MMA4KIDS, a local 2300 sqft fitness and martial arts gym in Dania Beach, opened its doors in 2017 but struggled to gain enough traction to avoid paying for Google Ads.
The traditional understanding of a new small business owner is that he can only grow by constantly paying for some sort of marketing or advertising services rather than building a permanent stream of traffic. Only a few entrepreneurs opt for options like Search Engine Optimization. The reason for that is that “hiring an SEO / Search Engine Optimization” sounds like “hiring a CEO” or “hiring a mechanic to optimize their bitcoin”. Most business owners are still from the generation of people who were born before the internet, so there is a learning curve.
Main Goals and Steps
After realizing that paying for Google Ads is not the best solution, the decision was made to generate organic traffic without paying for ads, aka beat Google Ads!
For a business like MMA4KIDS, the goal of SEO was to generate organic traffic or users who reach the website directly from a search engine results pages (SERP).
Some other mechanisms that small businesses like MMA4KIDS often overlook and go hand in hand with SEO are Local SEO using Google Maps, and social media marketing like Facebook.
Results
A successful Local SEO strategy, such as the one used for MMA4KIDS, enhanced the website’s visibility.
The most helpful resources were presented to users of the MMA4KIDS website with the help of RankMath.
This WordPress SEO tool offers Google Analytics integration and employs artificial intelligence to generate SEO tips and even content writing suggestions. Still, take it with a grain of salt but the tips are great!
Their class schedules became very popular, so the next goal was ensuring that the after-school program ranks for their desired keywords.
The marketing plan resulted in overwhelming registrations and the opening of the second location of 3500 sqft during the school closures in 2021.
MMA4KIDS is now building a third location of 4000 sqft in Idaho, and working on an eCommerce store to sell their unique branded merchandise and high-end MMA and fitness equipment for their students and online viewers.
Over 95k Views in Just One Year
Helping MMA4KIDS become an eCommerce store is still in progress, since they gained some popularity on YouTube after a successful SEO run on their channel.
The secret sauce is really just making sure you are above the rest and adding descriptions with proper links, and designing the thumbnails and channel designs. Check out what it looks like here!
