Generating traffic to your financial advisor website is a top goal of a modern financial advisor marketing plan. It’s important to direct traffic to your website on a regular basis to ensure you’re getting your services in front of the right audience. This happens in two different ways: Organically and Directly.
- Organic traffic is when a lead finds you by typing specific words into a search engine, such as Google, and then clicks on a link that appears in their results that takes them to your website. For most financial advisors, organic traffic is a crucial way that visitors find their website.
- Direct traffic is when someone visits your site by manually typing your web address (www.xyx.com) directly into a browser, or copying a link to your site from an email or friend’s suggestion that goes directly to a page on your site. While this traffic is also important, it’s less dependent on a financial advisor marketing plan, as it’s typically someone who knows exactly what they want (i.e. to go to your site).
Because more and more investors are turning to the Internet – and Google specifically – to search for financial advisors, attracting this organic traffic is important.
- Is your website appearing high in a Google search for keywords that your potential clients are likely to type in?
- Is your content attracting the right visitors?
- Is your content original, and does it meet Google’s many requirements?
Optimizing your RIA website for organic traffic expands your digital footprint and gives a better chance that leads will find you. This will lead to more prospects, which equates to more sales opportunities for your firm.
There are a number of factors that affect how much organic traffic your website will receive.
- A Blog – Having a financial advisor blog is a great way to draw organic traffic to your website. When optimized correctly, creating original content that resonates with your client personas is a great strategy for leading traffic to your site. This can be done through the use of Inbound links, which send the reader to another blog post or page on your website. It’s important to note that Inbound links must be relevant and not just placed there for the sake of getting traffic. It’s also important to link to other sites, as this can help establish you as an industry expert.
- Social Media – Having a social media presence is another way to drive organic traffic to your website. Similar to a blog, the social media pages for your business can and should be considered an extension of your website. Including relevant links to your website within your social media posts is a common way many businesses gain organic traffic. As with blog posts, it’s essential to have a mix of content – including videos and links to third party sites, and not just links that go straight back to your own website. However, be sure to evaluate the quality of the links for both reputation and compliance risk.
- Offering an Interactive Experience – Another way to increase organic web traffic is by having interactive features on your site. Having a static website with only text and a few stock photos isn’t only boring, but it won’t increase where you land in search engine results. Interactive elements such as calculators, infographics, charts and illustrations will create a better user experience for visitors to your site and help your organic search performance. While some of these elements may require a professional touch, the payoff for having a visually pleasing and interactive website will come in the form of not only better organic search traffic, but more web traffic overall.
- Proper SEO – Local SEO practices for financial advisors will get your information in front of local traffic, and according to HubSpot, 46 percent of all search engine inquires are potential customers seeking local information. Especially when it comes to the financial services industry, customers tend to search for financial advisors who are close to them – in their own city, state or metropolitan area. Knowing what keywords to use and how to use them correctly can help generate local organic traffic.
Direct traffic is important as well, but it’s less dependent on SEO and other financial advisor marketing factors. But an important thing to remember when it comes to direct traffic is to make sure your links are functioning. If you send an email with a link to a page on your website, someone may hold on to that email for a long time and then forward it to a friend. If that person clicks on a link to your website that’s dead or inactive, they may move on and never think twice.
Broken links can happen as a result of website makeovers or improvements, or possibly just a simple typo within the link itself. Paladin Digital Marketing offers a free audit of your website to help reduce the instance of broken links overall and see how your business is being listed. Outsourcing your financial advisor marketing needs to an experienced firm can be a lifesaver for busy financial advisors.
Staying Up-To-Date
Marketing trends are always changing, as are Google’s requirements and its algorithms. That means that gaining website traffic is essentially a moving target. What worked a year ago might not work today, and SEO rankings should be monitored regularly to ensure the current optimization techniques are being followed.
An experienced Digital Marketing agency should have team members who can pinpoint the current trends and keep your online presence optimized through every change in the world of financial advisor marketing. A Digital Marketing agency can also help you prepare SEO-optimized content on your blog, website and social media, help you keep a pulse on your competition and stay up-to-date with the industry’s best practices overall.
