Answers
Straight answers to gym-owner questions.
One question per page. A real number in the first two sentences. No "it depends" without saying what it depends on.
How much does a martial arts gym website cost?
A martial arts gym website costs between $0 and $8,000 up front, or $100–$600 a month on a subscription. A custom site built specifically for the trial-class funnel runs $3,000–$5,000 one-time, or around $150/mo with hosting and edits included. Anything under $1,000 is a template; anything over $8,000 is usually a general agency charging for time it spends learning what a gym is.
Why isn’t my gym showing up in the Google map pack?
Three slots, decided by profile completeness, review velocity and proximity. Coaching quality isn’t a ranking factor.
What is AEO and does a gym actually need it?
Answer-engine optimisation: making your site quotable by ChatGPT and AI Overviews. Yes, if parents in your area own phones.
Who owns the website when you pay monthly?
Depends on the contract. You should always own your domain, content and accounts. The code depends on whether there’s a buyout clause.
Should my class schedule be a PDF?
No. Unreadable on phones, invisible to crawlers. Your most-visited page should be HTML.
What should a free trial page for a gym include?
One offer, two form fields, the schedule underneath, and nothing else. Every extra link costs bookings.
How many Google reviews does a gym need to rank?
Velocity matters more than total. Two a week beats sixty from 2021. Past ~30 total, count stops mattering much.
Does ChatGPT recommend martial arts gyms?
Yes, by name, and increasingly so. Which ones it names is predictable and comes down to three things on your site.
Is a website subscription worth it for a gym?
At $147/mo, one retained member covers it. The question is whether the site books more trials than your current one.
How fast should a gym website load on mobile?
Under a second. Median gym site is 4.6s, and about 40% of visitors leave before that.
Should I publish my membership prices?
Yes. Hiding them filters out price-sensitive people and excludes you from every AI comparison of local gyms.
Do I need a separate page for my kids program?
Yes. Parents search differently from adult beginners, and AI engines cite pages that answer one thing.
Have a question we haven't answered?
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Every page above started as a question from a gym owner on a call. Yours gets a reply within two business days and, if it's a good one, a page.