Last week I said that we were going to take some time off from talking about SEO.
I was wrong.
Focus on your members, focus on your audience
The very best SEO practice is to write content for your audience and every day thousands of individuals search YMCA websites for information on the programs that you offer. And you dutifully add menu navigation to your website to drive traffic to programs that you want to promote. Like Adult Sports.
In the above example, there are a total of 43 words describing all the adult sports programs that this Y offers - and two of these words are the dreaded "and more."
And the the visitor is provided a handy link pushing the visitor off your site and onto another website - Daxko, Thinsoft, Active Life, etc.
Are you seeing why your programs are no longer ranking in the search results like they used to? You used to be able to get away with this and Google would still rank your "Adult Sports" at the top of the Search Results.
But no longer. Every two days now we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003... The only way to keep up in the search results is to fight back and publish new content targeted to the information that visitors are searching for!
Below is another example of how a YMCA display's their Adult Sports:
It's about more than just SEO
And regardless of how creating specific program pages affect your overall website SEO, it simply helps your current members find what they need so much easier.
In the example above, they have a series of more than 30 "click here" links that take visitors to PDF's. Here is a great opportunity to tell your story - either on this page or at least link it to a web page that allows you to tell your story.
It's all about the storytelling
Storytelling is different than giving someone a form to fill out. Consider "Volleyball Leagues".
- Why should you play in a volleyball league?
- What ages are eligible?
- Do 21 year olds play against the 60 year olds?
- Do you offer mixed sex leagues?
- When does the league start?
- Do I need a uniform?
- Do I provide my own ball?
- What does it cost?
- Are you signing me up to a team or do I form my own team?
- How many people on a team?
- What is the difference between playing in sand versus a hard court?
- Are there beginner leagues or is everyone here a pro?
- Is coaching allowed?
- Will I make new friends?
- How long will a match last?
- How long has the YMCA offered volleyball leagues?
- Is volleyball considered an aerobic sport?
- How many calories will I burn on average?
- In 2019, why am I printing out a PDF and manually filling it out when I should be able to sign up online?
The point is there are a lot of opportunities for story telling in your local YMCA.
Google loves "storytelling" (content).
More importantly, people love great stories (content).
And who knows, maybe you will get more people to sign up for your programs by telling a story that answers all their questions. (And yes this is hard work, but most of the easy work on the web is behind us.)
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