Driving More Traffic and Better Conversions with SEO

Google processes 3.5 billion search queries each day. What’s more, 76% of consumers look for a company's online presence before visiting in-person according to one study. When confronting a problem or looking for a service, people turn to Google for solutions. Searching for financial advice is no different.  This is why effective search engine optimization (SEO) is a vital component for the growth of your practice.

SEO is part art, part science, and both are constantly evolving. Search engines are becoming smarter about keywords, linking and social media. For example, because 97% of mobile search traffic belongs to Google, more emphasis is placed on the mobile experience than ever before. As a result, more traffic is being directed to locally relevant search results.

To help you drive more business online, here are some actionable tips:

1. Set Up Local Citations

Financial advisors are a vital part of their local community. It is important to establish a solid foundation with Google and make sure your local business can be found everywhere possible online. Google calls these local listings “citations,” and you want to have as many as possible to build credibility, and boost your presence with Google.

It is also critical that the information in these citations is consistent. Google looks at what is known as NAP (name, address and phone number). Those three fields should be identical across all citations.

When setting up your citations, start with the “Big 4”: Google, Yahoo, Bing and Yelp. Here are the urls needed to submit your listings:

Source: Google, Bing, Yelp.

Yahoo Local

Yext: https://www.yext.com/integrations/yahoo

You will need to verify each citation - the process for this will vary from platform to platform, but is generally pretty simple.

Once you have established yourself as an authority figure with Google, it is much easier to gain traction with other SEO strategies.

2. Know Your Keywords

1. Keyword research can seem complex, but you can make a big impact for your firm without being an expert. There are a few easy steps you can take without using professional SEO tools or needing much experience. To start, do a quick search on Google for a keyword about your business and see what comes up. Here are two things to keep in mind about keywords: It’s easier to rank for a keyword against local business websites than it is to go head-to-head with large, national, well-known websites.

2. Long-tail keywords are much easier to rank for than short keywords. You can work your way up to the shorter, higher trafficked keywords, but you first need to establish a base on the longer, locally focused, easier-to-obtain keywords. For example, “retirement planning” (short keyword) will be harder to rank for than “retirement planning boston.” (long-tail keyword). Each keyword has different traffic volume:

With the more focused “retirement planning boston” keyword, you will likely get more views than the broader “retirement planning”. You will also get more relevant views - for a financial advisor based locally in Boston, having people from LA visiting your site may not do you any good in terms of customer-building, and you may not even be able to serve them, depending on how and where you’re registered.

The easiest place to start is using the free Keyword Planner tool within Google Ads. This will give you simple volume data and a variety of keyword variations to research.

3. Think Content

While search algorithms have evolved over the years, one of the most important elements of SEO that will never change is simply writing quality content. The more fresh and useful content you can create, the better.

So what exactly makes quality content?

Quality content has an original point of view, is thought-provoking or inspiring, and should answer a question or solve a problem. Quality content is also properly sourced, grammatically correct and is structured properly for SEO.

Doing a little keyword research before creating content will also give you an advantage. Ask yourself: how can my content provide value to someone searching these keywords? Keep the keywords in mind while you write, but don't force it. Google penalizes websites that use “keyword stuffing”, that is, using the same keyword over and over again as a tactic to influence search algorithms.

4. Make Tags Matter

Every single page on your website should have a unique title tag. Title tags rank as one of the most important SEO elements on a page.

Title tags

The title tag is the first signal Google sees to determine the content of that page. It is also the first thing a user sees in the search results.

Four simple steps to writing an exceptional title tag:

1. Determine the target keyword for the page. The target keyword should be featured prominently in the title tag and, ideally, at the beginning of the title tag.
2. Write compelling copy. Your goal is to entice users to click on your listing to come to your website, so try to make the title tag as compelling as possible. Include features or benefits, inspire emotion, and be creative!
3. Make sure to stay within character/pixel limits. Google typically displays between 50 to 60 characters in title tags - anything more will be cut off.
4. If there is room, include your company name at the end, not the beginning of the title tag.

5. Links Matter

To build lasting SEO, consider the below:

1. Include links in your content – links that direct to other pages in your site or externally. Providing internal or external links, when relevant, may enhance user experience and speak to the relevance and connectivity of your content.
2. When you write a blog, a good practice is to link to one or two of the most important pages on your site from your related blog articles.
3. Watch for broken links.

6. Tracking and Monitoring 101

Google Analytics 4

Google is trying to get businesses to think differently about their users than before. So tracking website sessions to gain insight into user behavior is going to be a metric with diminishing importance.

This means, instead of page views and bounces, “GA4” will track user engagement via Engaged Sessions, Engagement rate, and Engagement time, giving a more accurate picture of user behavior.

Before beginning an SEO campaign, you should have Google Analytics tracking in place. This is a short piece of code placed on your site by your web builder that helps GA4 track activity on your site so you can see the results of SEO campaigns and whether changes are helping, hurting or having no effect.

The primary goal of an SEO campaign is usually to increase website traffic. You can find your traffic numbers in Google Analytics under Acquisition - All Traffic - Source/Medium. This will enable you to see basic traffic stats broken down by source.

Source: Google Analytics.

From there, you can filter to only view organic traffic simply by typing “organic” in the search box.

Eventually, you want to be able to compare year-over-year stats to make sure your SEO campaign is having a positive impact on organic traffic numbers. Ideally, you want your Users, New Users and Sessions numbers to be improving.

Get Started

SEO is a critical focus for online marketing at growing advisory practices, and it is a long-term process that requires true dedicated effort. Whether you spend time on it yourself or work with a professional that knows your industry, SEO is usually one of the more ROI-positive marketing tactics you can deploy.