If you’re running a golf course then you need to get more golfers golfing but how do you do it?
Golf Course SEO is all about improving the amount of traffic you’re getting to your website and converting it into sales, and how you can grow that to get even more.
What is Golf course SEO?
SEO is the optimisation of a website to make it appear more times in search engines.
It doesn’t matter what type of business you are, the niche you’re or anything else, SEO is the same across the board.
Search engine optimisation focuses on optimising current web pages and building more to help your domain be seen as an authority in the golf world and get more customers.
Why is SEO important for golf clubs?
There are a lot of golf clubs in the UK, and the competition between local clubs is strong, it’s important to differentiate your brand and make it stand out.
With SEO, you can increase the number of green fees sold, increase the number of members in the club, improve spending in the bar and clubhouse and a lot more.
SEO such be used as part of a holistic digital marketing campaign, along with PPC, social media and traditional marketing methods.
There are three main types of SEO
- On-page SEO: This focuses on what you have control of on the page, from the content to the titles, images used and lots more
- Off-page SEO: This is what happens away from your website, brand mentions, who’s linking to you, social activity etc.
- Technical SEO: Like a health check for your website making sure everything is in working order.
But then there are three ways to target too
- National SEO: For golf courses that want to start attracting golfers around the country
- Local SEO: To attract more golfers in the local area
- International SEO: To appeal to golfers worldwide
As a golf course, it’s likely that you’ll certainly need a local SEO strategy.
One good place to start is by optimising your Google My Business profile and if you’ve not got one, then you need to get one ASAP.
This is a great tool for appearing the in the map pack when your target audience is making local searches.
What types of keywords should you go after?
As a golf course, you want to sell your product more.
However, with SEO, there’s going to be a limited amount of searches in the local area for golf courses like yours.
There are different types of keywords, but the ones you want to target are the transactional and informational ones.
By just going after transactional keywords which are the keywords people are using when they are ready to buy, you’re limiting yourself and your websites.
Especially if your competition has a more complete site, then that can mean when the search engines are deciding who to rank, they see a website with 54 pages vs your one with 7, the other websites will seem more relevant to them.
Informational keywords are used when people want to know more about topics.
For golf, this can be great because it’s a notoriously difficult game to play and golfers are always searching online for information regarding golf, which could be
- how to play golf.
- what to wear when playing golf?
- what are the best golf clubs?
- And much, much more.
You’ll want to optimise for “golf courses near me” “best golf courses in X” “[your location] golf courses and many more.
How do you do link-building for golf courses?
Link building is always tricky if you don’t know what you’re doing.
It consists of reaching out to businesses to get them to place a link to your website and a lot of the time you get rejected or they want to charge a lot of money.
One of the best places to start would be to try networking with local bloggers or small websites that are based on regional content.
For example, a golf course in Manchester wants to find other websites that perhaps list the best golf courses in Manchester or are talking about golf or sports in general.
Remember, the links you build have to be from relevant websites, you can’t just get them from any website and they’ll be worth the same.
Getting a link from a domain website is much better than ten links from a site with low domain authority
How to make your website stand out in the search engines?
It’s all about relevance and consistency.
To have great organic visibility you need to show the search engines that you’re a trusted figure in your industry.
With so many algorithm updates occurring, a lot of businesses find that their organic traffic is decreasing yearly.
To combat that, you need to build something called topical authority.
SEO helps improve brand awareness
One of the biggest problems business owners have is making their product or service stand out from the competition. This is all about creating attention for your business.
With golf, there are a lot of different aspects where you can use video to market your golf course. Whether it’s
- the course
- teaching golf
- the pro shop
- the clubhouse
There are multiple ways you can show off your golf course. Perhaps, one of the best ways is to use drone videography.
We’ve seen this used by quite a few golf courses that have flyovers of each hole which really helps draw attention and makes golfers more likely to play there, well, assuming the holes look good.
Use SEO to drive your golf business forward
Any golf business can benefit from SEO but especially golf courses.
There are a lot of people searching for golf courses in your area and with so much competition from other local courses, you need to make your business stand out when people are searching.
