The success of financial advisory firms’ website traffic is becoming increasingly dependent on their Google ranks for relevant keywords. To be more specific, Google’s search engine results page (SERP) ranking is critically important. If your financial advisor website makes it to the first couple pages of the SERPs, in particular page one, you will receive that much more online traffic, some of which will convert into leads for your services.
Meet the needs of these leads, better than your competition, and many will become active prospects and eventually revenue-producing clients. What matters most is that you make these target investors aware of the fact that your financial advisor firm exists, a challenge that requires your website to rank highly on Google’s uber-competitive search results.
Here’s how you make that happen!
Monitor the Page Load Speed
The speed at which your homepage and other pages on your site load is of the utmost importance. If the homepage or any other page does not load in less than three seconds, you will lose out on valuable traffic and subsequent conversions. Your financial advisor website should load in less than three seconds on regular desktop and laptop computers as well as smartphones, tablets, and other web-connected mobile devices.
The bottom line is page loading speed is an important factor to Google, Bing, and the other major search engines. In fact, search engine spiders are advanced to the point that they can estimate site speed with considerable accuracy simply based on page code and the size of files.
If your financial advisor website has large videos, podcasts, or other files, do not host them on your own website because doing so can slow down your site. Instead, rely on third-party sites for the hosting and embed them onto your site to expedite its load speed.
Content Updates
Google Caffeine, one of the latest updates to Google’s search algorithm, gives ranking preference to websites that have updated their content in recent weeks or months. In particular, content updates are especially important for searches that are time-sensitive. Google even goes as far as displaying the date of the page’s most recent update when presenting search information to investors seeking advisors and financial information on the Internet.
If you have not updated your website in recent days or weeks, consider adding a current blog post. The addition of a weekly or daily blog entry updates your website, ultimately enhancing your SEO. Just keep in mind that the content in question must “live” on your financial advisor website in order to boost your SEO.
This means the updated content cannot be a document that is uploaded to the site or a video embedded to the site. Rather, the addition should be meaningful text that provides legitimate value to your online visitors.
Sweat the Small Stuff of the Contact Us Page
Google’s Quality Document makes it clear the search giant prefers websites that have the appropriate quantity of information relating to contacting your firm. So don’t saturate your online footprint with contact information assuming it will enhance your SEO. Furthermore, it is a mistake to simply add your phone number one time and assume it will suffice.
The name of your business, address, email, phone number and social media information should all be included on the contact page. Furthermore, this information should be uniform across the entirety of your online footprint. As an example, it is a mistake to abbreviate “suite” in one online review directory while spelling it out on your contact page.
Be sure to update your contact information on your Google My Business listing, social media pages, and other components of your online footprint as soon as that information changes. Even the slightest inconsistency makes it that much more difficult for Google to recognize your business. This lack of recognition from the search giant ultimately hurts your SEO.
Keywords in Title Tags and H Tags
Aside from page content, title tags are the second most essential component of a webpage. If the title tag is flawed in any way, it will compromise the SEO. Search engine results pages show the title tags in the form of headlines that can be clicked. Your financial advisor firm’s web page title tag should describe the page with the use of one or several keywords.
SEO gurus agree title tags that begin with keywords really do perform that much better than title tags that have the keyword toward the tag’s end. Furthermore, the keyword should also be included in heading or “H” tags. These tags are important as they transmit relevancy signals to search engines. In short, using keywords in H tags communicates to the search engines that those words are important.
Optimize the Images
Search engines have not yet advanced to the point that they can “crawl” images and quickly determine what those images mean. However, it is still imperative that each image on your site is properly optimized. Optimizing images is accomplished with the use of relevant file names, captions, descriptions, titles, and alt text.
Though most people are unaware of it, the truth is alt text and alt tags do more than describe pictures for those with eyesight impairment. Alt text and alt tags also play an important role in the SEO ranking of your financial advisor firm’s website. Implement one or several keywords in your image alt text and your SEO will improve.
A Steady Stream of Unique Content
Regularly update your financial advisor website with new content that provides valuable insight and your traffic, as well as your SEO, will improve. This content must be unique to your specific website rather than plucked from another site and simply pasted onto yours. So don’t rely on a templated site consisting of pre-written information that merely serves as a placeholder. Nor should you upload content that provides vague and generic descriptions of your services.
If you are not confident in your writing skills or simply don’t have time for the process of writing, outsource the content creation process to a digital marketing agency that produces content for financial advisors. This wordsmith will create new text that passes an in-depth analysis for duplicate content, ultimately boosting your financial advisor firm’s website SEO all the more.
