Once upon a time, simply having a website was the goal of many firms’ marketing efforts. But as digital technology has been rapidly evolving, it's becoming increasingly difficult for financial advisor websites to get to the top of SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) and stay there. This is where SEO becomes a major factor in any financial advisor marketing plan. Specifically, landing page SEO.
While the term "SEO" covers the entire spectrum of optimizing web content for search engines (think: Google, Yahoo, etc.), there are many aspects to a comprehensive SEO strategy for your website. An important—and sometimes overlooked—SEO practice is optimizing landing pages.
SEO landing pages are typically created to target specific keywords to increase web traffic and cover more relevant keywords to rank higher for those as well. However, while your website has optimized general keywords for SEO, these SEO landing pages are meant to be geared toward a specific topic or audience.
Top Tips for Creating The Best Financial Advisor Landing Pages:
Build a Landing Page Strategy First
While it may be tempting to jump right in with SEO landing pages, doing so before having a solid marketing strategy can decrease how effective they are and could ultimately cost potential pageviews. An example of a common SEO landing page strategy many advisors employ includes targeting niche audiences with content you already created, resulting in minimal extra work involved in creating these SEO landing pages.
Use Custom URLs
Think of a landing page as a specialized version of your homepage with a specific target audience. In fact, it's considered a best practice for landing pages also to use a custom URL.
For example, if your website address is www.abcadvisor.com, your landing page would be www.abcadvisor.com/customurl. This can help you measure analytics on your landing pages and improve your rankings with multiple pages appearing in SERPs.
Focus on Targeted Keywords
If your entire website was a tree, then think of the SEO landing pages as the branches. These pages can each be focused on one keyword or phrase, amplifying your website SEO and delivering specific content to those searching for it rather than just general financial planner content.
Bigger Isn't Always Better
Regarding SEO landing pages, it's a case of quality over quantity. These landing pages aren't meant to replace your original website but support it. For this reason, landing pages can be remarkably shorter/smaller than your full website.
Be Consistent
While having multiple instances of your website appear on SERPs, they must be consistent with one another and with all your other marketing content across all channels. Having conflicting information can send a confusing message to your audience and can also hurt SEO performance since Google has made it clear that consistency is a factor in SEO.
Use Internal Links
Linking from SEO landing pages to other pages on your website is another way to maximize SEO efforts. Because SEO landing pages are likely an abbreviated version of the content on your site, it makes complete sense to link to those pages to give potential clients access to more of the content they're searching for.
Don't Forget Backlinks
In terms of a solid SEO strategy, backlinks can be another valuable tool. However, backlinks are typically "earned." Because backlinks are links on another website that leads to your website, Google sees this as an endorsement of your website.
However, all backlinks are not created equal. In this case, the adage "the company you keep" comes to mind. A backlink from a reputable site will trigger a positive response from Google's algorithms.
In contrast, a backlink from a website with an unknown or questionable reputation can cause a negative outcome. Pro Tip: Beware of websites that sell backlinks. In the eyes of SEO, a true backlink is earned through a mutually beneficial business connection, not something sold.
Mobile-First, Not Just Mobile-Friendly
Websites have moved beyond simply needing to be "mobile friendly." With some sources determining that over 60 percent of online searches are conducted on mobile devices, your SEO landing pages will make a much smaller impact on your overall website SEO if they aren't designed with a mobile-first focus.
Keep Tabs on Page Speed
A major part of SEO includes how easy it is for users to find your relevant content and how easy it is to access and navigate that content. The speed at which your website loads plays a large role in the ease of navigation. There's no question that slow load times can be frustrating to your site's visitors, but this lag can also drop your SEO rankings as a result.
Not only will Google consider the page load time as a factor, but other KPIs signify a slow load time, such as bounce rate—i.e., someone leaves the page before it even loads, which could indicate a slow load time. The added frustration here is that not only could you be losing prospective clients, but they have likely moved on to a competing financial professional’s website.
Ready to Get Started with SEO Landing Pages?
Digital marketing for financial advisors is always evolving, and if your firm isn't yet utilizing SEO landing pages to enhance your online presence and grow your business, then there's no time like the present. But that doesn't necessarily mean you have the time to add it to your ever-growing to-do list. If you need help getting started, contact a digital marketing agency that can help today!
