4 SEO Tips for Financial Advisors

SEO is never easy, but it’s especially difficult for anyone working in financial services or the health and wellness space, including everyone from nutritionists to personal trainers to doctors. Google is constantly trying to improve their algorithm so they can reliably help their users find answers to the questions they’re asking.

As we all know, there’s a lot of misinformation out there, and it’s not hard to find it, even with search engines like Google doing their best to prevent them from rising to the top of searches (yes, social media is a major factor, but that’s a discussion for a different blog post). This is why Google created their EAT standards and incorporated them into just about every aspect of their algorithm: to help their users find information they can trust.

But you can Google “best coffee near me” and if you end up going with one of Google’s top results and it turns out to not, in fact, be the best coffee near you, the worst thing that can happen is your coffee is doesn’t live up to your expectations – or maybe it does live up to your expectations, but it could have been even better had you known about the cafe that actually serves the best coffee in town. The point is, the stakes are pretty low.

Contrast that with looking for advice about the best diet for someone with diabetes. If Google directs you to the right information, you could successfully get your blood pressure under control, and maybe even scale back on your insulin. If Google directs you to the wrong information, the results could be disastrous or even fatal, and Google really does not want to be responsible for that.

The same could be said of looking for advice about whether to invest in the stock market and/or which companies to invest in. If Google directs you to valuable information, you could get rich. If Google directs you to misinformation, you could lose your life savings, and again, Google does not want to be responsible for that.

How to Use SMART Content Marketing Goals to Drive Results for Your Business

smart content marketing goals

Content marketing is like anything else: you need to know what you want your content to achieve, and you need to be SMART about setting and achieving those goals.

There is a lot of content out there about the definition of a SMART goal, so I won’t spend too much time on it here. I’ll just briefly remind you that the acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time sensitive.

If you’ve been blogging for a while now, but not seeing results from it, the problem could be that you haven’t taken the time to develop SMART content marketing goals before creating your content. Let’s turn that around with these tips.

The Content Marketing Tools I Use to Optimize My Content Creation Process

content marketing tools

When I was in college, there was a bead store just off campus that I would walk past almost every day. I resisted as long as I could, but finally the day came when I walked in and it was all over. I became fascinated with the idea of making my own jewelry because I could make whatever I wanted!

But I needed much more than just beads. I needed wires to put the beads on. I needed pliers to manipulate those wires, wire cutters for trimming those wires to the right length, and clamps for compressing the small tubes of metal that would hold the wire in place. Essentially, I needed the right tools. Without them, my beautiful jewelry was just a handful of beads.

The same goes for my content marketing strategy.

When I started out, I was basically a freelance writer who provided blog posts (as well as other forms of written content) to my clients. But as I learned more about SEO and the need for a comprehensive content strategy, the more I realized I needed to invest in the right tools.

Without the right tools, you’re just shooting in the dark with your content creation process, which is a great way to waste a lot of time and effort. It might seem tedious to do your keyword research and analyze your headline before you start writing anything, but that effort is going to pay off more than creating content without a strategy ever could.

With that in mind, I thought I would go over the content marketing tools I use in my own content creation process and how each one helps elevate my content from just another blog to a comprehensive content strategy.

writing services

How to Write the Perfect Bio To Close the Deal

I talk a lot about the ability of a good content marketing strategy to attract, engage, and convert online leads, and yet I have somehow missed talking about one of the most crucial pieces of content when it comes to closing the deal: your bio. Your bio is a must-see for anyone who is considering

How to Create a Marketing Persona

how to create a marketing persona

For Christmas one year my mom bought my four-year-old cousin whatever the hottest toy for four year olds was that year and my cousin was ecstatic. My aunt (not the kid’s mom, but another aunt) was utterly baffled because she had never heard of the toy and my cousin’s enthusiasm took my aunt completely by surprise. My aunt asked my cousin what shows she watched where they advertise such toys and the poor kid didn’t even know what the word “advertise” meant. She just gave my aunt a confused look and went back to playing with her new favorite toy.

Not only does my aunt hardly ever watch TV, but even if she were to watch, it wouldn’t be children’s cartoons, and toymakers tend to advertise almost exclusively during children’s programming. They know parents (and in-the-know aunts, like my mom) would be making the purchasing decision, and despite the fact that parents and cool aunts are more likely to watch news and other adult programming than cartoons, the toymakers also know that lots of adults who don’t have kids and don’t care about the latest toys are also watching the news and other TV programming for adults, so it’s a waste of time for them to spend their advertising dollars there. While the younger kids might not have the independence to buy the toys themselves, toymakers know they can rely on kids begging their parents for the toys they see advertised.

The advertisers had narrowed down their target audience to kids within a certain age range and they knew what programs those kids were watching and what programs they were not watching, so they spent their advertising dollars accordingly.

Can you imagine how much money they would have lost if they had paid for their commercials to be played on all the networks during all kinds of different programming, day and night? They never would have been able to sell enough toys to pay for all that air time, not only because of the expense, but because so much of that expense would have been wasted by showing the ad to people who aren’t interested.

A Tale of Two Marketers

a tale of two marketers

If you’ve spent any time at all reading this blog or watching the videos on my YouTube channel, you know I’m all about giving people the tips and resources they need to write their own blog posts that successfully attract, engage, and convert online leads. But even with all this free knowledge, researching, writing, and editing content is still a fairly time-intensive process, and it’s not always the best use of your time. Consider this story of two marketers:

newsletter

What to Include in a Newsletter: How to Write A Newsletter That Gets Opened and Drives Conversions

The idea of a newsletter can be kind of intimidating for small business owners. What’s considered “newsworthy”? Do my clients really want to hear about this, or am I just shoving more junk in their inbox that will get deleted without having been opened? Add to that the idea that a newsletter is just more

Google

Google Algorithm Update: BERT

Table of Contents What Does this Google Algorithm Update Mean for Search Engine Marketers? How Long Tail and Short-Tail Keywords Affect Online Visibility After the Google Algorithm Update How Can I Optimize for the Latest Google Algorithm Update? Keep Up to Date with Evolutions in Language Create Value Google has made another major update to