When it comes to marketing the websites of financial institutions, you will be met with a vast army of competitors. These will be challenging you to that sweet spot at the top of the coveted Google search rankings.
Any internet search these days could potentially yield you millions of hits, but out of those results, you are very unlikely to go to the second page. And the fact of the matter is, it’s primarily the first handful of websites that will be visited. So, if you are not punching into the top couple of results on any search term that you are linked to, you are going to struggle to find the visitors that your business needs.
Getting up into those top results is an ongoing battle. You will constantly need to work at pushing your website to get there be. You can guarantee that there are potentially thousands of other people doing the same for their company. The fact of the matter is that you can’t all be top of the search results.
Search Engine Optimization Should Be The Central Tenant Of Your Marketing Strategy
Search engine optimization is essential for any business website, that relies on Google searches to draw their visitors in. Having an SEO strategy to market your website is essential. And ensuring that this strategy is continually worked, and adapted as Google’s algorithms change is vital.
Alternative finance and the crypto-currency market are currently one of the most significant growth areas out there. With more new currencies emerging with high frequency, and an increase in innovative financial products being delivered by new start-ups, it’s hard to stand out from the digital crowd.
Utilizing some key SEO services will allow you to get the best position in the search rankings as possible.
There are three main areas that SEO focuses on. Firstly, on-page SEO looks at how your page functions, how it looks, and the information that is contained within it. Keeping all of this to the right standard is the bottom line when it comes to finding any success for your site. The next area to look at is off-page SEO, which looks at taking your website and sharing it on social media, linking it to more influential websites. Lastly, local SEO can be particularly beneficial if you need to get your customers to find you in a physical location. For example, if you have a brick-and-mortar store or an office.
Keyword Analysis Is Essential
Your customers will go on a journey to find your product. But that journey starts with the empty search box. Knowing the types of words and phrases they are using in their searches will allow you to implement those words and phrases within your content.
Having as much relevance to any potential searches is vital. Your content needs to be written in a way that is rich in the types of keywords that people use in their searches.
Using tools such as Google Analytics, you can measure the frequency of specific searches bringing people to your site.
Google’s AdWords is an excellent way of making sure your site features at the top of any search terms. Having a sponsored link does cost you money, and can be a good short term option. However, it needs to be a small part of a much bigger puzzle.
Quality Content Leads To Being An Authority
Letting Google’s automatic web crawlers hunt for information from your website is one thing, but having a website that is designed for a machine to read is not the ultimate aim of the game. You need to make sure that you are creating content for humans. Keep everything grammatically correct, and make sure that the material can be scanned by the target audience. You can use tools such as Grammarly, or Hemmingway to determine the reading age of your text. Keeping everything as simple as possible will help your readers engage with your content, and remain on your site.
Having relevant, well-researched information is crucial. Your site needs to be reliable and trustworthy, and if this is the case, you will be able to demonstrate to the search engine that your content is valuable.
Having just your product or financial service on your site might not be the best plan for your business. You will need to create a high degree of organic traffic to your website, that is not coming because they already know your name. You want to attract people that have never heard of you. You can do this by creating compelling blog posts about innovations in your sector. You can link this back to your products by all means, but these posts should not just read as though they are an advert for your services. Try and keep a balanced viewpoint that is of value to the reader. Once you’ve piqued the visitor’s interest, then you might be able to win them over with your products.
Optimized For Speed And Mobile Browsing
The use of mobile technology, such as smartphones and tablets, has far surpassed that of computers when it comes to internet searches. With so many people now accessing the internet primarily through other devices such as phones, your website needs to be designed in a way where the pages load and look good on any screen.
Having a clunky, or slow loading page will be an immediate turn-off for many visitors. If the information is not displayed in a way that makes it easy to read, people will rapidly disregard your site.
Google understands the importance of pages that load quickly on all devices, and as such will favour sites that can be loaded quickly, and will display well.
The internet of things is a rapid growth area, with many homes now owning artificial intelligence devices such as Google’s Home Hub and Amazon’s Alexa. As the demand increases for these products, so does the need to optimize your content for them. It’s always worth keeping an eye on the technology trends to work out ways that your business can interact with these as early as possible.
Have An Off-Page Strategy
Every website has something called domain authority. These rankings are provided by Moz.com and can change according to any updates to your site. This is a score from zero to one hundred, which determines how influential your website is. Sites with higher domain authorities will have a high volume of traffic and will sit much higher in results. For example, Wikipedia is primarily seen as an authoritative source of information which covers every topic. It’s structure relies on internal to other pages, and external links to provide references. As such, Wikipedia has a domain authority of 100.
Your domain authority can be improved through links. By having your website linked on multiple high authority sites, you will rise in influence. It’s like getting a job reference from someone with greater importance when they vouch for you; your status can increase.
Getting bloggers or high traffic sites linking to you is an excellent way of improving your stature. Many bloggers are happy to link other companies, and there are a couple of avenues you can go down when it comes to getting onto other peoples blogs.
Affiliate marketing will involve having a link to your site within a promotional piece. Usually, any click-throughs that convert to a sale for you will earn that blogger a small commission. If a blogger has a particularly broad readership, this can be very worthwhile.
The second option is blogger outreach, whereby links from your site can appear in blogs. There are specialized services available whereby, for a price, your website will be featured on a guest post on a high domain authority blog.
When you create new content for your site, including backlinks to previous pages you have created helps to build up your authority too.
A Local SEO Strategy
If you have a physical store or office and you want people to visit, you need to be listed on sites such as Google Maps and any listing sites. Make sure that the information that you submit is consistent. Your name, address, and phone number should all be accurate and up-to-date.
Having your page listed is great, but people will need to know what you do, or they won’t visit. Have a great blurb about your business and what exactly you offer. Don’t overwhelm people at this stage though, keep it simple. Make sure your website is linked to these services, as this will be a massive benefit in driving traffic.
Having an SEO strategy is vital for your business. Keeping on top of the changes to Google’s search algorithms and what they mean to you is another key area. With updates being added frequently, the way in which you will manage your search engine optimization will change from time-to-time. Even if you are outsourcing your SEO needs to another company, you should still keep an awareness of how the changes will affect your business.
Like this article? Take a second to support us on Patreon!
