We know (from talking to many founders in the financial services industry) that most aren’t happy with the results they’re getting from the content marketing they’re doing in-house.
They either aren’t happy with the content they’re producing, they don’t know if they’re actually getting leads/customers from content, they don’t have a way to drive traffic to articles, and many times don’t have a strategy in place to acquire new business from the channel.
This article is meant to help you get better results – plain and simple.
What does that mean? It means more leads, more sales, and better-qualified traffic to each post you publish.
That is our goal when creating an effective SEO strategy in our agency, and that’s our goal in this article: get better results from your content marketing efforts. Results being defined as “conversions” from content:
How do we do this? We’ve identified the challenges of marketing financial services, and we’ve developed a system that fixes those mistakes. That’s the system we use on ourselves and for dozens of clients via our agency.
We will cover content creation, driving traffic to your content, and strategies for acquiring new business from your content marketing efforts!
Mistakes Most Financial Content Marketers Make
First, let’s review the mistakes other financial content marketers make. It will set the stage for each part of our process. Fixing this is the *why* behind our SEO process:
1. No Real Content Strategy
When it comes to search engine optimization for financial services, most content marketers start producing blog posts on the general topic of their business without a real guiding light of what topics to pursue first and why.
It’s the Wild West out there for SEO strategy for financial services companies. We often see this – a company will say something like, “We’re financial advisors?. Okay, I’ll see you in a month and will deliver eight articles related to financial planning.
How do they come up with the topics of that month?
What we see is either (a) just random brainstorming – people at the company say, “I’ve been wanting to write a post on X”, so they write a post on X, or they just sort of randomly think of ideas that they believe are relevant and can rank.
Or (b), even worse, they prioritize SEO keywords by search volume without actually considering if those topics will be helpful to their business.
These strategies lead to the problem many companies come to us with, “We have all these blog posts (and perhaps a lot of traffic), but we aren’t getting a lot of business ROI from them.“
2. Writing at the wrong knowledge level
Most of your business customers are not beginners. Financial sector businesses, in particular, sell to titles like founders or high net worth individuals who are successful in their own right. They are not interested in basic finance stuff that won’t move the needle. All they want to is to know they can trust you with their problem and you can solve it for them, while they focus on what matters to them.
But you hire writers or content marketers who don’t know much about your target audience.
A typical financial advisor will delegate to outsourced freelancers and give them minimal guidance or background of the business- typically just a keyword and asked to write a post.
The writer will perform a Google search for the keyword you’re trying to rank for, read what everyone else has written, and basically regurgitate the same information into a blog post in different words.
Sadly, this leaves your company with unoriginal, uninteresting content. So even if you happen to get a good topic from mistake #1 above, even rank in search results, it won’t impress your target audience enough to content.
It further hurts your chances of getting quality leads from your content.
3. Lack real promotion
Most content marketers in the finance industry do not promote their content.
They publish their content and wait for Google to rank them in most cases. It takes months to go by without much traffic, and that’s a terrible experience for your business.
Some who try to promote just tweet it out a few times or share on LinkedIn from the company or founder’s account. That’s not really promotion. It doesn’t really drive any real or qualified leads to your business – at least not immediately.
4. No measurement of conversions
Finally, most content marketers or agencies aren’t willing to hold themselves accountable for the business results of their content. By results, we mean; leads, sales, traffic attributable to the content they create.
Instead, they say content is for creating awareness (top-of-the-funnel) and counting traffic or social shares, or impressions only and convincing you that you’ll eventually get business.
In our approach, that’s not good enough. We said at the beginning that our strategy’s ultimate goal is to get conversions from the content we create, which separates us from 99% of other content marketers out there.
Financial Services SEO Done Right (4 Easy Steps)
Our system is designed to correct each of these mistakes.
1. Content Strategy
You can’t achieve SEO success without a roadmap. That’s why the first step in our process is always to develop a content strategy. It ensures that all of your SEO efforts focus on topics that will convert into new business.
The SEO content strategy process begins with:
- Understanding your customer pain point and the solutions they are looking for
- Building a bottom-up content strategy off of your customer research
Step1: Understanding your customer pain points
Here are a few questions to get you thinking about the right topics for your finance SEO content strategy:
- What are the most common questions potential clients ask you?
- What problems do they need help solving?
- What solutions do you offer?
- Why should someone use your firm instead of a competitor?
Once you understand the types of questions and topics your target clients are interested in, you can start creating content that addresses their needs.
Next, derive SEO keywords from your customer pain points and keywords your best customer is actually searching for.
Identifying the best keywords with a high conversion intent starts with knowing your customer’s top pain points to lead them to purchase.
The more specific, the more the topic itself will filter for people who are your best customers and have exact pain points your product solves and is likely to convert.
We wrote a comprehensive post here on how to develop top SEO keywords for financial advisors. The post illustrates how you can understand your customers in-depth. Knowing your potential customers inside out enables you to develop financial content ideas that your competitors won’t target.
Step 2: Build a bottom-up content strategy off of your customer research
After identifying your best customers and their most pressing pain points, you’ll use that information to find keywords and topics to target and drive conversions quickly.
To do this, we recommend using a bottom-up approach to SEO keyword research. This means starting with long-tail keywords (very specific keywords and usually have low search volume) and working your way up to more general terms.
For example, if you’re a financial planner who specializes in retirement planning for baby boomers, a few long-tail keywords you might want to target are:
- retirement planning for baby boomers
- retirement income for baby boomers
- baby boomer retirement trends
These are all pretty specific terms that someone would use if they were close to retirement and starting to think about their financial planning options. And because they’re specific, they’re also more likely to convert than general terms like “financial planning” or “retirement planning.”
Once you’ve covered your list of long-tail keywords, you can start working on more related general terms. For example, if you’re targeting the keyword “retirement planning for baby boomers,” you might also want to target the keyword “retirement planning.”
You can use a tool like Google Keyword Planner or Moz Keyword Explorer to find related keywords and get estimated search volume data.
Remember, when you’re doing SEO for financial advisors, your ultimate goal is to generate leads and new business. So while it’s important to target high-traffic keywords, you also want to make sure you’re targeting keywords with a high intent to convert.
Now that we’ve covered content strategy let’s move on to financial content writing.
2. Write at the Proper Knowledge Level
When you’re writing SEO-friendly content for financial services, one of the most important things to keep in mind is your audience’s level of knowledge.
You don’t want to write too simple or complex content.
If it’s too simple, your potential clients will think you’re not knowledgeable enough to help them.
But if it’s too complex, they won’t be able to understand it, and they’ll get frustrated.
The goal is to find that sweet spot in the middle where your potential clients will think you’re smart and know what you’re talking about, but they’ll also be able to understand your content.
One way to determine the level of knowledge your audience has is to look at the keywords they are using to find your content.
If they use very basic keywords, you know they are probably not financial experts.
But if they are using very specific, technical keywords, you know they are probably financial experts.
You can also use Google Analytics to look at the average time people spend on your page.
If they spend a long time on your page, they are probably finding your content helpful and easy to understand.
But if they are bouncing off your page quickly, they are probably not finding your content helpful or easy to understand.
Once you’ve determined the level of knowledge of your potential clients, you can start writing high-quality content for your financial business that will actually be helpful and informative.
If you’re not sure of some types of content to write, here are a few SEO-friendly content types for financial businesses:
- Case studies
- How-to guides
- Industry news roundups
- Expert interviews
No matter what type of content you choose to write, make sure it’s well researched, well written and at the appropriate level of knowledge for your target audience.
If you do that, you’ll be well on your way to driving traffic and acquiring new businesses with SEO-friendly content.
3. Use the Two-Pronged Promotion Strategy
You need a two-pronged promotion strategy to get your SEO-friendly content in front of as many people as possible.
The first prong is paid traffic and the second prong is organic traffic.
Paid traffic is when you use advertising to promote your content.
Organic traffic is when you use SEO to promote your content.
Both paid and organic traffic have their own advantages and disadvantages, which we’ll discuss below.
Paid Traffic
Advantages:
- -You can get results quickly.
- -You have complete control over who sees your content.
- -You can target specific audiences with laser precision.
Disadvantages:
- -It can be expensive.
- -You need to pay to keep the traffic coming constantly.
- -The results stop as soon as you stop paying.
Organic Traffic
Advantages:
- -It’s free.
- -The results are long-lasting.
- -You build up a loyal following of readers over time.
Disadvantages:
- -It takes longer to see results.
- -You have less control over who sees your content.
- -The results can fluctuate depending on algorithm changes.
As you can see, there are both advantages and disadvantages to using paid and organic traffic to promote your SEO-friendly content.
The best strategy is to use a mix of both paid and organic traffic to get the most bang for your buck.
Start with paid traffic to get quick results, then supplement it with organic traffic to build a long-term, loyal following.
By using a mix of both paid and organic traffic, you’ll be able to drive traffic and acquire new business quickly and efficiently.
4. Track Your Conversion
Okay, so we’ve established that SEO can help you rank for relevant keywords and drive traffic to your site.
But how do you know if this traffic is actually leading to new business? The answer is in your conversion tracking.
Conversion tracking measures how many visitors to your site take the desired action, such as scheduling an initial consultation call.
This data is then used to improve your SEO strategy by identifying which keywords will most likely lead to conversions.
Is it worth paying for SEO? – Benefits of SEO for Financial Services
SEO can be an excellent investment for financial services companies. Here are some key benefits of SEO for financial services providers:
Increased traffic – The most immediate outcome of a well-planned SEO strategy is an increase in organic visits to your website. The more you rank higher for your most important keywords, the more people will see and click through to your site to read more content.
Improved conversions – SEO drives more traffic to your website and helps improve the quality of that traffic. By targeting people who are actively searching for your services, you’re more likely to convert them into paying customers.
Increased brand awareness – SEO is a great way to build brand awareness and create long-term visibility for your financial services company. As your website starts ranking higher for relevant keywords, people will begin to associate your brand with being a major player in finance.
Improved customer insights – SEO can also help you better understand your customers’ search behavior and needs. By analyzing the search engine data, you can get valuable insights into what people are looking for and how they’re searching for it. This information can improve your website content and target your SEO campaigns more effectively.
SEO is a long-term investment that can provide valuable results for financial services companies. SEO should be a key part of your marketing strategy if you’re looking to drive more traffic, increase conversions, and build brand awareness.
What should be included in SEO?
SEO for financial services should, at a minimum, include customer research, writing targeted content for your customers’ expertise level, promotion and conversion tracking. By taking a holistic approach to SEO, you can give your financial services firm the best chance to succeed online.
Is it Worth Paying for Financial Services SEO?
SEO is an integral part of any online marketing strategy, and it’s especially important for financial services firms. SEO can be a complex and time-consuming process, but it’s worth the investment. SEO provides an impressive return on investment (ROI), and it’s a great way to drive traffic and acquire new business.
If you’re looking for SEO services, be sure to partner with a company with experience in the financial services industry and knows how to get results.
How much should you pay for SEO Services?
This is a difficult question to answer because SEO pricing depends on several factors, including the size of your business, your budget, your SEO goals, and the competitive landscape.
However, you can expect some general prices from various service providers. For example, most SEO agencies in the United States charge between $100 and $250 per hour. SEO plans from these agencies typically range from $2500 to $10,000 per month.
Overseas SEO companies may charge as little as $0.05-$0.50 per hour, but it’s important to remember that you get what you pay for.
If you’re looking for high-quality SEO services, it’s worth paying a bit more.
The best way to determine how much you should pay for SEO services is to consult with a reputable SEO agency for financial services and ask for a customized quote based on your specific needs and goals.
Are you looking for a financial services SEO agency you can hold accountable to leads and traffic?
SEO for finance companies is not easy. In fact, SEO in any industry is becoming more and more difficult. With so many changes to Google’s algorithm, it can be tough to keep up. That’s where we come in.
We help our clients identify their target audience, then create content that speaks to them and help you improve search engine rankings. Learn more about our SEO services for financial services providers.
Personal finance writing is a great way to connect with your audience and build trust. However, if you want to make the most of your personal finance blog, you must ensure that your content is SEO-friendly. Learn more about our financial writing services.
SEO audit for financial companies: We offer SEO audit services to help you understand how your financial services website performs and what changes need to be made to improve your SEO. Our team will review your web pages and provide a detailed report, including our findings and recommendations. Learn more about our SEO Site Audit Services.
I’m an ex-banker, agency owner, and SEO & Content Expert for Financial Service Providers & Personal Finance Bloggers. I leverage my 15 years of expertise in financial writing & SEO to drive more traffic to your blog. Whether you want more traffic to your website for new customers, Ad revenue, or affiliate sales, I can help.
