Content marketing is an essential strategy for financial advisors who want to make the Internet a primary source of new business for their firms. But, to be effective in reaching more prospective clients, this strategy requires much time and effort where there are no shortcuts.
Financial advisors can produce their own content and publish it on their blogs. However, as you will read, this content marketing strategy may not meet the expectations of the financial advisor. If you want leads, you have a big problem when your website does not produce them.
That is the point of this article:
- There are no cheap short-cuts
- Most financial advisors are better off outsourcing the work to a team of digital marketing specialists
- Look into hiring a team that specializes in content creation and SEO for financial advisors for the cost of a part-time employee
As you will see, there are no ways around Google and the other major search engines that require “original” content for higher page ranks.
What is SEO and how does it impact content marketing?
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a combination of several services that increase the visibility of your website. Content marketing is one of those services. In fact, you might say content marketing is the primary service because it impacts your SEO results (traffic on your website).
How does SEO work?
Search engines use bots to collect information about pages on websites and put them in an index (a giant library). Indexing helps Google find the content that its users are seeking.
Search engines use algorithms that have hundreds of ranking factors. Think of the factors as rules that impact the visibility of your content. Follow the rules, and you have greater online visibility. Ignore the rules, and you have less visibility.
Google’s role is to match users' queries with the indexed content in its library. The more your content matches the queries, the greater your visibility in the search engines. The best content resides on page one.
Does SEO include publishing blog articles from a library?
The answer is no; if hundreds or thousands of financial advisors have already published the same content on their blogs, you do not want to reuse it. This strategy used to work years ago when Google’s algorithms were less sophisticated. Today, Google labels this “duplicate content” with no SEO value.
Why would Google rank your content on page one when it has already been seen hundreds of thousands of times?
There are two primary business goals for content marketing
The number one goal is page one visibility for keywords that matter, like keywords used by investors about to retire with at least $1 million of investable assets.
The number two goal is traffic to your website that is produced by your page one visibility.
Why do Google’s content marketing rules matter?
The rules define what Google’s bots are looking for. And, if you want to rank on page one, your content marketing strategy better be based on the following six rules:
- Original content only; no duplicate content
- 1,000 words of content or more
- Blog articles are connected to website pillar pages
- Consistent flow of new content
- Content is open and read by Google’s users
- Is updated/repurposed when it is no longer current or relevant
Does personalizing content make a difference?
Putting your name on someone else’s work may fool investors, but it will not fool Google. Original content means Google bots have never seen it before, and the name on the content does not change that.
What is the impact of pillar pages on content marketing?
Pillar pages are a Google convention. They usually reside in a Resource Center on a financial advisor’s website. They establish a financial advisor’s authority for specific financial topics, such as pre-retirement planning.
Blog articles are linked to the pillar pages on financial advisor websites. This creates somewhat of a connected library of content within your financial advisor marketing strategy.
What is the best type of content for this type of marketing?
The best type of content has titles that attract the attention of large numbers of investors. Then high-quality content supports the title.
Bland, generic titles will not get the job done. Investors on the Internet have a lot of choices and will skip right over what doesn’t hook them.
How does social media impact a financial advisor’s content marketing results?
Social media is one more way to promote your content on the Internet and build connections with like-minded influencers who can broaden your reach. If you need help setting up social media profiles and publishing posts to reach your target market, ask us to help you begin.
How do financial advisors know their content marketing strategies are working?
If you’re reading this, the goal is to get your financial advisory firm found online. Download our free eBook to help you get started. Remember, there are key metrics that have the greatest impact on your content marketing results.
- The rankings of your content: How many of your articles rank on page one for keywords that drive the right types of traffic to your website?
- The amount of traffic that visits your website.
- The amount of time they spend on your website: If your article brought them in, they should stay on your site long enough to read it. Even better if they take the time to learn more about your firm.
- How many visitors contact you for interviews (leads) or information (contacts): All of the content marketing time and expense is wasted if visitors do not become leads and contacts.
- The impact of content marketing is visibility and traffic, but the metric that matters the most is traffic converted into revenue producing clients.
