Founder-run · Sydney · gyms, boxing and martial arts
Local SEO for gyms, run by someone who works in one.
No account manager, no twelve-month contract, no promises about page one. A developer who grew organic leads at the boxing gym he works at, doing the same for yours — and for no other gym within about 5 km.
Minimum 3 months, then month-to-month · One gym per ~5 km · You own every account
Our standards
- The work is done by the person who sold it to you. No account manager, no offshore team, no ticket queue between you and the change.
- Every number in your monthly report is read from accounts in your own name — Search Console, Analytics and your Business Profile — so you can check any of it yourself.
- The prices, the 3-month term and the one-gym-per-catchment rule are identical on this page, on the pricing page and in the proposal you would sign.
The boxing gym’s before-and-after figures are with its owner for written sign-off; until they come back we publish the method and not the numbers. How we did it, phase by phase
01How members find a gym now
The decision is made before anyone opens your website.
Someone in your suburb types “boxing gym near me”, or asks the assistant on their phone. They get three pins on a map, a star rating each, and an answer that names two or three gyms. That is the whole shortlist.
The map pack
Three results, chosen by distance, category, reviews and how complete the profile is. Most gyms sit outside it for most of their own catchment and never know, because the owner searches from inside the building and sees themselves first.
Reviews
Count, rating, recency and whether anyone replies. People screen on all four before they tap. A profile whose last review is three years old loses to a rival with a routine, however good the coaching is.
AI assistants
Ask one for the best boxing gym in your suburb and it names a handful, not a page of ten. It builds that answer from the same profile, reviews and pages Google reads, so a gym invisible in the map pack is usually invisible there too. Most people still check Google or Maps before they act, which is why we treat AI visibility as something to measure every quarter, not something to sell you.
02What we do
Three jobs, done in accounts you own.
Own the map pack across your catchment.
Categories and services set to what you actually teach. Photos that show the room. Posts that keep the profile alive. Citations tidied so every listing on the web agrees on your name, address and phone. Then a scan of a grid of points across your ~5 km catchment every month, so you can see where you rank from your members’ driveways rather than from your own front desk.
Make your website readable by machines.
Most gym sites keep the timetable and the prices inside a booking widget that nothing can crawl. We rebuild them as real HTML pages: class, day, time, coach and price as text, with the widget underneath for the transaction and structured data on top, so Google and AI assistants can quote you instead of guessing. The test is simple: load the page with JavaScript off. If the prices are not there, they are not there for ranking either.
Turn reviews into a system your front desk can run.
A short routine coaches can follow after a good session, a link that takes ten seconds to use, and a reply to every review inside the week. No incentives, no picking who gets asked, no gating out the unhappy ones: nothing Google’s policy or Australian Consumer Law would object to. Reviews then arrive at a steady, natural pace instead of a burst before a launch and silence after it.
Not sure which of the three is costing you the most? That is what the teardown answers.
Get a free teardown03The first 90 days
What happens after you say yes.
Nothing here is secret. This is the sequence, in the order it runs, with the honest timeline underneath.
Access, audit and the quick wins.
You add us as a manager on your Google Business Profile, Search Console and Analytics; they stay in your name. We baseline everything: a first geo-grid scan of your catchment, the review gap against the nearest rivals, and what an AI assistant says when asked about your suburb. Then the fixes that take days, not months: wrong categories, missing services, duplicate listings, the timetable nobody could read.
Profile, reviews and the pages that sell.
The Business Profile is rebuilt around what you actually teach and posted to every week. The review routine goes live with your front desk. On Growth, the class, membership and location pages go up as real HTML, written from what your members search for rather than what a template came with.
Citations, links and the first full report.
Your listings are cleaned up across the directories that matter in Australia, the first links come from local organisations that would plausibly mention a gym, and you get the first full monthly report: enquiries first, then calls, direction requests, grid coverage, reviews and where the AI answers stand.
Expect first movement in 60–90 days and meaningful lead flow in 3–6 months. If a competitor has a five-year head start on reviews, the second number is the one to plan around.
That is the plan. The teardown tells you where your gym starts from.
Get a free teardown04Pricing
Two retainers and a managed website. No lock-ins.
Every price in Australian dollars, every number the same on this page, the pricing page and the proposal you would sign.
Foundation
$750–1,000per month, AUD
Fix the local basics for a single-location gym and keep them fixed.
- Google Business Profile optimisation and posting
- Citation and directory clean-up
- On-page fixes for your key pages
- Review response and review-request playbook
- Competitor and map-pack tracking
- Monthly report and check-in
- Onboarding (one-time)$500–1,000
Most gyms
Growth
$1,200–1,500per month, AUD
Foundation plus content, reviews and conversion work to own your catchment.
- Google Business Profile optimisation and posting
- Citation and directory clean-up
- On-page fixes for your key pages
- Review response and review-request playbook
- Competitor and map-pack tracking
- Local content: suburb, class and programme pages
- Conversion improvements on the site
- Monthly report and check-in
- Quarterly strategy call
- Onboarding (one-time)$500–1,000
Managed website
$99–179per month, AUD
Build, hosting, maintenance and a capped block of quick edits each month.
- Site build, hosting, security and maintenance
- Capped block of quick edits each month
- Onboarding (one-time)Included in the build
| Inclusion | Foundation$750–1,000per month, AUDFix the local basics for a single-location gym and keep them fixed. | Most gymsGrowth$1,200–1,500per month, AUDFoundation plus content, reviews and conversion work to own your catchment. | Managed website$99–179per month, AUDBuild, hosting, maintenance and a capped block of quick edits each month. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile optimisation and posting | Included | Included | Not included |
| Citation and directory clean-up | Included | Included | Not included |
| On-page fixes for your key pages | Included | Included | Not included |
| Review response and review-request playbook | Included | Included | Not included |
| Competitor and map-pack tracking | Included | Included | Not included |
| Local content: suburb, class and programme pages | Not included | Included | Not included |
| Conversion improvements on the site | Not included | Included | Not included |
| Monthly report and check-in | Included | Included | Not included |
| Quarterly strategy call | Not included | Included | Not included |
| Site build, hosting, security and maintenance | Not included | Not included | Included |
| Capped block of quick edits each month | Not included | Not included | Included |
| Onboarding (one-time) | $500–1,000 | $500–1,000 | Included in the build |
| Get a free teardown | Get a free teardown | Get a free teardown |
Minimum initial term of 3 months, then month-to-month with 30 days’ notice. No 12-month lock-ins. One gym per roughly 5 km catchment — we will not work for your direct competitor while you are a client.
We do not guarantee rankings, leads or member numbers. Nobody legitimately can — Google says so, and so does the ACCC. Expect first movement in 60–90 days and meaningful lead flow in 3–6 months.
05Questions gym owners ask
Straight answers, before the call.
How many gyms have you done this for?
One in full, and it is the gym Toby works at: an independent boxing gym in Sydney’s inner west. That work was done hands-on over months as a member of staff, and the whole method is written up phase by phase on how we did it. Its before-and-after figures are with the owner for written sign-off, so we publish the method and not the numbers until they come back.
Southpaw is a new practice and we would rather you hear that from us than work it out. It is also why the terms are shaped the way they are: an initial 3 months rather than twelve, 30 days’ notice after that, every account in your name from day one, and a free teardown first so you can judge the thinking before you pay for any of it. If we are not moving anything, leaving costs you a month.
Can you guarantee we rank first, or that ChatGPT recommends us?
No, and walk away from anyone who says yes. We do not guarantee rankings, leads or member numbers. Nobody legitimately can — Google says so, and so does the ACCC. Nobody outside Google or OpenAI controls what their assistants say either.
What we do commit to is the work, in writing, every month, in accounts you own, and a report that leads with enquiries rather than positions. If the work is not producing anything after the initial three months, you leave with everything we built.
How long before I see anything?
First movement in 60–90 days, usually as calls and direction requests from the Google profile. Meaningful lead flow in 3–6 months. Which end of that range you land on depends on three things: how far behind you are on reviews, whether the website needs rebuilding, and how many gyms sit inside your 5 km catchment already doing this properly.
What do you need from me?
About an hour at the start and twenty minutes a month. Manager access to your Google Business Profile, Search Console and Analytics (we never ask for a password), someone at the front desk willing to ask happy members for a review, and answers to a few questions about your classes and who they are for. Photos of the room help more than you would think.
Can I cancel?
Yes. The initial term is 3 months, then it is month-to-month with 30 days’ notice. There are no 12-month contracts and nothing is held hostage: the profile, the site, the tracking and the reports are yours. The detail is on the pricing page and in the terms.
Is there a setup fee?
A one-time onboarding fee of $500–1,000 AUD. It covers the full audit, the baseline scans, call and enquiry tracking set up in your own Analytics, and a written 90-day plan. If we build your website on the managed plan, onboarding is included in the build.
Who owns my Google profile and website?
You do, always. We are added as a manager on the profile and can be removed in one click. On the managed website plan the site runs on your domain and you can take the files with you if you leave. We do not register domains in our name or route your enquiries through numbers we control.
My Gymdesk or Mindbody site already does SEO. Why would I need you?
Those platforms are good at the thing they were built for: bookings and payments. Their hosted pages sit on the vendor’s domain, the timetable and prices render inside a widget, and the “SEO” box they tick is usually a title tag. Keep the widget for the transaction. We put a proper site around it so Google and AI assistants can read what you teach, when, and for how much. How we build gym websites.
Will you work with the gym down the road as well?
No. One gym per roughly 5 km catchment; while you are a client we do not run this playbook for a direct competitor inside it. First in takes the area.
Free teardown
Get a free teardown of your gym’s search presence.
A short recorded walkthrough of your Google profile, your website and what an AI assistant says when asked about your suburb: what is broken, what it is likely costing you, and the three fixes that matter most.
Yours to keep whether or not we ever speak again. We record it and send you the link within two business days; there is no call to sit through first. What is in a teardown
A note from the founder
Why this exists.
I am a developer, and I work at a boxing gym in Sydney. I started on its search presence because I could read the documentation and write the code, and because nobody else was going to. It was slow, and it was mostly the boring things done properly: the profile, the pages, the reviews, then checking every month whether anything had actually moved.
It moved. Southpaw SEO is that job, done for other gyms, with the tools I built along the way. I will not promise you a ranking. I will show you the work and the numbers every month, and if it is not working for you after 3 months you can leave with everything.
TobyFounder, Southpaw SEO