How do you get noticed more in search engines? It’s a popular subject, but also a daunting one.
To help advisors increase organic traffic to their websites, I’d like to share five of my favorite tips for raising their profile through searches, otherwise known as search engine optimization or SEO. These tips are certainly not an exhaustive list, but they are some of the most reliable.
1. Choose The Right Keywords
Keywords are essential to the success in search engines. They determine the type of content you create and help Google and other sites understand the structure and context of your website.
How do you select the right keywords? Most advisors start by determining a list of topics they want to be known for, such as a specialty or a niche. Another approach is to ask prospects what prompted them to seek an advisor and their most pressing financial objectives. Answers to these questions can give you great insight into the terms people may use when they search for financial advice.
A helpful tool in this effort is Google’s Keyword Planner, which helps you research keywords for your campaigns. The tool requires you to set up an account in the AdWords advertising platform, which is easy to do and doesn’t require you to spend a penny.
Once you have your account and access the Keyword Planner, finding keywords with high volume is simple. Start by plugging in the keywords you are considering and checking the forecast. You’re looking for the number of impressions to determine volume, and anything above 100 impressions is an effective keyword choice. Of course, this number could be lower or higher, depending on your audience. The key is to ensure the term receives search volume.
2. Create Content Using Search Intent
When people do searches using the keywords you have selected, what type of content are they looking for? Blogs? Articles? Education sites? Video? Finding out the intent of their searches for certain keywords is extremely important if you want to use these keywords in your content, and the next step is finding out what that intent is, using something called a reverse search.
By performing this Google search, you can see the type of content Google decides to rank under specific keywords and use these results as clues for creating content that is likely to rank highly.
For example, doing a reverse search on “financial advisor” gives us a list of ads, definitions and a map containing locations of local advisors. The results page for this keyword tells us that people looking up this term are often looking to understand the responsibilities of a financial advisor or are looking for an advisor themselves. And based on Google’s localized results, they want this advisor to be near them.
Using this technique, you can determine the type of content you should create. So, the next time you are writing, do a reverse search to help you determine what type of content to develop for each of your keywords.
3. Structure Your Copy For The Search Engines
The best content is organized and skimmable. It uses formatting and copy to improve the user experience and provide context to Google and other search engines.
Structuring your content for search engine optimization is relatively simple. Begin by breaking down your content into sections and assigning descriptive headers. Next, make sure your copy is broken into small, skimmable portions. Avoid long blocks of text.
These simple adjustments will help readers and search engines understand the structure of your content better, improve the reader experience, and make it easy to read content quickly.
Those are the basics. But there are some extra tips you can take away to help get the most out of your formatting.
For headers, start by searching your primary keyword. Then on the results page, reference the “People also ask” section. This area is filled with a variety of questions related to your keyword.
These questions can be used word for word as headers in your content—or even expanded to create new content. Doing this can help you find the search intent of your chosen keyword, increasing the likelihood that your content ranks well.
Another great place to look is the “Related Searches” section, found at the very bottom of a search results page. This area contains topics related to your chosen keyword and can provide you with additional related keywords. If you find a few that match your topic, consider including them in your copy.