5 min
A lot is happening online. People go online to get information about everything - also about your fitness business. That’s why it’s important to be on top of your online performance. Many people do online research before they decide which gym to join. But do people find your website easily? There are lots of ways that make it easy to keep track of what’s happening online.
Do you know what are people posting on social media about your fitness business? Of course, it’s good to interact with negative comments and show people that you care about your clients. On the other hand, social monitoring can help you identify your promoters. Are you reaching out to them yet to get more out of social media?
They are probably likely to write a positive review about your facilities online. And what about your website? If you sell memberships online, it’s important that everything works smoothly and prospective clients are able to find their way to the right pages.
There are many ways to keep track of all of this data. You don’t need to be a data scientist to get basic insights. Today, I’m sharing 8 free tools for online monitoring, website insights, and search engine optimization. Check them out and find easy ways to improve your brand online.
Website Analytics (Heatmaps and Visitor Recordings)
Tools: Hotjar , Inspectlet , Smartlook
There are several tools that give you insight into your website’s performance. Google Analytics is the most famous one, which collects valuable data from all website traffic. However, it doesn’t give you insight into how individuals interact with your website. Tools like Inspectlet, Hotjar, and Smartlook can help out here. These tools record videos of your website’s visitors’ browsing behavior, which you can review to see if people miss any important information. Hotjar and Inspectlet generate heatmaps for you as well, which show you which parts of your website your visitors are paying the most attention to. Hotjar and Inspectlet are the more extensive tools. They both work with a freemium pricing model, where you need to pay for more recordings. Smartlook is completely free but doesn’t offer heatmaps at this point, only visitor recordings.
To set up these tools, you only need to add a bit of Javascript to your website. This is a very easy task for the person that manages your website.
Benefits of heatmaps and visitor recordings:
- See how people interact with your website on an individual level
- See if people can easily find all the information you want them to find
- See which parts of your website attract the most attention
Online Monitoring
Tools: Google Alerts , Mention
Curious to know when people write about your fitness business on their website? Tools like Google Alerts and Mention can help out here. You’ll get instant notifications in your inbox when someone mentions a keyword you want to track.
Google Alerts solely focuses on mentions on websites. So if you want to know when people write about you or a competitor, Google Alerts is the way to go. Unlike Google Alerts, Mention also monitors social media. Mention uses a freemium model, so if you want to track multiple keywords or reach a limit in mentions, you have to upgrade to a paid plan (starting at $29/month).
Both tools are quite easy to set up: just create an account and add all keywords (like your brand name and your competitor’s brand name) you’d like to get notifications about. That’s all!
Benefits of online monitoring:
- Instant notifications when people write about you
- Identify your brand promoters and help them promote your fitness business even more
- Find negative comments and act on them!
Search Engine Optimization
Tools: Google Search Console , SEO Site Checkup , Moz Local
Google Search Console
Making sure that your website is performing well in Google can be quite a hard task, but there are some easy tools to help you identify new opportunities and quick wins. The Google Search Console shows you some additional information that Google Analytics doesn’t, like which keywords generate the most traffic to your website, what the average search position is (do you have the top positions, are you on page 2 or 3, or somewhere way down on page 30?). This can help you to identify new opportunities. The Search Console also shows you what people are searching for, so you can provide them with answers to their search queries by creating content around their questions.
SEO Site Checkup
There are many factors that can help your website reach the top pages of Google. An easy way to identify those opportunities is by entering your website URL at SEO Site Checkup . This tool tracks lots of different factors that can influence your position in search engines and shows you where to take action. Please note: you can only use it once a day without an account.
Moz Local
Google wants to provide the best results, so if someone in London is searching for a personal trainer, Google doesn’t want to show personal trainers in Sydney. Moz Local helps you out here. After entering your company name and ZIP/area code, Moz Local checks how you can improve your local rankings, giving you valuable insights into how to proceed with your marketing campaigns.
What to do with these tools?
If you manage your website yourself, these tools will give you insight into what you can do to improve your online visibility. If someone else manages your website for you, just do the SEO check to see how well your website has been set up, and let one of the heatmap/visitor recording tools be installed to gain more insight.
Want more free tools? Check out my previous blog about spying on your competitors.
