Is SEO important when building a new golf club website?
Golf clubs across the UK and Ireland are investing in stunning new websites. Over the past few months, we’ve seen many new websites launched. They are full of high-quality imagery, drone footage, sleek design – at first glance, these new makeovers look very impressive.
However, scratch beneath the surface, and there’s a major issue: almost none of them are SEO optimised.
What is search engine optimisation?
It’s the equivalent of building a beautiful house…without any foundations.
We’ve reviewed a number of these new websites recently and seen the same issues time and again:
- No page titles or meta descriptions
- Headings not structured properly (or missing altogether)
- Images not tagged with alt text
- Sparse or duplicated content
- No clear keyword targeting
- No internal linking strategy
All of this means that while the site looks the part, it doesn’t perform. Google has no idea what the site is about, who it’s for, or when to show it to people searching for golf in your area.
You’ve moved house – but forgot to tell anyone
Here’s a better analogy. Imagine spending tens of thousands on your dream home. You move in, decorate it beautifully, and then tell all your friends you’ve moved… but you don’t give them the address. No directions. No postcode. Nothing.
How are they supposed to find you?
That’s exactly what clubs are doing when they launch a new website with no SEO in place. A website isn’t just a brochure – it’s your digital front door. But without SEO, Google can’t send anyone to it. And if Google can’t send anyone to it, neither can your customers.
SEO isn’t optional – it’s essential
We get it – marketing buzzwords fly around all the time. But SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) isn’t fluff. It’s the practical work that ensures your website gets discovered, ranks on Google, and drives traffic from people actively searching for golf in your area.
It doesn’t have to be complicated. But it does need to be done.
Before you build (or rebuild)…
If your golf club is considering a new website – ask your provider these questions:
- Will every page have a unique meta title and description?
- Is the site structured with proper H1s, H2s, and keyword-focused content?
- Are all images tagged and compressed for speed?
- Is there a blog or news section to support ongoing SEO?
- Do you have a strategy to appear in searches for golf memberships, green fees, society days, and lessons in your area?
If the answer to most of these is no – you may be investing in something that looks great, but gets lost.
Because at the end of the day, a website that no one can find is just a very expensive secret.
At Your Golf Marketing, we specialise in building golf websites that aren’t just pretty – they perform. We design with SEO baked in from the very beginning. That means your site doesn’t just look good, it works hard too.
SEO Case Study
We sat down with The Social Golfer editorial team in late 2023 to review the SEO on their blog pages. We repurposed much of the content, restructured their pages, deleted low performing blogs and tagged their imagery correctly.
Following our guidance, over the last 16 months, they have seen their Google impressions grow from 2K daily impressions to more than 13K+ a day.
And, on the Sunday of The Players 2025 event (16th March 2025), they reached nearly 30K page impressions on a single day! (and it didn’t cost them a penny in promotion!)
So, yes, SEO does work!