Financial Marketing

Search engine optimization (SEO) is often a confusing topic for our financial clients. When discussing terms like SEM (Search Engine Marketing), keywords, longtail keywords, organic, off-page, and ad words, it’s no wonder financial marketing SEO is an enigma. For example, I could easily use SEM instead of SEO in this article, but more on that later. In this blog, I’ll address some of the basics to explain this terminology and how financial firms can apply these tactics.

Keywords and Content

Generally, keywords and content are the two factors that play the largest part in financial marketing SEO success. Keywords are terms or phrases you use in the content of your website that tell search engines that it is relevant when a search is made. When choosing keywords, don’t always go for the ones with the highest number of monthly searches, as it will be hard to rank against larger competitors. Consider instead keywords that target your specialty markets or services. These focused terms will bring better quality traffic to your website. Keywords must also be used in the meta data on each page.

When ranking websites in reply to a search query, search engines evaluate your content. Content with the keyword or phrase from the search that is structured properly in the content will perform better. Google has specific guidelines on how to set up the text on each page which will also help to improve financial marketing SEO. 

SEO versus SEM

The essential difference between SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is that one involves unpaid tactics, and the other is a paid strategy. Some definitions of SEM say that it is a combination of SEO and PPC (Pay Per Click). SEM is also becoming the overall term for campaigns that involve both organic SEO and PPC. For clarity, I prefer to explain it as any paid for tactic to drive traffic to your website. This would include PPC and paying a company to help you increase backlinks to your website. Backlinks are on other websites that link back your website. Otherwise known as inbound links, the amount and quality of your backlinks will help to increase your rank in search engines.

Financial marketing SEO on the website

SEO is the strategies to improve rank in search engine’s results organically (what you can do on your website). First, you need to develop a list of potential keywords that people may use when looking for your firm’s services. Next, conduct keyword research to determine which of those keywords people are using and their monthly search numbers. This will tell the keywords that will be most effective in financial marketing SEO.

Once you have the keywords you want to use, you can begin the On-page SEO. This stepinvolves writing and structuring content to attract search engines, while complying to guidelines. You will also want to implement Technical SEO. You complete these tasks in the background of the site to assure search engines can find, crawl, and index your content.

Financial marketing SEO offsite

PPC is online advertising in Google to appear at the top of search results. It involves several action items, such as bid setting to decide your budget for pay for a click and audience targeting to select who sees your ad. Finally, you need to create the ad and engage the campaign. Another tactic that is essential for financial marketing SEO is setting up a Google account for your business appear in local searches.

About the Author

Paul Kowalski (or Pappy as he is called around the office) spent over two decades working at other agencies before opening Conach Marketing Group in 2008. The early part of his career was working with Fortune 500 clients at different agencies. However, working with smaller clients was his preference. This choice was because of the impact on a client’s business growth and forming closer, personal relationships.

About Conach

When he was creating Conach, his goal was to bring those Fortune 500 strategies along with years of B2B marketing experience to small business marketing clients. As a result of focusing on business to business marketing, Conach specializes in financial marketing, financial marketing, and industrial marketing. Even though we are in Mid-Michigan, Conach provides marketing services to clients across the country.

For more information, visit conachmarketing.com or contact us or call 989.401.3202.