Sports & Fitness
Local Business
Brand Launch &
Local SEO
Brand with Two Audiences
The Split
A private boxing, MMA, and personal training gym in small-town Texas had two very different customer profiles that needed to coexist on the same website:
Serious fighters — competitors, amateur MMA athletes, people looking for real training with a credentialed coach. They care about credentials, lineage, fight history, and whether this is a serious gym.
Families, parents, youth participants. They care about safety, community, the coach's background check, the vibe of the gym — "Is this a good place for my kid?"
The Brand Problem
A gym brand that's too aggressive alienates families. A gym brand that's too approachable signals amateur status to serious fighters who want real coaching. Most small gym websites collapse into generic fitness site aesthetics that serve neither.
The visual identity had to feel credible to a competitive combat sports audience while simultaneously not being intimidating to a parent evaluating it for their 12-year-old. That's a narrow channel.
The solution was a typographic hierarchy that leads with credentials and fight history at the top, then transitions to community and youth program content lower on the page. Each audience reads the page differently and finds what they need.
Local SEO Reality
Small town Texas markets are significantly easier to rank in than metro markets — but only if the technical foundation is correct. The previous WordPress site had no schema markup, poor page speed, missing Google Business Profile optimization, and a homepage that didn't mention the city name in any heading.
What We Built
A 10-page static site migrated off WordPress. Lighthouse 100 accessibility. Ranked #1 for primary local terms within months of launch.
WordPress → Modern Static Stack
WordPress was introducing unnecessary overhead — constant updates, plugin conflicts, security vulnerabilities, and slow page speeds that a small gym site doesn't need. Migrated to a modern static build: instant page loads, no CMS attack surface, version-controlled content.
Local SEO Foundation
Every discipline got its own dedicated page with geo-modified content — Boxing Classes + City Name, MMA Training + City Name, Kids Boxing + City Name. LocalBusiness schema implemented with coordinates, hours, services, and geo-content.
The 10-Page Build
Visual Identity — Fighter + Approachable
The color palette leads with black and white — classic boxing gym aesthetic, credible to a serious training audience. A warm accent color (not red, which reads aggressive-only) threads through to soften toward the family audience.
Typography uses a condensed heavy face for fight-night impact in bigger display moments, transitioning to a clean sans-serif for readable body copy. No stock photo gym clichés — original photography and competitor action shots throughout.
Results
Local Organic
Ranked #1 for primary city + discipline terms within months of launch. Boxing, MMA, and personal training keywords all ranking in the top 3 within the target geographic radius.
Lighthouse Accessibility
Full ADA AA compliance from launch. All images have alt text. All interactive elements have proper ARIA attributes. Color contrast passes throughout. The site is accessible to the full range of Luling's community.
Rankings Lost
The WordPress to static migration preserved all existing rankings. 301 redirects were mapped before launch, DNS cutover was coordinated, and Google Search Console was monitored for 30 days post-launch. No drops were observed.
Local business
brand launch?
Sports & fitness, trades, professional services, retail — if your local market has room and your current site isn't taking advantage of it, let's fix that.