Financial Advisor Marketing Secrets: Search Engine Rankings

Written By : Clifford Blodgett

As you strategize the marketing plan for your financial practice, it’s highly likely that at some point you may consider the search engines and a desire to “rank high on Google”.  While search engine optimization should be a component of any online marketing campaign, having the proper expectations, understanding the work that needs to be done, and accepting a reasonable time frame are paramount prior to starting.

What do the search engines want?

Gone are the days where you could build a website, pay little or no attention to it, and find yourself landing on page one of a search query.  Today’s search engine algorithms have become far too complex for you to simply stumble upon high rankings.  Competition among  insurance agents, especially in densely populated cities, has become fierce and despite potentially thousands of financial websites in a major metropolitan area, there are still only 10 spots on page one of a Google search.

Eliminate website errors

Often, when your website is built and even more so as it ages, it becomes prone to errors.  These include factors such as broken links, pages that have been improperly deleted or changed, content that has been duplicated on more than one page, slow loading times, poorly written or missing page titles/tags/descriptions, and pages with inadequate text.  In most cases, you may need to hire an expert to assess your website for these errors and often specific software is needed to detect them.  But if high rankings are your goal, you can save time and money by addressing these issues first.

Keyword Integration

Example: If your firm is in Dallas and you want to rank high for terms such as “Dallas Financial Planners”, then you absolutely must incorporate those keywords properly into multiple areas of your website.  Headings, page titles, internal URL’s, descriptions, and actual text are just a few ways to make this happen.  You may also want to incorporate your keywords into your image titles and frequent blog posts.  To be clear, we are not advocating keyword “stuffing” or spamming your site with an abnormal use of keyword terms.  There is an art to writing and inserting content in a way that makes the search engines happy yet still reads well with your visitors.

Blogging

Most advisors cringe at the thought of writing frequent blog articles, and rightfully so.  Managing a busy practice requires time- time for which you can be well compensated.  This is a task that you should consider outsourcing so you can spend your time building your practice.  But whatever you do, don’t neglect blogging or leave it out of your marketing plan.  Search engines want regularly updated and fresh content, and so do your readers.  Keep everyone happy by updating your blog at least once per week with a 300-400 word article relevant to one of your practice areas.

Link Building

Link building is the process of writing content in a wide variety of places online and linking it back to your website.  Not only can this help drive traffic to your site, but those links are highly visible to the search engines and play a large role in determining rankings.  Examples of sites where you can create links are social media platforms, social bookmarking sites, press releases, blog posts and comments (on other legal websites), and articles submitted to various online directories.

The need for experienced counsel and representation

Just as you would probably suggest to a client about not making their own investment decisions, optimizing your website is a skill that will require experienced online advice.  Marketing your practice on the internet successfully can mean formulating a strategic plan and implementing it consistently over an extended period of time.  The best advice available is to interview marketing firms and discover the methods they utilize for increasing your online exposure.  Getting the right advice is important in the markets, and on the internet.

FOR INSURANCE PROFESSIONAL USE ONLY. NOT FOR USE WITH THE GENERAL PUBLIC 14195 – 2015/3/5

Filed under: Financial Advisor Marketing