts school?

It does, for one particular kind of family: the ones already looking. Somebody typing "kids karate" and your town name is about as close to booking as a stranger gets. Those are searches worth ranking for, and you should rank for them.

Owners do tell us they're hoping it will replace the advertising. That isn't the job it does.

The search volume for keywords like "children's martial arts" in a small radius around your school is almost always low, and when other schools are competing for the same words in your area it's lower again. That's the constraint. Not quality. Volume. And it doesn't go up because you need eight students this month.

What actually decides whether your school shows up

Google publishes this, which saves a lot of arguing. Its guidance on local ranking says local results are mainly based on three things:

• Relevance is "how well a Business Profile matches what someone is searching for". Google's advice for it is to "provide complete and detailed business info".
• Distance is "how far each business is from the customer who's searching". If they haven't shared their location, Google uses what it knows about it.
• Prominence is "how well-known a business is", which Google says is "also based on info like how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have".

Distance is your lease.

Google is blunt about shortcuts, too: "There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google." If somebody offers you one, that's the end of the conversation.

So distance is measured from the customer who's searching, and there's no version of this where you pay to shorten it. Paid advertising works the other way round: you set the area yourself, by population rather than a fixed number of miles, and the families inside it see you whether or not they were looking that day.

One channel waits for the right person to search. The other goes and finds them. You want both, and you shouldn't confuse the two when you're short of students in November.

How long does local SEO take to bring students?

Google's own guide answers this, and the answer is a range.

Google's SEO starter guide has a heading for this. "How long until I see impact in search results?" The answer underneath: "Some changes might take effect in a few hours, others could take several months." It also says to wait a few weeks before you judge a change at all.

Which matches what the work actually is. SEO is a manual process. Instead of paying Facebook and Google for ads the platform runs for you, it has to be done by hand, by people: writing the pages, fixing what's slow, keeping the profile current. That takes time, and the results take time after that.

Something you build over months and then keep is worth owning. It's a bad thing to be waiting on when you've got four spaces in the Tuesday beginners class and rent day coming.

Start by owning your own name

Before anything clever, make sure somebody who already knows your school can find it.

You want to be ranking top for searches like your school's own name. Set the site up early so that search traffic for your name finds a home on your website rather than on a competitor's. A family who saw you somewhere and then went to look you up should land on you.

That same habit is why owners credit the wrong channel. Website leads come from several places, Facebook included, and the search was often the last click rather than the reason.

Then, as the school grows, you can invest more and work outwards to the buyer searches. Your style, or "martial arts", plus your town, your service area, or "near me". Only if those words are actually being searched in the area around your school.

The basics come first and they're unglamorous. A site that's fully functional, easy to navigate, fast, and displays well on a phone, because most of your visitors are likely to be on one. Your full address and the areas you serve. A clear description of what you offer and who it's for. That's the floor. Another prospect on Reddit put it better than I can:

"I've seen so many schools with websites/social media that were so outdated they made me doubt they were still operating."

Only once that's right is there any point optimising further, and only if there's real search volume for buyer keywords in your area. Which you can check for your own town. Run the searches below for yours.

Do business directories still help?

They do. Listing on business directory websites helps get your name out there, it helps your own website's SEO, and you benefit from the traffic those directories are already generating.

Treat it as housekeeping rather than a strategy. Get listed, use the same details everywhere, then stop thinking about it. It's worth doing and it isn't where your Tuesday class comes from.

The Google side of it is different. Reviews aren't housekeeping: Google says prominence is based partly on how many reviews you have. Getting reviews is the one piece of this I'd put real effort into.

Organic social media isn't SEO, and it reaches fewer people than you think

These get filed together under the free stuff. They're different jobs.

Profiles on Facebook and Instagram are a must-have. In some ways they serve as another website, they're free to set up, and you should have links in the profile and bio so people can easily book a class from there. Get that right once.

The posting is a different matter. Free posts on Facebook and Instagram usually don't get very many impressions, meaning not many people see the post, so don't spend your evenings on them hoping for students. Set a batch up once a month, schedule them, and they'll keep the account active for that time. The reach you pay for is a separate thing and belongs in a separate column in your head.

One more boundary, and it comes before any of this. Get to at least thirty enrolled students before you start paid advertising. By then you've proved there's a market in your area and that you can enrol and keep students, which is the thing neither channel can prove for you.

Where we sit in this

We're a pay-per-show company, so read all of the above as an interested party being straight with you rather than a neutral one.

We get paid when a student walks into your school. There's no retainer and no contract, you're not locked in, and nobody is charged for a pause. That's the whole public pricing story, and the rest belongs on a call.

What we do is the other half: we find the families, get them booked and remind them to come. You welcome them, run a great first class, and enrol them. When an owner tells us he wants to grow this term and the plan is to wait for Google, we say what this page says.

Build the SEO anyway. Just don't make next month depend on it.

What to do Monday

Two numbers.

1. Write down how many new enquiries you need in the next thirty days to fill the spaces you've actually got.
2. Look at what your website and your Google profile brought you in the last thirty days. Not clicks. Enquiries from families you'd never met.

If the second number is most of the first, your SEO is working and you can invest more into it. If the gap is most of the first number, you've found your gap, and now you know which tool is meant to close it.

Then run the search list in the box above for your own town, so the next SEO quote you get is one you can price.

If you'd like to go through those two numbers with us, book a time here and bring your timetable and the number of spaces you can genuinely take this month. If we don't think we can fill them, we'll say so on the call.