Making Your Web Presence Count
Another simple opportunity for advisors to establish themselves as retirement experts is in their Web presence. Take a minute to type your name into google or yahoo to see what comes up. You can also put quotation marks around your name to make your search results more specific. What will clients, prospects and people in the media see? Your Web site? A link to a news story? Or some cheesy listing on a Web site full of ads for businesses that you never knew existed?
Unfortunately, a lot of people are trying to cash in on Internet marketing by setting up domains that feature limited information about advisors, hoping to get visitors to click on a paid link. That can leave advisors who aren’t familiar with even just basic search engine optimization (SEO) on the losing end of prospects. This is not something to take lightly, but also doesn’t mean you should just run out and pay some company to try and rank you higher. Instead, start letting everyone know you’re an expert by consistently broadcasting what you know and do with clients.
One approach to consider as you build your Web presence is to purchase your name as a domain (it doesn’t matter if it’s .com, .net, .co or other extension) and then populate it with your company-approved bio, picture, company logo and link to e-mail. Doing so can help you move up in the rankings and it’s an easy way for people to remember your name and contact info (I usually say, “My Web site is my name and my e-mail is easy to remember, it’s just my initials @ my name: [email protected]). You can even take it a step further and look for a domain that classifies your area of expertise, although you may have to get creative and use something like a hyphen in order to secure the domain, for example Retirement-Expert.net or less popular domain extension such as RetirementExpert.us
In the end, one of the best things about becoming an expert is it’s similar to adding a new credential to your name that you won’t regret putting the time, energy and effort into. I hope these tips are helpful in creating a media presence, writing your first book or guide, and making you stand out on the Web.
Follow Robert Laura on Twitter @robertlaura. He is the president of SYNEGOS Financial group, co-founder of RetirementProject.org, and author of Naked Retirement. He can be reached at [email protected].