Finance is full of acronyms, so here is another one for you: SEO – search engine optimisation. SEO is the art of getting a website listed as high up on a search engine’s results page as possible.
At this point you may be thinking: why should I care? Well, this is all about marketing your business, acquiring new clients and keeping those you already have happy.
Search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo! are the starting point of many people’s daily internet life. Over five billion searches are carried out each day around the world. If a potential client is looking for a financial adviser, the days of picking up the Yellow Pages are gone.
Typically, someone will ask a friend for a recommendation or they will type exactly what they are looking for into a search engine; for example, “financial adviser, Shrewsbury”.
The term “independent financial adviser” is searched on Google 22,200 times each month on average. That is 22,200 potential clients searching for a financial adviser each month.
When looking at a search engine result page there are three distinct areas of interest. Paid for search results reside in the yellow box at the top of the page and the smaller boxes down the right-hand side of the page.
Meanwhile, everything below the yellow box is listed for free and is known as organic search results. The basic rule of thumb here is that the higher up the organic search results your website appears, the more clicks to your site you can expect to receive.
Here are five tips for improving your search ranking:
1 Make sure your website is in the search results
Simply type: “site:www.yourwebsiteurl” in the search box – for example, “site:www.morningstar.co.uk” – and you should be presented with a list of all your website pages. If you do not see this list, it means your website is not being indexed by the search engine. Get this fixed first.
There are a number of ways to do this but the first thing to do is tell the search engines they need to visit your website. You can do this by submitting your site to Google Webmaster (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools). Both Bing and Yahoo! have their own versions as well. It may take up to six weeks for your site to be indexed for the first time.
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2 Get your title and description right
The title and description of your website are known as metadata and can be found in your site code. Search results show both of these (see below):
The title is one of the most important on-page SEO and off-page SEO factors. It should provide a description of exactly what is on a web page and be no more than 70 characters, for example:
Independent Financial Advice Shrewsbury | Your Business Name
The description has no bearing on your search ranking but it is the marketing message that encourages the searcher to click on the title. It should be no longer than 160 characters, for example:
Highly recommended independent financial adviser in Shrewsbury, specialising in retirement planning and inheritance tax advice.
3 Keyword and research
Keywords are the individual terms that are searched for; for example, “inheritance tax planning” or “pension advice”. A search engine will look for keywords within your website and, if it thinks your site is relevant to the search term, it will include your firm in the results.
Spend some time researching what potential clients are searching for and use these terms in your metadata and website copy. Keep your research generic, so look for “retirement planning”, for example, rather than “retirement planning, Shrewsbury”.
At this point, it gets tempting to try and pack your website with as many keywords as possible. Don’t do it. Search engines will penalise your site and lower its ranking if they think you are doing this.
4 Local relevance
If you are running a single practice, there is no point in trying to make your website rank highly for the generic search term “independent financial adviser”. All of the big nationwide businesses will already be trying to do this.
Focus your metadata on what your practice does and your location. This way, if your practice is based in Shrewsbury and local individuals search for a nearby adviser, they should come across you. Hence your metadata title could be:
Inheritance Tax Planning Shrewsbury | Your Business Name
5 Use the tools that are available to you
If you are using an agency to build and manage your website ask them what they are doing to improve your SEO. If a competitor is appearing higher than you are, ask the agency to explain why. Make them work for their money.
If you are using a content management system, such as Word Press or Joomla, it is likely to include tools and plugins to help you improve your SEO. Use them. Note that you may not see the results immediately as it can take time for a search engine to re-index your site.
A few hours reading about SEO and working on your site will pay dividends in the long run. Just think what an extra ten enquiries a month might do for your business.
More resources:
Take a look at adwords.google.com. This shows what people are searching for in Google and is an excellent tool for helping you identify keywords and metadata, and understanding the needs of your target audience.
Another great site for all things SEO, including education, is www.seomoz.org. What you can learn here will be invaluable to your business.
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