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In this pod/blog I am going to talk about how financial advisors can get more people to go to their websites using some super dope Google moves. Is your website just hanging out there lonely with nobody paying any attention to it? There is something that can be done about it and I’m about to teach you about it!
In this pod/blog you’ll learn:
- How much of a time and money commitment is takes to increase your Google rank
- How to increase financial advisor website traffic
- Website optimization tips for financial planners and advisors
- Why financial planner websites typically stink and what to do about it
- What is long form content
- A success story of a financial advisor who went from 6 clients to 50 clients by driving massive traffic to his website using long form content in
For those of new to my blog/podcast, I am Sara Grillo. Pleased to meet you!
I have a fun and irreverent weekly newsletter in which I talk about financial advisor lead generation. Please subscribe to follow me.
I’m joined by Samantha Russell of Twenty over Ten in this podcast. We put together the points below on how to increase to your website as a financial advisor.
Getting more traffic to your financial advisor website is hard freaking work!
I am in Google position one for a few keyword search terms, and let me tell you that it freaking rocks. When I first started out on YouTube, I was making three videos a day with no money coming in the door. It took time. And I had two kids under two years old at the time.
(Btw here are some definitions for the terms I just used. Sorry to vocab bomb you).
- Google position one: the first entry that comes up when you enter a search term into Google
- Keyword search term: the words you type into Google that bring up certain content.
That is the first thing I want to tell you. It’s not going to happen overnight. You want to think of it like you are creating marketing assets that will accrue value over time. Kind of like a dividend stock or a bond is a long term investment.
You financial advisors hate it when a client says, here’s my $100,000. Turn it into $1,000,000 and you have two months to do it.
Saaaaay what?
That’s not how it works. Marketing works similar to how investments work. It’s a long term game. Now you may get lucky and get a viral hit right away but that’s not the normal case.
Financial advisor success story: a great website was all he needed!
There once was a financial advisor who went independent and launched his own firm. He was 33 at the time and did not have a big brand behind him. So he started writing long form content.
- Long form content: 1800-2400 going in depth on one very granular topic
The specific keyword search term he used was “can capital gains push me into a higher tax bracket.” Over two years he went from six family friends being his clients to 50 C-Suite executives mostly from his local area. All because of this blog post blowing up and getting more people to his financial advisor website.
The point is that you don’t need to be creating a new piece of content every day. Create content that answers questions that the type of people you want to work with have.
Google snippets are the Holy Grail
If you are a financial advisor who wants to drive more people to your website, there is a really price thing and it is being featured in the Google snippets.
Google snippet:
You search something, and you don’t even have to click and go to that person’s website to find out the answer. Google pulls the answer into a little answer box for you. This is also called “Google position zero.”
Here is an example of a Google snippet about Social Security.
The financial advisor in the story mentioned above has that; he is in Google position zero (Google snippet) for the search term we mentioned.
Optimizing content is important
Like any asset, Google content must be refreshed. This is called optimization. It is recommended that at least every six months you are going back and optimizing your top performing posts. When you optimize a post, you want to:
- Republish it with a new publish date so Google knows it is fresh
- You never, ever, ever want to change the url. You will break the link.
- You can add new imagery
- You can add new outbound links (linking to another piece of content)
- You can add new inbound links (linking to your content from your own content)
You don’t want to have an orphan post. For every blog you have, you want to have:
- Two incoming links
- Two outgoing links
What is an outbound link?
If I write a piece today on the new LinkedIn stories feature, I want to make sure that in my post I hyperlink certain terms to other content. For example, I would hyperlink the words “social media strategy” to an old blog post on my website talking about social media strategy. Remember you want to keep people on your own site.
Also, this will help improve your Google rank because the more time people spend on your website for a particular topic, the more that Google will see you as an authority on that particular topic. It’s helping Google crawl your site and understand how things are interconnected.
Key point: You want at least two links going to another blog post on your website.
What is an incoming link?
You want to go back to old blog posts and link to the new blog from those old pieces. This helps direct traffic to your new content and again, it keeps people on your site.
Most people forget to do this.
By the way, are you enjoying my blog/podcast? If so, please consider joining my membership. You’ll learn a ton about how financial advisor lead generation and I’m great to work with. Here’s more information about it below.
How financial advisors can get more website traffic on Google
Financial advisors who want to get more website traffic using Google should remember this simple acronym.
EAT
- Expertise
- Authority (domain authority)
- Trust
Twenty over Ten wrote a great article on it that you can read here.
You may have been a financial advisor for 30 years, but if you just launched a new website, your website has no authority on Google. You build domain authority by getting other people to link to your website. To established authority, you have to get people to come visit your website and stay on there a long period of time, to not just come on there and bounce off right away.
There are lots of different things that impact domain authority.
- The length of your site. How long it’s been out there.
- How in depth you go on a particular topic. If you an write for 1800-2400 words, it will help you be seen as an authority because in Google’s eyes it means you are able to talk at length about the topic at hand.
Now, let me pause on this for a minute.
Financial advisors, stop going broad. Stop going wide. Go narrow. Because it’s going to make your practice better in general. But it’s also going to make your marketing better.
Said differently: stop marketing if it just going to be the same high level mish mosh. Let me tell you that you are never going to beat Vanguard or Fidelity on the topic of “what is a Roth IRA.” You’re competing with a million dollar marketing budget or probably even more. Pay attention to the little niche details that nobody else has the energy to pay attention to.
I DO NOT WANT TO HAVE TO WRITE ANOTHER BLOG FOR ANY OF YOU FINANCIAL ADVISORS ENTITLED “WHAT IS A ROTH IRA.” OKAY? I DO NOT WANT TO DO IT,
I’m often hired as a ghostwriter and the financial advisors hands me three other financial advisors’ blogs and tells me, “Imitate what they’re saying.”
UMMM, HELLO???? FINANCIAL ADVISORS, YOU ARE NEVER GOING TO BE SEEN AS AN AUTHORITY IF YOU ARE COPYING OTHER PEOPLE.
If I, as a ghostwriter, could be hired to do your job of expounding upon a particular topic, then how much of an expert are you? What does that say about your level of expertise?
Did you ever think about getting more knowledge instead of copying other financial advisors?
So many of you financial advisors are just in the game because you are the one to show up at the grandkids’ nursery school graduation. Or that you’ll handhold the client like heck. With the younger generations though this is going to become less valuable. You need to have expertise if you want to command the value you deserve.
I’m not a good marketing consultant and this is not a good podcast if I don’t say things like this. You know that I love you but sometimes there is going to be a little bit of tough love here on this podcast. Stay up later at night. Heck, I got four kids. How am I out there getting game on Google are you’re not?
And then there’s Antonio on top of the four kids. That’s like having five kids, dammit.
Think about who you want to target and think about the types of things that they would be searching for. If you don’t know this, then pay attention the next time you meet with these types of clients and write down what they say.
Let me write that again.
You want to write down the exact words they use and don’t edit them. Because if you do that you’ll add all sorts of financial advisor mumbo jumbo in there and that’s not how non-financial people talk. If you want to get non-financial people to be attracted to your website that then it what you do. If you use financial advisor terminology then guess who is going to be attracted to your website – other financial advisors!
Key point: Meet with your clients or prospects and then write down the exact words they say when they ask you questions. Do not change what they say. Do not edit their words.
By the way, once you get the lead, here is some advice about how to move them through your sales funnel as a financial advisor.
Niche focus helps Google send you more traffic
The more niche specific you are, the faster you will get authority on Google. If you are targeting a small niche segment of the population, you are going to have only a small amount of queries a month, but the people who visit you will be more likely to be qualified.
This I have found to be true. I niched down on my YouTube channel for the term “equity research analyst” and “equity research analyst interview.” I make a video every week or so on this topic (yes, I am beating this keyword to death) and use these keywords. I mention my e-book on this topic in the middle of the video. And voila – people buy my book, and I am in touch with them over email. It draws in people who are focused on this topic.
I don’t get a million people a week to watch my videos but I’m selling e-books and my newsletter list is growing rapidly.
You can use Google Analytics and Google Search Console (both free tools) to figure out which keyword terms to niche down on. You may only get 30 people a month on your website, but if the chairman of Coca-Cola is one of those people then that is successful lead generation for a financial advisor. Wouldn’t you say?
Beat the keyword term to death doing this:
- Write about it in five million different ways or more
- Create a checklist
- Make an e-book about it
- Create an infographic about it
How to optimize a financial advisor website on Google
With your website in general, there are a few things you need to do if you are a financial advisor who wants to get more website traffic.
- Create content on a particular subject that will drive traffic to the site. Update your website at least twice a month with this content.
- When you set up the main page of your site (home, services, etc.), use the formula of primary keyword, secondary keyword, and company name in your page title. Do that for every single page.
- Get keyword research ideas from Ubersuggest.
- Follow these SEO tips from Neil Patel.
Example:
- Your page title for your home page should be something like: Financial planner for women in Manhattan/Sara Grillo
- The secondary keyword is often your location. Often financial advisors like to work in their own community.
Another example:
- Financial planner for expatriates in Norfolk, Virginia/YZ company name.
How do you find out which keywords you want to use? You may need to hire an SEO expert to do this. You can also use tools like Google Search Console to find out how you are showing up for those terms already.
FINANCIAL ADVISORS – THERE IS NO REASON YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE HOOKED UP.
A 22 year old could do this. Do you have a son or daughter in college? Ask them to watch a YouTube tutorial and learn how to do it. It costs nothing so don’t even try to make the cost excuse.
You should also make sure to optimize your Google My Business listing. Put photos there and make sure it’s easy for Google to understand what your business is and what it does.
Sara’s upshot
The three things that financial advisors should do to get more people to go their website are:
- Set up and optimize your Google My Business
- Go back and look at your website. When was the last time you added a new blog post or updated it? Update it at least twice a month and hire it out if you need to.
- Think about what keywords you want to be found for and create a keyword tree that represents the search queries that people would have within that group. Start creating content that has those keywords.
Thanks for reading the blog and I hope I have inspired you financial advisors to get a ton more people to go to your websites.
What’d ya think? Was this helpful?
If yes…
Learn what to say to prospects on social media messenger apps without sounding like a washing machine salesperson. This e-book contains 47 financial advisor LinkedIn messages, sequences, and scripts, and they are all two sentences or less.
You could also consider my financial advisor social media membership which teaches financial advisors how to get new clients and leads from LinkedIn.
Thanks for reading. I hope you’ll at least join my weekly newsletter about financial advisor lead generation.
See you in the next one!
-Sara G
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