I hope you get value out of this blog post.
Looking to attract more clients online?
Learning search engine optimization is a good decision since it can help you stay competitive and reach your target audience effectively online.
It involves optimizing your website and online presence to rank higher in search engine results and make it easier for prospective clients to find you.
A word of caution: With the introduction of ChatGPT, Google has been hard at work trying to figure out its business model. It has started putting answers to search queries right at the top using its Gemini model. This will continue to happen, pushing the site results further down the page. While learning SEO is essential and will remain so, understand that providing clear answers that perhaps get highlighted by Google's Gemini AI should also be your goal. But, first, you need to understand the basics and this is what we will cover next.
Think of SEO as a way to help your website appear higher on the search results page when someone looks for anything related to your services online.
When someone searches online, the search engine runs through its index to provide the most relevant results.
For example, if you search for “how investors earn money”, you will see the following results:
Naturally, you would see the results that ranked first, visit them, and you would likely find the answer you’re looking for.
When you understand this process and tailor your website content and structure to align with what search engines prioritize, you can boost your site’s ranking.
If your site is at the top of the search results, it would lead to more visitors, and eventually, clients for your business.
⚠️ Note: This article serves as a primer. I will discuss the topics in each section in detail on linked articles, so stay tuned. ?
Keyword research is the process of identifying the terms and phrases that people use in search engines so you can optimize your content around those terms.
What’s awesome here is that there are tools and techniques that can help you with this, starting Google’s own search engine.
A good example of this is the autosuggest feature in Google, which automatically shows you what people are searching for according to what you entered.
For example, if you search for “tax refund status”, Google will show you what queries people search for related to that term.
There are also dedicated keyword research tools that can give you more information about those keywords such as:
These tools can provide you with detailed analyses of keyword trends, search intent, and even competitor rankings.
The downside is that they aren’t free, so I suggest you start with either the autosuggest feature I showed you or some freemium tools out there.
But what you need to do here is collect a comprehensive list of potential keywords — you can even start by looking at what your competitors are doing. ?
As with everything else, not all keywords are created equal.
Two facts here:
This is where strategic thinking comes into play.
You need to assess the relevance of each keyword to your services, how popular these keywords are, and the competition level (how many people are writing about them).
You also need to consider the user intent behind each keyword — like what the searcher is really looking for, and if you can provide it.
Once you have the keywords to target, it’s time to talk about what you can do when creating individual posts and pages.
There are three basic strategies I want to show you:
This refers to creating valuable and engaging content that incorporates your target keywords naturally.
You can do this easily:
With keywords in the headings, subheadings, and body text, search engines would be able to understand and rank your pages better for relevant queries.
But always remember that the goal is to serve your visitors with the best content possible — don’t force keywords.
If you find this a little hassle to do on your own, there are tools out there like SurferSEO that can help you.
These tools have content editors that contain on-page SEO scores that would enable you to optimize your website content more easily.
Title tags and meta descriptions are the first things you see when browsing search engine results (it’s the title and the text below it).
A good meta title has the following elements:
Meta descriptions should also provide a brief overview of what users can expect from the page to encourage clicks.
Now, some people underestimate the importance of these, especially meta descriptions, since Google sometimes plucks out a paragraph in the content to use as a description.
But make sure to provide a good title and description for your title since they can help entice searchers to visit your website.
Header tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) refer to the heading that should be at the top of each section in your pages or posts.
Not only do they improve the readability of your visitors, but they also help search engines understand the hierarchy of information on your page.
In addition, using structured data or a schema markup can improve your website’s optimization by providing search engines with clues about your page’s content.
On the side of the search results page, you may also gain featured snippets, which others call “position zero” that directly answer the searcher’s query.
Now let’s talk about strategies you can do outside of the pages and posts on your website that can increase your site’s ranking.
Here are the basics:
When we say backlinks, it refers to links from other websites back to your own website, which acts something like endorsements.
Unfortunately, not all backlinks are created equal:
Links from good and relevant websites are like receiving a vote of confidence from the industry, which tells search engines your content is valuable and trustworthy.
Be that as it may, never buy links from people as most likely, those links would come from spammy sites or networks.
The best way you can build backlinks is by guest posting on other websites and sending a link back to your own website.
Technically, social media signals do not directly influence search engine rankings — they don’t count.
However, engaging on social media increases your content’s visibility, which can then lead to more shares and potentially more backlinks to your website.
These interactions can:
Think of it as creating more entry points for users to find your website.
This not only increases the likelihood of generating indirect SEO benefits like how backlinks do, but they directly contribute to the overall online presence and authority of your site.
You might not heard of local SEO yet, but it has something to do with optimizing your website’s visibility in local search results.
Let’s discuss more about what it is:
Basically, local SEO is another brand of search engine optimization that deals with improving the visibility of your website or brand in local search results.
As a financial advisor, you also need this since it’s likely that you serve specific geographic regions and you want to reach potential clients in your vicinity.
For example, if you search for “best financial advisor in Kansas”, you will see the following results:
When you optimize for local SEO, you will be able to improve your online presence to appear more prominently in searches related to location.
Key elements of local SEO include:
Let’s get into detail on these elements.
GMB is a free tool from Google that allows businesses to manage their online presence across Google, like in search and maps.
When you create and optimize a GMB listing, you will be able to present key information about your business.
The information prospective clients can get includes:
What you need to do here isn’t that complicated — you simply need to make sure your listing is complete, accurate, and up-to-date.
You should also encourage satisfied clients to leave positive reviews on your GMB profile to boost your visibility and credibility.
Local citations refer to those mentions of your financial advisory business’s name, address, and phone number on other web pages.
Similar to GMB optimization, you simply need to ensure the consistency and accuracy of your NAP information across directories and platforms.
Online reviews, like on GM, Yelp, and other sites, act as powerful indicators of your firm’s reputation and reliability.
As I explained earlier, just encourage your happy clients to share their positive experiences as those can signal search engines that your business is trustworthy and valuable.
Part of talking about the basics is knowing how to track and analyze SEO performance.
After all, you won’t be able to improve your SEO performance if you don’t know which part you lack or excel at, right?
With this, let’s start with the metrics:
There are a lot of metrics in SEO, but for starters, you only need to track and analyze a few of them:
First off, traffic sources help provide insights into where your visitors are coming from while keyword rankings inform you how well your website performs for targeted terms.
Engagement metrics, like bounce rates and time on site, help you understand the quality and relevance of your content to your audience.
Conversion rates on the other hand indicate if your website visitors are taking desired actions like filling out a contact form or scheduling a consultation.
If you still have the bandwidth for more, it might also help to look at the backlink quality and quantity to see your site’s authority and trustworthiness.
Similar to keyword research, there are tools you can use to simplify this process:
GA and GSC are both free and are considered foundational tools in offering insights into your site traffic, user behavior, and more.
If you need a more in-depth analysis, Ahrefs and SEMrush provide extra tools like backlink analysis, ranking monitoring, and more.
Although they are premium tools, you can use them to create detailed reports you can customize to track specific metrics.
If this is your first time learning about SEO, it can seem a little daunting and overwhelming at first.
The key to success here is actually more on continuous improvement and adaptation rather than on implementing the strategies.
The most impactful SEO strategy is one that grows and adjusts to your business and audience’s needs.
