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Are you looking for ways to generate more interest from local clients? A strong local SEO strategy may be a good option for you.
Local competition is fierce, and if your firm is not on the top for local search terms, you can be sure competing firms are. Local SEO offers great ROI. Through its targeted results, firms that invest in local SEO have observed a greater ROI.
Since many advisory firms are not leveraging the power of local SEO, advisors that invest in it are likely to gain a competitive edge over other local firms..
These are 11 tips that will help you position your website so that your firm can attractive more prospective leads locally:
The title tag and meta description tag are the most important tags.
See the example below:
If you want to reach local prospects, include the area your financial advisory practice serves. Focus on 1 targeted keyword per page, and include it as close to the beginning of the title tag as possible.
Make sure your meta description includes your target keyword, target city/town, and some call to action to click through to your website.
Focus on major online business directories like Yelp, Merchant Circle, CitySearch, and others. Find local directories where you can list your firm, and try reaching out to your local newspaper’s website and your local Chamber of Commerce for inclusion on their sites.
These are a few search queries you can use to find local directories and listings:
Also, ensure your firm’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) are consistent on the major citation data aggregators such as Infogroup, Neustar/Localeze, Acxiom, and Factual. Make sure you correct all issues with misspellings, abbreviations, lack of suite number, and incorrect phone number.
To check the consistency of your practice’s NAP information, use the Moz Local tool.
Use a solid description, business categories, business hours, types of payment accepted (if applicable). You also want to upload your firm’s logo and photos of your office and team members. Fill in all sections completely.
To claim your listing, visit google.com/business.
Bing also has a similar page for local businesses, Bing Places for Business. Make sure your firm is listed on Bing Places, too.
According to Search Engine Land, 84% of people trust online reviews as much as personal referrals. Furthermore, 7 out of 10 clients will leave a review if asked.
Google has implied that “high quality, positive reviews from your clients will improve your firm’s visibility.”
These are your key action items to leverage your client reviews for their full potential:
Popular reputation marketing vendors include Reputation Loop, Get Five Stars, Trust Pilot, and Vendasta.
If interested in working with these vendors, make sure you understand their approach to compliance requirements.
Software such as these work great if you have a large book of happy clients.
The manual approach works best if you have a small book of happy clients.
Structured data, which is also referred to as schema.org markup or schema markup, can be integrated with your website’s code to provide the search engines with more detailed information about your practice, including
According to Queue, the Association for Computing Machinery’s magazine, only 31.3% of ALL websites are using structured data.
This percentage is even lower for financial advisory sites.
Schema is a great opportunity to make your firm stand out amongst local competition.
Where to start: Use Google’s free Structured Data Testing Tool to check if your site is properly marked up with schema
There are an infinite number of ways to build links back to your advisory firm’s website. Focus on sustainable strategies that you can build out over time.
There are numerous link building resources out there, so I will not detail strategies here. If you are interested in reading more, check out these guides and sites:
Outside of link building, pay attention to anchor text, and be sure to target your firm’s name in the vast majority (50-70%) of the anchor text that you use.
For your remaining backlinks, target your firm’s main services and location, such as “tax planning in Phoenix” or “Seattle education planning”.
Effective use of backlinks and anchor text are critical to your SEO if you want to improve your web presence in competitive cities are niches for financial services.
For your citations, focus on quality over quantity. For online marketing, quality correlates with authority, and you want to add citations and listings on sites that will showcase your expertise and authority.
As a financial advisor, start with these sites (if you’re a member)
There are also other smaller networks, such as the Kingdom Advisors Network
After you have added a listing for your firm on these sites, think about any other non-industry related organizations you’re involved, any alumni groups, or local organizations that you’ve worked with.
Has your firm been eligible or nominated for an award? Make sure you get a listing from the organization that grants that award!
Regardless of which strategy you decide to use, stick with it and you will soon reap the benefits with more traffic to your site and more prospective clients in your sales pipeline.
If you have any questions on using local SEO for your firm, be sure to reach out by filling out the form to your right!