Whether you operate a static html site, a blog - or both - continually adding new content (not necessarily replacing old; but adding new) is extremely important. Rather than explain the whys here at First Page Fitness, the best piece of advice we can give you is to read this blog post about Temporal Trends by Rand Fishken at SEOmoz.

Other than the obvious tautology of the title (isn’t something to do with a trend by its very nature temporal?) it is the finest blog post on the subject that I have yet to read. It takes what most SEOs know by experience and “instinct” and solidifies the idea in words for everyone to understand. It makes this concept infinitely easier for us to explain to clients who think an SEO firm is trying to squeeze more money out of their pockets by requesting permission to write or outsource more content. So next time you are having ‘that’ conversation, try sending them a link to Rand’s blog post, mentioned above.

In my experience with FPF rankings, we move between the #2 and #5 spot for Fitness Marketing, depending on how fresh our blog entries are, and whether they are inspiring more links. Just because we get ten new links for a blog entry and bounce up a few spots, does not mean we will stay there for any length of time. Blogs, from my observations and by considering what they are meant to accomplish conceptually, require fresh content about ‘current’ events.

This makes me wonder about the future prospects of the many “static” websites being built these days using Word Press as a content management system. If they are categorized by a search engine as a “blog” will they have to update their content more often than their truly static competitor in order to maintain the same rankings?

A new - or rather, previously overlooked - niche fitness center market is emerging, known as “Gray Gyms”. We think they should be called “Silver Gyms” for obvious cultural and marketing reasons, but that’s beside the point.

Have you ever wanted to start your own fitness center, but were scared off by the competition in your area? If so, perhaps you should look into starting a gray gym, silver fitness center, over-50 health club, or whatever you want to call it. The damn is high, only getting higher, and competition is definitely not at its peak.

Nifty After Fifty is a small, independently owned fitness center in Whittier, California. As you might have guessed, this fitness center caters to the over-50 crowd. And business is booming!

As the baby-boomer generation prepares for retirement and eases its way into the golden years of life, many are finding the fast-paced, high-adrenalin atmosphere of mainstream fitness centers a little to intimidating. Besides that, it isn’t exactly motivating to be struggling with a fraction of what you used to be able to lift with one hand, while watching 20-something, muscle-toned men and women workout.

This demographic has been almost completely ignored by the explosive growth of independent and franchised health clubs, including the many niche women’s fitness centers, gay gyms, and corporate health clubs.

A “gray gym” like Nifty After Fifty has easy-to-use pneumatic weight machines, low-impact cardio equipment and classes like yoga, ballroom dancing, and tai’ Chi. They provide access to licensed physical therapists and personal fitness trainers who specialize in working with mature-aged clients.

I already have a fitness marketing business to run, but if I was looking for another entrepreneurial endeavor, this would be it. Perhaps one of our readers will start their own successful fitness center for seniors. If so, come back to First Page Fitness and we’ll make sure you are well represented online.

And if you already own an over-fifty health club, don’t forget to list it in our fitness center directory.

Everett

Leann Prescott of Hitwise recently published an update regarding traffic to popular local search websites. The numbers show a 91% increase in traffic to Yelp and and 34% increase in traffic to Insider Pages (which was acquired this week by City Search). In addition after the inclusion of the ‘Local One Box’ in regular search results pages for some local based queries, Google Maps traffic jumped 26% above its already 10X market share lead over Insider Pages.

How does this effect your local business? It means that if you are not taking advantage of listings on Google Maps, Yahoo Local, Yelp and Insider Pages you are probably missing out on a ton of traffic. Did I mention that listings on all four of those websites are FREE, so what are you waiting for, go sign up.

Google Maps

Yahoo Local

Insider Pages

Yelp

While the basic listing on each of these sites is free you may want to consider a sponsored or paid listing as well for a few months and see what kind of traffic you receive. In addition all the sites above, except for Google, allow customer reviews. It would be judicious to ask a few customers to enter reviews for you after your listings have been published.

Lastly it is possible to ‘optimize’ for higher rankings in each of these local directories. We’ll cover tips occasionally on this blog, but if you need professional help please don’t hesitate to contact us.

If it were possible to learn how good an SEO is by the jokes they tell, one would have to assume that Scott Clark over at Site Creations really knows his way around a log file. Check out “Top 20 things that scares the bajeezus out of Search Marketers” for some good funny-because-it’s-true laughter.

As much as I hate to admit it, I am guilty of this one myself: “Presenting kickass SEO results for an hour, and then realizing you left personalized search on.”