5 Steps to Writing Keyword-Rich Blogs for Financial Advisors

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Blogs are the secret weapon that allow financial advisors to expand their outreach. If your website is the home base of your digital storefront, then your built-in blog serves as an outpost that attracts new prospects while engaging current clients. Content is king and continues its multi-year reign. By continually refreshing your blog with new content, Advisor Launchpad drives new business to your website through Search Engine Optimization. With SEO-powered blogs, you can:

  • Address multiple points of interest and maximize your audience
  • Boost your search results placement
  • Increase traffic and future business

It all starts with having the right “keywords,” or the words and phrases that sites like Google love to promote. Indeed, the most effective blogs have keyword-rich content, and with a little planning, you can ensure that your own content does, too. In this blog, we’ll explain why featuring certain keywords can benefit your website’s SEO and your company’s digital presence.

Identify your Focus Keywords

A “keyword” is simply a word or phrase that people use to search on Google or other search engines. It’s not quite mindreading, but it does take a degree of anticipation to select the right keywords.

As you create your website’s content (beyond your blog), be mindful of the kinds of terms your audience may be searching. For example:

  • If you’re looking to attract clients interested in annuities for retirement, you can assume those prospects will search for keywords like, “Retirement Annuities in Your City, State.”
  • By anticipating that demand, a potential blog post title could be: “Retirement Strategies: 5 Things to Consider About Annuities.”

This strategy tells interested buyers that you have what they need.

Put Your Keywords in the Right Places

Placement is important. Once you’ve decided upon the most important keywords for your blog post, be careful to place them where they’ll have optimal impact. The more the merrier, and keywords should appear in at least some of the following places in your blog post:

  • The Title
  • Headings and Subheadings
  • The Introductory sentence
  • The Concluding paragraph
  • Anchor text (hyperlinked text to other related pages on your site)
  • Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

Ask yourself: what do people want to buy? What does my business do best? With fresh content in the pipeline, you’ll consistently be reaching new clients and longtime customers alike.

Keep Your Keywords Consistent

Keywords help you create a strong theme. By stating and then reiterating what your firm does well, you create a culture of consistency throughout your website. Therefore, when you link to your blog post from other pages of your website, be sure to continue using the exact same keywords. You’re not being repetitive, you’re reinforcing your brand.

This consistency is particularly crucial when outside sites link to your own. It tells search engines how credible your materials are and leading them to rank your pages more highly.

As always, make sure you Tweet, Facebook, and share links of your new content to continue driving traffic to your site. If you don’t promote yourself first, no one else will.

Optimize Your Blog Images

Believe it or not, search engines like Google evaluate the file names of your blog post images when ranking pages in search results. There is a big difference between a file saved as “blog pic 1” and “Retirement Annuities Meeting.”

Be sure to include the relevant keywords in the title of the actual image file, then fill out the alternate text field with a brief, keyword-rich description of the photo.

These little details go a long way.

Keep Posting Content!

Start strong, then keep going. Last week’s blog might as well have been from 2014, so keep it fresh. Google and your new clients will thank you for the effort. By regularly updating your blog with relevant, carefully-crafted content, you will steadily rise above other outdated websites.

This is a marathon, not a sprint. As long as you update it and use precise keywords, your blog will continue to drive traffic to your website.

Conclusion

Google and other search engines may have changed the online game, but once you know the rules, it’s yours to win. Know your keywords, craft consistent content, then promote it and repeat the process.

SEO is vital to your digital marketing strategy, but we also know how confusing it can seem. Contact us today or fill out the form to your right to learn how Advisor Launchpad helps improve SEO for financial advisors.

How To Strengthen Your Social Marketing

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Financial advisors have limited time to worry about their social marketing. Between LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, it can be especially hard to build a brand that remains unique to your firm and yet specific to each platform.

At Advisor Launchpad, we’re here to strengthen your social marketing by simplifying your focus. Our advice? Pick a platform, build a game plan, and stick to the process. It’s that simple. Rather than trying to master LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook all at once, invest your time in one platform at a time.

Today, we’ll provide an overview of each outlet so you know what types of content work best.

  1. LinkedIn: “The 24-Hour Trade Show Booth”

For financial advisors, LinkedIn is regarded as the most important social marketing community. While Twitter and Facebook bring more personality to the conversation, LinkedIn is usually the first destination prospective clients and industry colleagues will search you. It’s the place where thought leaders carve their niche and cultivate their audience. 

To join the conversation, you need original, engaging, and thought-provoking content. LinkedIn surfers aren’t only interested in hearing about what you do. They want to know how you think. Not only do people use LinkedIn to network, but also to stay abreast of the most innovative ideas in their industry. 

Inspirational pieces about your unique work philosophy or your distinct approach to financial planning will make the most lasting impressions. To captivate audiences about your company, shine a spotlight on your team, your work culture, and your firm’s successes. If you can attract readers with your business ethos alone, it’s only a matter of time until they become your client. 

LinkedIn rewards topicality. Stick to your niche, focus on your audience, and publish content that continually reinforces your expertise in the financial world. Think of LinkedIn as your 24-hour, seven-day-a-week trade show booth at a financial planning conference. 

What would you publish to continually attract (and retain) your visitors? 

2.   Twitter: “The Eternal Elevator Pitch”

LinkedIn posts age slowly, but last week’s tweets might as well be from 1850. Twitter is a social media beast that feeds exclusively on a steady stream of fresh and pithy messages.

While providing a second outlet for the content you share on LinkedIn, Twitter presents an opportunity to network in a more engaging and public way. Beyond linking to your white papers and blogs, Twitter encourages you to continuously interact with others in your field. 

Retweets, comments, and even a well-timed GIF show readers that you possess a broad perspective that extends beyond your own practice. That’s an attractive quality to prospective clients. Think of Twitter as your personal newspaper, carefully curated to highlight the qualities that make your firm unique. Though much of the content on your feed may come from third parties, if you retweet it, you’re technically still the publisher. 

While your LinkedIn profile largely consists of your own blogs and updates, Twitter can be an eclectic collection of tweets from The Economist, stock market updates, a random Bill Murray GIF, and the occasional thought piece of your own. 

A word to the wise: while propriety is paramount, don’t be afraid to build the Twitter feed you want, not the one you think others respect.

3.   Facebook: The Happy Hour of Social Media” 

The secret is in the title: Face. Book. The ubiquitous social network demands one thing above all else: users want to see you. In contrast with LinkedIn and Twitter, Facebook is by far the most personal of the social media outlets. 

With well over 2.13 billion active users on the platform, Facebook is less about overt branding and more about personality. This plays well into the hands of financial advisors.

While you may already have a personal Facebook page, you will want to establish one specifically for your company. When you do, lean into the recreational side of social media that Facebook enables. Continue sharing your company’s original blogs and content, but go a step further by posting videos of you and your firm. 

45% of users watch over an hour of Facebook videos a week. If you can tap into that demand - whether via clips explaining a hot topic in the news or behind-the-scenes videos of your team at work - you’ll be personally inviting prospective clients into your world. 

If LinkedIn is your round-the-clock trade show booth and Twitter is your elevator pitch, think of Facebook as a corporate happy hour. You’re technically still working, but you’re surrounded by people who want to loosen up and get to know the real you. 

Use video to get the most out of Facebook.

Getting started!

We hope this guide helps clarify the larger differences between the three pillars of social media. However you choose to get started, prioritize building an authentic personality on one platform rather than a haphazard presence on all three.

Pick your platform, build a game plan, and stick to it. Over time, you’ll master each platform and reap their individual rewards. 

What are backlinks and how do you get some?

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has a language of its own. From “whitehat” to “blackhat” and “nofollow” links to “dofollow” links, this digital lexicon requires more than a few definitions to make sense of the madness.

Today, we’re looking at one of the central components of an effective SEO strategy: “backlinks.” Widely heralded as the currency of SEO, backlinks are incoming hyperlinks that point from one website to another. For example, if Advisor Launchpad mentioned an article in The New York Times, that hyperlink would be considered a backlink for the famed publication. 

Backlinks are an integral piece of search engine ranking algorithms. If your website receives an abundance of backlinks from high-quality sources, Google will recognize your growing authority and boost your ranking.

While backlinks have long been part of the digital marketing conversation, the means of actually getting them have changed drastically. First, there was the old-school approach that saw hosts spamming comments sections with links to their own websites. Then came the “ends justify the means” crowd who bought backlinks from “link farms” to help increase their popularity. 

Though these tactics worked for a time, Google and other search engines caught on to the schemes and leveled harsh ranking punishments (and even banned) websites attempting to cut corners. The backlink goldrush inevitably led to a more tightly monitored and regulated market.

Backlinks are crucial to help grow your online presence, but only when they are earned through networking and a consistent emphasis on producing quality content.

Here are a few tips to get started:

  1. Position Yourself As A Thought Leader

Backlinks themselves carry little value; it’s the destination they take you that matters most. Rather than fret over the number of backlinks you can attain, focus on the most important goal: establishing yourself as a thought leader in both your local and industry markets.

The financial advisory world is inundated with competing voices that often regurgitate the same information. Carve a niche in that community, and you’ll not only boost your backlinks, you’ll also grow your business. 

  1.    Build Your Content “Skyscraper”

What’s the best way to enhance your online presence in the financial space? Take a look at what’s already working. Run a quick Google search of popular financial blogs and articles authored by competing advisory firms. Tools like Moz’s Open Site Explorer and Buzzsumo can help you pinpoint the biggest content influencers and closely analyze their backlinks. 

Take note of the topics they cover and the tone they take, then put together a game plan to exceed their efforts. Brian Dean of Backlinko calls this the “Skyscraper Technique,” an approach derived from the “whatever you can do, I can do better” school of thought.

This could entail writing a more comprehensive or “ultimate” guide to the topic at hand, providing more real-world anecdotes and explanations to personalize your content, or simply altering your blog’s structure to feature more image-based or list-driven content. 

In short, be aware of the content that has a proven track record of success, then expand those qualities and put your own unique spin on it. 

  1.    Leverage Industry Partnerships 

Once you have cultivated your content, it’s time to launch it in the marketplace. Your best target? Financial industry partnerships and local community alliances. 

Say you published a blog that stresses the importance of incorporating an estate plan with your overall financial strategy. Your investment management firm works closely with local attorneys who specialize in estate plans. In this scenario, you could ask those attorneys to feature your guest blog on their website, or simply have them link to your article in one of their own posts. Google prizes these sorts of backlinks, as they rank high in both quality and relevance. 

Beyond leveraging your industry relationships, consider reaching out to local businesses with whom you may already have clients. The power of community credibility cannot be overstated. If a local shop gives you a shout-out in one of their own blogs or newsletters, you’ll earn both backlinks and new business. 

  1.     Publicize Through Social Media 

While leveraging your professional network, be sure to double your influence by capitalizing on social media. LinkedIn shares, Facebook posts, and Twitter retweets go a long way to getting your quality content on the map. Continue cultivating relationships with your social media followers, and it won’t be long before they start promoting your content.

Ultimately, getting backlinks takes time, creativity, and commitment. By focusing on developing unique and compelling content, then taking a multi-pronged approach to publicizing it, your website will gain backlinks as your company gains business. 

4 Ways to Capture Events For Your Marketing Effort

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Conducting events in your community is an excellent way to support your current clients and reach out to a new group of prospects. Whether you are hosting seminars, conferences, parties, or lectures on timely financial issues, you can show off your personality and establish yourself as a thought leader.

But hosting events also gives you an additional opportunity to boost your social presence and cultivate engagement through email marketing and blog posts. Here are some essential steps to ensure you are maximizing the ROI on your event planning:

1. Create a new event using ALP’s Event Builder

The more information you can include, the better, but be sure to have the date, time (be sure to select the right time zone), location, and a contact who can handle any questions about the event. For maximum impact, let people know what they should expect to learn from the event and encourage them to invite their friends and family. The RSVP feature makes it easy to estimate a head count and ensure that you have enough snacks and drinks to cover all of your attendees! 

2. Get the word out early on social media 

 In the lead-up to your event, it will be essential to post multiple times on all social media channels. Posting on your Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter may be a given, but don’t ignore smaller channels like community pages and specialized groups. Craft a short sentence that describes the event, when it takes place, and what the public can expect to gain from attending.

3. Find someone to team up with

To really drive community involvement, consider a dual partnership with another local business to double your marketing efforts. You can reach out to the community to line up potential collaborators, guest speakers, or even just a popular lunch place to supply catering. Don’t forget to mention these partnerships in all of your marketing efforts!

4. Create a targeted email campaign

Reaching out to both existing clients and promising prospects is another excellent way to drive up attendance, and directing them to your website’s event page drives up your SEO. Be sure to send a series of emails as you countdown to your event. We suggest sending the first three months prior, then re-sending at 1 month, 1 week, and the day before to keep your event top-of-mind.

If you’re taking the time and effort to put together a company event, why not reap the benefits of your marketing strategy? Crafting an event on your website to drive traffic, sharing your event across all social platforms and through a dedicated email campaign, and drumming up community involvement all ensure that your event gets the attention it deserves! 

How Content Marketing Helps Your SEO

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If you’ve been paying any attention to the marketing landscape, the words “Content Marketing” have probably caught your eye. Why has such a simple concept—creating timely and informative content to share on your website—come to dominate the marketing world? In addition to being relatively simple and affordable, content marketing has taken center stage for one key reason: It is an excellent way to maximize the impact of your SEO. 

But how specifically does content marketing increase your SEO? Here are some brief explanations of their impact (and some tips to put content marketing to work for you)!

So much space!

Take some time to imagine that you’re The Google Search Engine Algorithm. You can’t see the pictures posted on each website. You can’t watch videos. So how do you determine what each website is about? The written word, of course! 

If you’re not posting regular blogs, Google has limited information it can use to determine what industry you’re in, what clientele you serve, and what search terms are most relevant to you. The algorithms would have to rely on the sparse information on your homepage and interior pages to figure out how to rank you. Posting regular blogs gives Google more information to work with, and the more keywords you integrate into your content, the better it gets to know your business. So help Google out! Post regular blogs to strengthen its algorithm and improve your site ranking. 

You have our attention…

In addition to improving your SEO Keyword Rankings, content marketing performs another essential function for your website: Keeping the attention of your audience. As Google’s algorithm calculates its search rankings, it measures how many visitors frequent your site and how long they stay on each page. 

Posting regular blog posts has a twofold effect on your website: Previous visitors check back in to see if any new blogs have been posted, and new visitors take the time to look at your latest postings to see if your services fit their financial needs. In both cases, the time they take to scroll through your new blog post ranks you higher in Google’s SEO rankings, so keep posting that new content!

Show off your unique point of view!

One of the biggest challenges in developing an SEO keyword strategy is finding a niche that no one else is writing about. As a Financial Advisor, this gives you a wonderful opportunity to show off what sets you apart from other professionals. Is there a service or opportunity that you provide clients that flies under the radar in most firms? Is there a particular question that your prospects would type into Google that could lead them right to your website? Take some time to show off something special, and remember to be more specific than “How to prepare for retirement?” 

As you dive into your marketing strategy, content creation is an effective and inexpensive way to stand out from the crowd. By utilizing a keyword strategy and posting content regularly, you can optimize your SEO and make Google go gaga for your site! 

3 Tools To Help You Generate Blog Ideas

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As a financial advisor, listening to the concerns of your prospects is the very first step to expanding your business. What fears or stressors drive the average person to hire a financial advisor? What topics should you touch on to ensure that you’re delivering content that matters to your target market? 

Here’s a surprising suggestion: Keyword planners! These tools have been an integral part of the marketing landscape for years, but they are often used just to decide what specialized SEO “buzzwords” to plug into your latest blog post. What a waste! Financial advisors should be using these tools to focus on the big picture instead: What are your prospects looking for?

Here are a few Keyword Planners that can help you answer that question:

Answer the Public

This innovative, long-tailed research tool shows you what real people have been asking about a certain subject. Unlike other keyword planners, this tool breaks the results down into easily-digestible data and even provides an alphabetized list of supplementary keywords.

To put this into practice, search for “Retirement.” You will see the 198 most commonly asked questions surrounding this keyword, including “Are retirement pensions taxed?” and “Will retirement age increase?” 

These are likely questions plaguing your potential prospects as well, so address their concerns! Write blog posts including these exact questions—and some of the suggested keywords from the “Alphabeticals” section—to answer the public and attract new prospects!

BuzzSumo’s Top 10 

BuzzSumo’s innovative marketing tool scours the internet for the top 10 shared pieces relating to your search, allowing you to evaluate your competition. What are prospects most likely to share with their friends and family? What type of content will drive the most visitors to your site? This tool is a great way to stay on top of what content is trending in the financial services industry (and craft a strategy to catapult one of your pieces into the Top 10)! 

Tried and True: The Actual Conversation

Though keyword planning tools are an excellent way to survey the content landscape, there’s no replacement for the old-fashioned conversation. Ask your ideal clients what their biggest financial anxieties were before they signed up for your services. What fears kept them up at night? What did they Google as they scoured the internet for answers? Go right to the source and ask your clients what drew them to your doorstep. This is the ultimate keyword planner in a financial advisor’s playbook!

Your prospects are leaning on search engines and social media to find answers to their financial questions. In order to draw them to your site, leverage your financial experience by creating content tailored to their queries. Whether you utilize a keyword planner or a good, old-fashioned conversation, you should be answering their main concerns in your latest content. 

New Year’s Resolutions for Marketing Magic

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2018 is right around the corner, and it’s the perfect time to optimize your marketing strategy for the new year. But where do you start? Before you begin setting new goals, take some time to consider what strategies worked best for you in 2017. Ask your team:

  • What specific marketing strategies were most effective?
  • What (if any) marketing strategies didn’t work at all?
  • Should you re-allocate resources to the more effective strategies?
  • Has your target audience or geographic location changed in the past year?
  • Were you able to stay within your marketing budget?

Having an honest conversation about your performance over the past year is the optimal way to pick the best path forward. Once you know what worked best for your team in the past, you are ready to create marketing resolutions for the next year. Focus on creating goals that are SMART.

  • Specific (targeted to a specific area of improvement)
  • Measurable (gives a quantifiable result you can monitor)
  • Achievable (a goal that is challenging, yet still completable)
  • Relevant (something that will further your marketing goals)
  • Timely (set a certain deadline for completion)

Here’s an excellent example of a SMART Goal: ”I will grow my social media presence to 250 followers by the end of the year, and post content on my social profiles twice a week.” Now that’s a SMART goal!

Though it can be daunting to draft out your marketing resolutions for the new year, these tips can help you focus your efforts and input a successful strategy for 2018.

4 SEO Improvements You Can Do Today

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SEO Tips You Can Make Today

In the digital domain, quick fixes are hard to find. With something like Search Engine Optimization (SEO), however, a few nips and tucks can help elevate your website in the public eye.

If you’re looking for a quick boost to jumpstart your online presence, here are 4 SEO Improvements You Can Do Today:

1.    Get Keyed In With Keywords

Without well-placed keywords, even the best content will hear crickets. In a nutshell, “keywords” are the phrases and buzzwords that tell Google, “rank me higher!” Though identifying the right keywords requires a bit of gamesmanship, a savvy advisor will take a blog about “Paying for College” then pepper it with keywords like “college planning” and “529 savings plans” to boost the content’s ranking.

Use your best judgment in determining the number of keywords to employ, and avoid going overboard. So long as your keywords highlight the core message of your content, you’ll be in good shape. In fact, as you consider expanding your blogging output, kill two birds with one stone and start planning your content around the keywords you know you’ll use.

2.    Go Meta

Meta tags are the advertisement for your content. They’re the one-or-two sentence-long descriptions that readers encounter while scrolling through search results on Google.

However innocuous they may seem, these titles and descriptions are key to enhancing your SEO rankings. They essentially tell Google how to assess and rank every page of your website. If you’re missing meta descriptions in a few places, simply find the field for each page in the back end of your website. Then, in 150 words or less, sum up the focus of the content and let Google do the rest.

3.    Drop the Anchor (Text)

If you’ve ever clicked a link on a webpage, then you’re familiar with “anchor text.” Though it sounds nautical, anchor text is actually the clickable, highlighted part of a sentence. When blended into the body of a paragraph, anchor text helps Google understand that particular page’s focus and the keywords it should evaluate in its ranking.

Though it sounds obvious, anchor text is a primary way to help navigate readers through your site. Best of all, it’s very easy to setup. For example, if you’re writing a post about estate planning and mention leading tax strategies in a sentence, highlight “leading tax strategies” and link it to a blog you might’ve written about the IRS.

In addition to helping clients more easily find what they’re after, anchor text keeps readers engaged and clicking across your site. Not only is this advantageous for current clients, but a moderate (though  not excessive) usage of anchor text will help boost your SEO rankings

4.    Repurpose Your Content

While fresh content is hard to beat, your favorite blogs from previous months will always retain their value. Marketing gurus call these pieces “evergreen,” or content that can continue to draw readers for months on end.

Here’s how you can repurpose content to boost your SEO: take a blog you published about retirement planning last summer. In the six months since it landed on your site, you might’ve developed additional insights you think clients would find interesting. Rather than starting from scratch, simply update your old blog and revise it with your new, cutting edge perspective. While you might want to tweak whatever statistics you might have used in the article and maybe freshen up the photos, continue building on your already strong foundation. From there, you can convert your blog into a podcast, turn it into a video, or even use it as the basis for a future webinar.

Thanks to social media outlets like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, you can then share your recycled content in a variety of ways.

Start Your SEO Engines

Ultimately, SEO is about staying power. In the fast-growing online marketplace, competition abounds and increases the need for savvy tactics that help you stay visible. These quick tips will help you get started, but they’re just the tip of the iceberg. When you’re ready for a custom SEO strategy, we’ll be here to help drive traffic to your website and expand your clientele.

Reach out to Advisor Launchpad to get started on building a website, optimizing your existing content, or ensuring your digital marketing plan is effective.

5 Common SEO Terms Defined & Explained

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The internet is an instrument of discovery.

Websites are built and social media accounts are opened for a single purpose: to be seen.

While there was a time when the internet was like an open country road, however, it has since become a congested freeway. Getting discovered online and reaching your target audience is more challenging than ever, and the mechanisms to do so have become increasingly technical.

This digital rat race has led to the rise of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). For financial advisors, SEO incorporates the protocols and strategies needed to help prospective clients find you amid the sea of competition. Spend time with SEO specialists and you’ll hear words like “trail,” “breadcrumbs” and “crawl,” all terms that encapsulate their main goal – to help search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo!) find your website so clients can do the same.

5 Common SEO Terms to Boost Your Knowledge

To jumpstart your journey, here are 5 SEO terms that will help you navigate the world of search engine optimization.

1. What is a Sitemap & What Purpose Does It Serve?

Sitemap (n): the blueprint for your website’s individual pages

The internet is a digital metropolis replete with its own form of transportation. Search engines rely on “crawlers” to move from page to page on a website. Though they may sound like a menacing creature from The Matrix, crawlers are your allies who try to understand the function of your website and match it with incoming search results.

Given your website has numerous pages, the best way to consolidate them is through a sitemap. In its simplest form, a sitemap is a file filled with listings of the web pages on your site. By indexing your content, your sitemap tells crawlers what kind of content you have, how frequently it’s updated and how relevant it is to a prospective client’s search.

Whether you have a large site with many pages or a new one with a limited amount of content, a sitemap is essential to boosting your SEO rankings.

2. How Are Keywords Used on Websites?

Keywords (n): specific terms used to index content (and attract viewers)

Search engines thrive on speaking the same language as those searching for results. Anyone who has ever seen Google finish their sentence in a search bar can attest to this.

Indeed, when clients looking for financial guidance start their research, they’ll type in a handful of words like, “Retirement planning near me.”  In this instance, “retirement planning” and “near me” are the notable keywords that narrow down the search results. Financial advisors with well-optimized websites anticipate these searches by constructing keyword-rich content that tells search engines: “send that client to me!” 

The law of diminishing returns also applies to keywords, however. While your content must be specific and targeted, avoid abusing these tactics through “keyword stuffing.” Search engines are savvy enough to punish websites with obvious attempts at boosting their rankings, but as long as your keywords are relevant and concise, you’ll be on the track to success.

Advisor Launchpad can help create content for your website that is keyword-optimized. Reach out if you would like help with relevant copy that will help boost your search rankings!

3. What is a Meta Description?

Meta Description (n): a snippet of text that describes a page’s content 

Consider meta tags the elevator pitch of SEO.

In 156 characters or less, these short descriptions that appear below page titles in search engine results essentially advertise your content and function as the bridge between searching for something and clicking on the resultant link. Though the centerpiece content is important, your meta description is crucial. It’s the gateway from starting the conversation to closing the loop.

Truly effective meta descriptions tease the most scintillating parts of the featured content while incorporating keywords that promote your SEO ranking.

4. How Can Anchor Text Help SEO?

Anchor Text (n): the clickable part of a hyperlink

Anchor text is the highlighted text displayed on hyperlinks (like one promoting the best blogging tips). Sneaked into the body of a paragraph, anchor text helps Google and other search engines understand the page’s topic and the keywords it should evaluate in its ranking.

As more sites link to “the best blogging tips” with the same anchor text, Google will rank that linked page increasingly higher. Though there are many approaches and tactics with anchor text, financial advisors will benefit most from internal linking that keeps readers engaged on their website.

As with keywords, however, refrain from stuffing your blogs with excessive anchor text to avoid an overtly “salesy” appearance. Less is more.

5. What is a No Follow Link?

No Follow (n): a strategy used to curb spam and page-rank manipulation

SEO thrives on popularity. When multiple websites link to the same piece of content, Google will view that webpage with respect. If a particularly notable site like CNN or the New York Times leads the charge, the content gets what SEO gurus call “link juice.”

This digital nectar is hard to come by, however, and those who work hard to develop their own search rankings guard it jealously. When Google announced that links were a key part of their algorithm, spammers got busy and relentlessly posted URLs in blogs, forums and more.

Enter the arrival of the “no follow” link, which essentially tells Google and other search engines: “don’t reward this URL.” This turns regular HTML links into ones that literally have the coded addendum “nofollow” attached.

Though it seems cruel to link to a site without a gesture of thanks, the no follow link is an essential tool from keeping spammers at bay from posting irrelevant links to content of their own. While lacking the “juice” from regular links, no follow links still carry a lot of value for building readership and expanding user bases.

Improve Your SEO with Advisor Launchpad

The world of Search Engine Optimization is constantly evolving, but the sooner you understand the landscape, the faster you can reap its many rewards.

If you’re looking for leading digital marketing strategies and want to become the CEO of SEO, Advisor Launchpad is here to help. Contact us today for comprehensive website, SEO, pay-per-click advertising, and copywriting services!

How to Choose a Domain Name for Your Financial Advisor

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What’s in a name? Ever since Shakespeare asked the question, we’ve been seeking the answer.

When it comes to your online presence, choosing your domain name is particularly important. For prospective clients, it’s the gateway to your website.

3 Tips for Choosing a Strong Domain Name

When you hand people your business card, you want your website URL to be concise and compelling. After all, they’ll be the ones typing it into their browser to visit your digital storefront.

Make your domain name sharp. It’s like that scene in The Social Network where Mark Zuckerberg is encouraged to change The Facebook to, “Just Facebook. It’s cleaner.” Details matter for domain names.

Here are 3 tips for choosing a domain name.

1. Know Your Niche

Earlier this year, we wrote about the value of owning your niche. Truly influential financial advisors corner the marketplace in their respective networks, and that process starts with choosing a domain name.

Do you specialize in insurance services, retirement strategies, or wealth management?

Consider ending your domain name with the defining feature of your company:

e.g. www.WilliamsInsurance.com

The full title may be Williams Insurance & Investment Services, Inc., but for your domain name, always aim for the most direct version. If you have a comprehensive menu of services, however, don’t worry about limiting your company to a single title. Keep it broad:

e.g. www.CollinsFinancial.com

2. Be Your Brand

However big or small, embrace the size of your firm.

When we craft original content for clients, outfits with a single advisor occasionally fear being viewed as a one-man shop. Pluralities like “our team” may be off limits, but we encourage these firms to capitalize on the appeal of their size. Boutique offices have plenty of advantages, and when choosing a domain, individual advisor names can work very well.

Plus, if you’re in a small town where everyone knows each other, promote your likability with a domain name to match:

e.g. www.CherylStrongFinancial.com

Conversely, if you have urban offices and a large firm, expand your domain. You could even incorporate the city in the title:

e.g. www.AtlantaWealthAdvisors.com

Wherever you fall on the financial spectrum, play to your strengths and choose the domain that best represents you and your firm.

3. Be Concise

Domains are less about being clever and more about being concise. That’s partially why Amazon and Apple do such great online business.

While we can debate the pros and cons of domain names for days, the ultimate goal is simple. We want clients to visit your website and get on your roster.

The only question is: how easily can we facilitate that process?

3 Extra Tips for Brainstorming a Domain Name

Here are a few rules to keep in mind as you brainstorm a new domain name:

  • Demand a Dotcom: Don’t mess around with .net, .biz, .us or anything but .com. Unless you’re a truly massive company, avoid .org as well. The “.com” extension works around the globe and is by far the most popular option for modern domain names.
  • Networking Friendly: Think of your domain name as your digital handshake. Does it look good on the back of your business card? Does the URL fit properly? Consider its appeal in the real world before registering the domain.
  • Finish Strong: If you’re unsure of your choices, you’ll never go wrong with a few power words and a portmanteau (two words combined). Matched alongside your city, your personal name, or your company title, consider ending the domain with “wealth management,” “financial,” or “advisors.”

Finally, know that the growing power of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) extends even to your domain name. At the end of the day, your domain name is a string of keywords telling search engines like Google how to feature your site.

Choose the right domain name, and lay the foundation for the rest of your website’s long-term success.

Conclusion

While we want you to get the best domain for your business, don’t torture yourself in the process. This shouldn’t be as strenuous as naming a child, and realistically, having a solid digital presence is much more valuable than perfecting your URL.

Once you narrow down your list of domain names, you can easily register them with a hosting provider like GoDaddy or SiteGround.