How To Optimize Your Gym's Google My Business Information

Why should you worry about optimizing your Gym's Google My Business listing?

Your Google My Business (GMB) listing is the face of your gym on Google. It's likely the very first thing potential clients will see when they search for gyms nearby or even your gym specifically.

When locals search phrases like "best gym in El Segundo," there is a list of gyms that fill the top of the search results. This is usually directly after only one ad or two, so it's a prime spot on any Google Search page! Being in the top 3 of these listings will bring you a significant amount of local traffic, which means it's absolutely worth fighting for.

Optimizing your listing is how you fight for that spot. Admittedly, there are quite a few checklist items for optimizing a listing and ranking better, but we'll start in this guide with making sure your gym's business information is perfect.

1. Fill in as much information as possible!

Optimizing your Google My Business listing is what helps Google rank your gym higher in local search results, of course. But it also gives your potential clients more options of how to find you and become a member. The most important part is the core business and contact information, specifically:

Name
Address
Phone
Website
Hours

Those were the bare minimum. However, we really recommend filling out as much information as possible about your gym. This is the rest of the one-time information you should to fill out:

Category and Attributes
Products and services
From the business
Questions and answers (Owner-generated queries)

But these other sections are ongoing (and we'll cover them in detail):

Posts
Reviews
Questions and answers (Consumer-generated)

2. Be extra careful and double check all your business info.

Here are just a few tips to optimize your gym's information for the listing:

Be consistent about your gym's name online and offline. Use the same words, exactly as they appear on your gym's physical sign on-location.
Make sure that both your gym's address exactly matches everywhere that you've listed it online. This means even spelling “st” vs “street” or “co” vs “company” consistently. You may be surprised to learn that Google even takes these little details into account!
Get specific with your business hours, including holidays and weekends. You've likely felt the disappointment as a customer somewhere of their online listing saying they were open, while in reality... They were not. And you drove 30 minutes to get there! Disappointing customers this way will inevitably lead to worse reviews.

3. Add a “from the business” description

Google actually creates a description for you that appears beneath the listing itself. However, there's another description type that you have complete control over – the "from the business" section in the account dashboard. This section appears further down your profile, but it's still a great way to add more information and rank higher in local searches.

In the “from the business” section, you should focus especially on the first 250 characters but try to use as close to the full 750 as possible. Make sure to try using keywords that people may be using in searches for your gym as well. That's usually natural to do as you describe your gym, but be sure to mention classes you have and other add-on services as well.

Also, make sure not to add operating hours, address, or any other information that is already included in other places in your Google My Business listing.

4. Choose a category

The key here is to be as specific as Google will allow you to be. For example, Google has a category for "Boxing Gym," which if true for you, is better than just selecting "Gym." There are over 3,000 categories, so make sure to really choose the one that best fits your gym!

Also, Google may ask you to verify your business if you edit your category list, so try your best to get this right the first time through. They're careful about maintaining accuracy on their own platform!

5. Select applicable attributes

After you've selected a category, Google will present you with attributes that you can check off to give more specific information clients may be looking for. These are typically unique or specific features such as “free wi-fi” or "help desk."

In typical Google fashion, there are 100's of these attributes, so be sure to look through them thoroughly so you can check as many off as possible.

You did it! 👏👏👏

Adding all of that information to your Google My Business listing is the best and first step you need to take to start seeing results from local search traffic.

The next step will be to add photos of your gym so that your potential clients know what to expect before they call or walk in! Luckily, we've got some tips on what kind of photos you should add and even how many.