Are you trying to learn about SEO for your yoga website? Would you like to know how to improve your yoga website and attract more people to your yoga classes and yoga retreats? What if I told you that you do not need to spend hours making Instagram Reels?! You can improve your website with classic SEO Marketing and thus, have your yoga website rank higher on Google, so that more people will come across it and find your offerings!
Here are the 5 most important SEO Marketing tips for yoga studios and yoga websites
Yoga SEO Tip #1: Page Title and Meta Description
Optimize your page title and page description (also know as meta description). Each page needs to have a unique page title that is indicative of the content (what is that particular page about?), but also include relevant keywords, that you would like your page to rank for. This way, you help users – and Google! – understand what the page is about and why they should click on it.
Page titles are very important and shall ideally be max. 60 characters long. The most important page title is that of your homepage. The page title of your homepage can for example include the name of your business and the physical location (city) and maybe a few of your main offerings (like the particular yoga style).
Meta descriptions can be up to 160 characters long. If they are longer than that, they will be cut off and displayed with three dots at the end. A meta description is a short summary of what the page is about and thus helps users to determine if this is what they are looking for. In general, you will want to write a meta description that makes people actually want to click on your page, so make sure it is well written and interesting. It also gives Google an understanding of how good a match your page is to a user’s search. Make sure to include the relevant keyword(s) into your meta description as well.
Sometimes however, Google does not display your meta description, but rather choose any content snippet from that page to be displayed in the search results. If this is the case, your meta description might be too spammy (too many keywords stuffed into two sentences) and should be re-done properly.
Lastly, the H1 heading of every page is also important. The H1 heading is the main heading on any page. Every page should have one (and only one ) H1. It is the main headline of each page and not the same as your page title. For an example of these three, see tip #2.
In summary:
- Provide a unique page title, meta description and H1 heading for every page of your website (including every blog post).
- Use the relevant keyword in your page title, meta description and H1 heading.
- Make sure your meta description is well written and interesting, so that it makes people click on the page. The more people click the better Google will consider the page and slowly start ranking your website higher.
Yoga SEO tip #2: Local Search (Local SEO)
Optimize your website and content for local searches. What is a local search you might ask? A local search query is when a user searches for something local, a local business near him, usually adding “near me” or the particular city to the search term.
For example: Yoga New York or Yoga near me is a local search query. When people are searching for a local yoga studio or a yoga class in their city, it is very important that your yoga studio comes up in the search results! How do you do that? One important tool for optimizing your visibility and ranking for local searches is your Google Business Profile. If you want to know more about this, check out our page for Local SEO.
However, you also need to optimize your website for local searches, as your Google Business Profile ranking correlates with your website’s content. Therefore, you will want to add your location (name of your city) to your page title, meta description and H1 title (see example below).
Also, add it as much as possible into the text (the main content) on your “offering” pages. Meaning, pages that list and describe your offerings, i.e. your yoga classes, yoga retreats, workshops, events and so on. The text (i.e. the content of the page) should be optimized for the keyword plus the location (name of your city).
If you are offering Yin Yoga classes in Chicago, you will want to add and repeat this information on your page that describes your yin yoga offering in Chicago as much as naturally possible (do not overdo it).
Example:
- The page title could be: Daily Yin Yoga Classes | (Name) Yoga Studio Chicago.
- The meta description could be something like: Join our daily yin yoga classes in Chicago at 5:30 pm every Mon-Fri! Yin yoga is a perfect way of relieving stress from your life.
- The H1 on your offerings page for yin yoga could be “Relaxing Yin Yoga Classes in Chicago” or something like that.
Check out our current offer for Optimizing your Yoga studio’s Local SEO.
Yoga SEO tip #3: Content
Create relevant and valuable content of a certain length.
I cannot tell you how many yoga (studio) websites I’ve seen that have almost no content and no text at all to describe any of their offerings and classes in detail. If you have no content, which means not much text on your homepage and your other pages, how will you rank at all in Google and, how then can people find your website? It simply can’t work like that.
Rule of thumb for content length: Your homepage shall have at least 300 words (the more, the better) and your main pages which describe your offerings shall have at least 500 words per page.
It is important to have a certain volume of words because otherwise, how can you include relevant keywords into your text if you have none in the first place? And if you slap the (key)word “yoga” onto your page only once, you will NOT rank anywhere near the first 50(0) search results for sure. So, the more content you have, the better your chances for ranking higher on Google.
Takeaway:
- You need at least one separate, dedicated page (better: more than one) for your yoga offerings. If your site merely has a list of offerings like classes or retreats but not much content to go with it or to describe it, it will rank lower than a similar site that provides valuable content and more useful information for that particular search term.
- That is why having a blog is a great way for yoga businesses to improve their SEO rank. This way, you can add a lot more useful and valuable yoga content and keywords.
- In any case, make sure to describe your offerings, that is your classes, workshops, events etc. as detailed as possible.
Yoga SEO tip #4: Internal and External Links & Backlinks
Linking from one of your pages to another one shows search engines and users that these pages contain related information to the page they just came from. It enhances the chance that users click on that page, too and that way stick around your website a bit longer. The longer a user “hangs around” your website, the more important Google thinks it is.
If a user clicks on a website and exists it again after just a few seconds, it tells Google that the user did not find the information s/he was looking for. This would not be good. You want users to keep reading and keep finding interesting yoga content. This shows Google that your website is valuable. That is why internal links are important.
Similarly, you should also include links to other, external websites. When you add trustworthy and relevant website links to your content, it improves the credibility of your own website. In addition, valuable external links provide your readers with references, which will enhance your website’s authority.
Backlinks are links that link from other websites to yours. These are very important for your ranking. The more backlinks your yoga website has, the better. However, the quality of backlinks is also very important, so do not prioritize quantity over quality here. For more information, check out this article from Semrush on backlinks and why they matter so much for SEO.
Yoga SEO tip #5: Website Speed
Your website needs to be fast. And mobile friendly. You can test if your website is considered mobile friendly with Google’s own tool here.
If your website loads too slowly, users are unlikely to stick around, and may exit your page right away. With a tool called Page Speed Insights you can check your website’s speed and get useful tips on how to improve it.
For example, you might need to compress your pictures or convert them from JPEG to WebP and use lazy loading plugins for pictures. Mobile friendliness and website speed play a huge factor in Google’s ranking.
Conclusion
Your yoga website needs SEO. If you want to succeed and be visible online, you will need to either spend some time learning about SEO and make improvements to your website yourself or hire a Marketing Agency, preferably one with experience in the yoga world, like ours.
Make sure to check out our article on the 5 best free SEO tools.