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Once you have a Web site for your advisory practice up and running, chances are you want current and potential clients to find it. Search engine optimization (SEO) involves taking steps to improve the chances that your Web site will appear high on the list of a search engine’s results. When someone does a Google search for “401(k) adviser” or something similar, having a Web site that follows SEO techniques will increase the likelihood that your site will show up in the first few pages of results—rather than at the bottom of the barrel.
Decisions, Decisions
There are two decisions to make before implementing an SEO strategy. Decide if you’d prefer organic or paid results (although you can do both). If the goal is to get your Web site listed high on the list of search results, you can pay the search engine to place it higher (it will be noticeable that its placement was paid for), or you can use strong SEO techniques to have the site rank high on its own accord.
The second decision to make is if you want to outsource SEO entirely or do it yourself. Outsourcing Web search optimization is common (and there are many companies available to help you)—but there are a few things you can do yourself (or at least make sure are getting done) to improve your Web site’s placement, and therefore increase traffic to your firm’s site.
Keyword Research
Essentially, all SEO techniques are based on keywords. You need to find the best keywords to use on your site, which requires research. Keyword research involves understanding what search terms or phrases your target audience is most likely to use, and then balancing the popularity of that term with its competitiveness—how many other companies are trying to use that term?
There are several free keyword research tools available. Two popular ones are Google Trends (www.google.com/trends) and WordTracker (www.wordtracker.com/). They’ll show you how often a search term is being used, and how many other companies are using it as a keyword. Finding commonly used keywords that relatively few sites are using can be challenging—one trick is to include a geographic locator term as part of your keyword. Instead of making “401(k) adviser” your go-to keyword, try using “401(k) adviser Phoenix” instead.
Once you have a keyword phrase pinned down (or multiple phrases), you want to use it all over your Web site—that does not mean typing “401(k) adviser Phoenix, 401(k) adviser Phoenix” over and over again on your home page. The content still has to be presentable and grammatically correct, but every page on your site should include the keyword somewhere—in the title of the page or in the URL for instance. You don’t need to worry about prepositions and conjunctions in the HTML code (the, and, for, with). Saying “the 401(k) adviser in Phoenix” is weaker than “401(k) adviser Phoenix.”
Create Content
Search engine algorithms pay more attention to sites that are being updated regularly than to sites that are static. The more often you update your content, the more the search engines will “spider” your site (walk through your content to see what it contains).
One useful piece of content that should be added to a site is a site map. A site map outlines the content that a user can find in each of your Web site’s sections or tabs, like a directory. Each line in this directory would be a link to that section of the site.
Don’t Get Discouraged
If your keywords are highly competitive, making it into the top 10 results can be virtually impossible, but using SEO techniques will at least move up your site in the rankings, which should increase traffic. Also keep in mind that SEO results take time. Make a habit of strengthening your SEO about once a month; keyword popularity and competitiveness changes over time, so make sure to keep them up-to-date.
—Nicole Bliman