72 months building the UK’s #1
fitness course provider.
Future Fit Training had the ambition to lead the UK fitness education market. I joined as Head of SEO, spent 4 years embedded in the business, then continued as external consultant for 2 more — and built the organic infrastructure to get them there.
A fitness education brand that wanted to own its market — not just compete in it.
Future Fit Training is the UK’s most trusted provider of health, wellbeing, and personal trainer courses — helping people turn their passion for fitness into a professional career through world-class qualifications in PT, pilates, nutrition, sports massage, and more.
When I was brought in, Future Fit had been trying for years to hit the top 3 positions for “personal training courses” and “nutrition courses” — their two most commercially valuable keywords. They had hired SEO agencies with little to no results. Organic traffic was flat and hadn’t broken above 16,000 visitors per month despite years of investment.
The audit revealed the root cause: their landing pages didn’t match user search intent. The personal training courses page looked like a blog post — heavy with text, impossible to scan, and providing no way to compare courses. That single problem was costing them their most important rankings. Fixing it became the priority.
The SEO Strategy
The full SEO audit drew on data from Google Analytics, Search Console, Semrush, and ScreamingFrog. It included competitor research, a technical audit, and an analysis of how recent Google updates had impacted traffic performance — including the significant 2019 and 2020 algorithm shifts visible in the GSC data.
Key findings from the audit:
- Landing pages (money pages) had severe search intent mismatch — designed like blog posts, not comparison pages
- The “personal training courses” page presented courses in a text-heavy format with no easy comparison mechanism
- Traffic was flat at 16,000/month despite years of agency work — no non-branded keyword growth
- Google algorithm updates had caused dips that were never recovered from
- Technical issues identified and prioritised with High / Medium / Low scoring
Fitness education keyword strategy is structurally complex. Each course type has its own demand profile — different search volumes, different intent stages, different competitive landscapes. A personal training course query looks nothing like a pilates instructor query.
We built a full keyword matrix covering every vertical Future Fit operated in:
- Personal trainer courses — Level 2, Level 3, Level 4 distinctions
- Nutrition and dietitian qualification queries
- Sports massage, pilates, yoga instructor courses
- Location-specific queries — London, Manchester, online courses
- Comparison queries — “best PT course UK”, “accredited vs non-accredited”
- Career and salary informational content feeding the conversion funnel
Each cluster was mapped to a specific content type and URL, with clear priority scoring based on commercial intent, search volume, and ranking difficulty.
The most impactful single change in the entire engagement: a new course comparison landing page. Research showed that users searching “personal training courses” wanted to compare options — not read a blog post. I developed a new page concept that displayed Future Fit’s three PT courses in a clear, structured comparison format with in-depth information about each.
The result was immediate:
- Position 1 for “personal training courses” achieved within one week of the new page going live — a ranking they had been chasing for years
- Conversion rates increased immediately — users had the right information to make a decision
- More traffic, more enquiries, and a measurable uplift in enrolments
In 2022, I extended the strategy to the blog — using informational content to support and feed traffic to the high-intent landing pages. This triggered the traffic explosion visible in the Semrush chart, taking monthly visitors from ~60K to a peak of 243,100.
After 4 years as Head of SEO, the engagement transitioned to an external consultancy model — providing strategic oversight without the day-to-day operational role. The challenge shifted from building to defending and extending.
Phase 2 focus areas:
- Strategic advisory to the in-house team on content and technical priorities
- Monitoring and responding to Google algorithm updates affecting the education vertical
- Expanding into new qualification categories as Future Fit broadened its offering
- Competitive analysis to defend #1 positions against emerging challengers
- SEO input on new website features, CMS changes, and course launches
- Training and upskilling the internal marketing team on SEO best practices
The consultancy model allowed Future Fit to maintain institutional SEO knowledge while building internal capability — the ideal transition from dependency to ownership.
The Results.
“Luca is one of the best as an SEO Consultant. Amazing process, knowledge and execution. I would highly recommend Luca.”
Want an SEO partner
for the long game?
The biggest organic gains come from sustained, strategic work — not short-term campaigns. Let’s talk about what a long-term partnership could do for your business.