Strength Matters
The Strength Matters podcast is a weekly show for health and fitness professionals who want the systems, tools, and resources to grow and scale a successful fitness business. Hosted by Head Coach Josh Kennedy and Strength Matters founder, James Breese.
Join the world’s leading experts in helping personal trainers and coaches uncover cutting-edge training solutions and share them with you.
Strength Matters is a system of training and education for fit pros and experienced enthusiasts who want to optimize performance and enhance their health span.
The central question that drives our work is, “How can we train smarter?” To answer that question, we like to talk about science-based ways, made simple, to solve practical health and fitness problems.
However, science doesn’t always have the answers. That’s why our work combines both science and practical real-world experience. What works in a textbook, doesn’t always work in real life.
This is why we like to talk about and share our client results with you… the good, and the bad, so that we can all learn from them, move forward to live, and perform better.
Strength Matters
Link Building for Fitness Websites: What You Need to Know
Welcome to another episode, where we dive deep into the intricacies of SEO for fitness professionals. Today, we’re simplifying the complex world of link building. Whether you’re trying to enhance your website's visibility or aiming to outmaneuver competitors in Google rankings, understanding the types of links and their roles can elevate your online presence. Join us as James Breese and Josh Kennedy, along with Andrew Wallis, unravel the significance of internal, inbound, and outbound links, and guide you through the nuances of toxic and broken links. Press play now to transform your website into a Google favorite!
Timeline Summary:
- [00:00:05] SEO and Link Types Overview
- [00:01:18] Three Types of Links Explained
- [00:02:00] Importance of Efficient Internal Links
- [00:04:20] What Are Backlinks and Toxic Links?
Key Takeaways:
- Types of Links: Learn about internal, inbound, and outbound links—each plays a crucial role in website authority and user retention.
- Internal Links: These are pivotal for SEO as they help Google crawl your website more efficiently, enhancing user experience and site navigation.
- Inbound and Outbound Links: Inbound links boost your website’s authority by other sites referencing yours, whereas outbound links show your resourcefulness and credibility.
- Toxic Links: Understand the harm toxic links can cause to your SEO efforts and how to use Google's disavow tool to protect your site’s reputation.
- Strategic Link Building: Discover the importance of earning quality backlinks naturally through valuable content creation like blogging.
- Link Building Techniques: Learn modern strategies like appearing on podcasts or collaborating with other webmasters to gain quality links.
- SEO Best Practices: Emphasize regular audits of your link health to avoid penalties from Google and maintain a robust online presence.
Websites and Links Mentioned:
Quotes:
"Links tell Google you're an authority and you take good care of your website." — James Breese
"Internal links make your website efficient for Google to crawl." — Andrew Wallis
"Earn your links, don't buy them. Google knows the difference." — James Breese
"Toxic links are like bad cholesterol for your website’s health." — James Breese
"A good linking structure equals better traffic, leads, and sales." — James Breese
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[00:00:00] James Breese: Strength Matters Media, Video, Print, Podcasts.
[00:00:05] Josh Kennedy: Welcome back to the podcast today. We're talking about link building for fitness websites. What you need to know. We're back in the world of SEO and, um, exploring links, the significance of links, exactly what they are. You've got toxic links, backlinks, internal links, and, uh, all sorts of links.
[00:00:22] James, talk to me like I am a child and explain to me the significance of links on websites and what they are. Is that any different? I always talk to you like a child, don't I? That is true. Yes, fair point.
[00:00:37] James Breese: Okay, so first of all, before we talk about links, and before you have no idea what we're talking about links, you kind of have an idea, but you maybe not, you don't understand the importance of it. So the point is, like everything we're trying to do and teach you guys, We're about helping you have a website that ranks higher in Google.
[00:00:55] It gets you more traffic, it converts to more leads and converts to more sales, [00:01:00] right? Links are a really important part of this because a good linking structure on your website tells your, tells Google that you are an authority. You take good care of your website and it'll want to rank you higher. Okay.
[00:01:18] So let's look at, let's look at the three, there's three types of links you have in your website, right? And links are as simple as what you click on to get to another, another destination. That's a very simplistic way of looking at it, but you have internal links. You have inbound links and you have outbound links.
[00:01:34] Those are the three links that are really important and relevant to your website. Internal links is the structure and links between pages from one page to another, right? Because when people land on your website, you want to make them stick around. Particularly if they land in a blog post. So you've got to make sure there's a good, what we call, internal linking structure between each of the pages that makes it efficient for Google to [00:02:00] crawl.
[00:02:00] Because Google likes efficient pages, it doesn't like having more than two to three clicks to get through every site on your page, right? So you've got to have a good internal linking structure. Secondly, inbound links is when other websites refer to you. So that's when you have links from another website that goes, hey, these guys are pretty awesome.
[00:02:20] We need to check them out. So they link to your site. Accordingly, that's an inbound link. An outbound, outbound link is, is when you link to another website or resource that isn't your own. All three play a major role, an important part to play in terms of helping you build authority and get more traffic to your website and telling Google that you are an
[00:02:44] Josh Kennedy: authoritative figure in that space.
[00:02:47] That was good. Before we dive a little bit deeper into what each one is, does and the importance. Andrew, before you steal Andrew's bit as well, Andrew, talk to me a little bit about internal links. I've got a,
[00:02:58] Andrew Wallis: I've got [00:03:00] a good experience working with both internal and external links, both for my own websites, but equally with the clients we work with as well.
[00:03:07] Um, as James said, internal. links are those that are linking to another page within your own website. So an example of that would be, let's say that you're talking, uh, giving an overview of the key elements to, um, achieving, um, optimum health and wellness. And you're talking about a training plan. You could have training planning linked to a separate blog post or page on your training services.
[00:03:39] Or an outline of a workout for somebody to follow and equally,
[00:03:43] Josh Kennedy: I was gonna say, or go straight to a downloadable plan or something. Would that be the right thing to do? Something like that? If
[00:03:48] Andrew Wallis: that's hosted within your within your website, then absolutely. Then the external links are, if you're talking, let's say that we're talking about a good nutrition plan.
[00:03:58] And [00:04:00] one to follow or one that you recommend is, let's say, Precision Nutrition, you could link out externally or outbound, as James says, to, to the Precision Nutrition website. So that's, that's, that form.
[00:04:14] Josh Kennedy: Good stuff, James. What are then, uh, Backlinks and toxic links.
[00:04:20] James Breese: So backlinks are the inbound links coming back to your website, right?
[00:04:23] That's another word. It's another term that people use quite a lot. They're the inbound links coming to you. So again, you want people to say to, say to your business. that, Hey, I really rate these guys content or website. Go check them out. Right. So those, that's what those, that's what backlinks are. This is why it's so important to write blog content.
[00:04:43] Okay. Because people are more likely to refer to great articles on your website than they are to your homepage. Okay. That's a great example is our blog for athleticism. That gets so many. back links or inbound links back to [00:05:00] our website from other people's blogs who are writing about athleticism in some form or way, and then they're linking back to us, right?
[00:05:07] You want people to write naturally on their blog saying, Hey, this is a great article about the 10 components of athleticism. You should check this out. And it links straight to our blog post. That is so important because the more people link to your website, The more chance you have for more traffic from other people to come to you, but the more it signals to Google in terms of page ranking to rate your services and product type.
[00:05:29] Okay. So you want to get as many backlinks across as possible. So a lot of people, particularly in the very competitive areas, let's take New York. So Rick Ritchie, we started working with him recently. He's got his, he's got his gym there and we're looking at his, his page and his website. Okay. So we want to make sure that as many resources in New York City are linking back to his website, because they want to, we want to drive as many trainers to that spot as we possibly can.
[00:05:54] So we need to look at this because it tells Google this is what needs to be done. And if you haven't got it, it means you don't [00:06:00] rank number one. If you don't rank at number one, there's multiple factors that go into it. But linking is a simple, no, it's not simple. It's a simple thought process. However, it's hard to do in practice.
[00:06:11] Right. You've got to really earn those links coming to you. And that's why people and the top businesses spend thousands, if not millions of dollars a year, trying to increase their backlinks to their websites. Cool.
[00:06:23] Josh Kennedy: Other what you've mentioned, blogs are a way to get good backlinks. What about, um, say appearing on people's podcasts or YouTube videos?
[00:06:30] Is that another way?
[00:06:31] James Breese: Exactly right. Absolutely perfect. So like the best way to get links at the moment is through appearing on other people's podcasts. Get them to link from their website back to your website in here. And it's a simple, easy way to do it. Right. It's just so if you wanna get in a lot of people's podcasts to do it, but make sure when they link on their webpage, if they're doing it, hopefully, 'cause if they're not doing it on their webpage, it means they've got a marketing issue in terms of Google rankings and [00:07:00] they need to absolutely upload it straight away.
[00:07:02] Okay. So they meet it. Make sure you links on their webpage linking back to your website, because that's a simple, easy way. For authority to build it into your website and potentially get more traffic to it, too, for people clicking on it and clicking through it. So again, Google's all about being helpful.
[00:07:16] Josh Kennedy: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Be helpful always. And that's what Google likes. And finally, toxic links. I, uh, I'd never heard of toxic links until a couple of months back when I spent a thrilling 15 minutes watching you go through toxic links on, uh, on the website, why, why is it important to get rid of them?
[00:07:36] James Breese: It's, it's, there's, there's a, there's a debate here.
[00:07:40] Some people think you should get rid of toxic links. Other people say Google already knows this. You don't need to do it. It's much of a muchness, but it's worth keeping an eye on it. So what happens is, is the bigger your website gets, the more traffic you get, there's all these like dodgy websites out there that are trying to make themselves look good and trying to like, just link out to all sorts of people [00:08:00] with random context, random context.
[00:08:02] It's like a bot usually to do all this. So you could be mindful of this. You don't want any toxic links coming to your website in theory. Because it's referring from poor traffic and terrible people. So you can tell you can upload a file to Google and say, Hey, it's called disavow links. So you can upload a disavow file to Google and say, Hey, please don't follow this website who's linking to me.
[00:08:23] It's not very good, but there's a debate whether you want to do it or not. I like to disavow them. Most of them. Because I don't think they're worthwhile. And I think it's good to keep your website healthy. But on when we talk about toxic links, the other issue we have, and this is a big thing we've seen in so many websites, is they have what we call broken links, right?
[00:08:43] And that tells Google that you don't take good care of your website. You don't care about it, essentially. So broken links are when there's pages on your website linking to outside resources. Which, which tends to happen quite a lot with us. If we link to someone's outside resource, they delete their website or [00:09:00] they change their website.
[00:09:01] Guess what happens? It's a broken link. If you have poor linking systems within your own website, and it doesn't go to the right pages, that's called a broken link. Broken links are just as harmful to your webpage as you can possibly imagine. So there's lots of things going on here. Linking is not just a simple strategy where you can think, yeah, I can link out to anything.
[00:09:21] It's actually plays a bigger part to it. And it's the overall theory and the structure to having a website that ranks number one on
[00:09:30] Josh Kennedy: Google. Fantastic, James. Briefly. Oh, and you go. Yes. I like that. Put your hand up. I can
[00:09:34] Andrew Wallis: see that just so I'm not butting in. But, um, James mentioned something which I thought was pretty pertinent before that.
[00:09:42] You've got to earn the links linking externally to you, which I think is a valid point. But I've got a question and I see this a lot. And I'm thinking of listeners would be maybe getting approached by I say businesses in the loose tense, [00:10:00] purchasing links. Um, what's, what's your thought on that, James?
[00:10:05] James Breese: Don't do it. Don't do it. Again, Google knows all this stuff. Google wants to be helpful. It's, it's cleverer than us in so many different ways. So what you want to do is earn links from websites, ideally, that have a higher domain authority than you, which means they're higher ranked than you. Okay, that's the ideal world.
[00:10:26] What you don't want to have is all these terrible websites, which are these things you want to disavow from, because there's all these random websites. Hey, we can do link building resources for you. And what they'll do is they'll put them on a crappy website that's full of spam and has no meaning.
[00:10:41] Google will see that and they'll go, no, sorry, goodbye, adios, goodnight. So don't pay for link building services. Like that in terms of like mass market, if you want to get link building services, you've got to pay high end premiums for that because people are working hard for you. You can't just do it overnight to get 500 [00:11:00] backlinks in a day.
[00:11:01] Google will see that, don't like it, penalize you and say you're a scam for website. In fact, I think to us, you're hopefully What we'll do is we'll maybe on the next episode, we'll do a behind the scenes audit and review and how you can check your website on in terms of like backlinks and health and stuff like that, because we're doing it.
[00:11:21] It's actually, there's a scan going on at the moment with Cricket Matters, seeing the updates we're making from that. So hopefully if that's finished, we can do that. How does that sound?
[00:11:28] Josh Kennedy: Why not? If it's there, we will, uh, we'll definitely do that and show you. Yeah. How we're checking out the backlinks on cricket matters.
[00:11:35] That is it for today. Please don't forget to rate review and subscribe. And if you want help getting more clients or patients booking for your free 15 minutes strategy call with us by going to strengthmanners. com forward slash strategy.
