Part 2 – Easy wins to boost your website’s visibility

This is part two of a three-part series on branding, websites and online engagement we wrote for Citywire WealthTech.

Click here for our article featured in Citywire.

For the three articles visit this link.

Alongside this recent change is the transition of wealth across generations. As one generation moves into their peak earning years, they begin to build wealth of their own. Many of whom also stand to inherit from their parents, a cohort that has a great deal of wealth. Generational shifts are hardly new, of course. But the “great wealth transfer” promises to be the biggest movement of wealth in history. You know all this, but is your technology ready for it?

Most businesses have, by now, been persuaded by the need to have a company website. I don’t use the word “need” lightly. It is technically optional, but it really isn’t. Most new contacts will view your website before making contact. This is true right across the demographic spectrum.

Let’s look at the purpose of a website. I say purpose, but I mean the plural: purposes. So what are they? A website is a communication tool, of course. It’s a vital part of your branding, a permanent advertisement, a directory, a guide and a diary. It is – when boiled down to the simplest explanation – a communication tool. How might we measure success?

Often the metric for success is conversions. How often do visitors contact you through the website? Or how often do visitors interact with calls-to-action? But this number isn’t very helpful if one doesn’t know how many visitors there are in total. Analytics packages will track this number. Once we have a baseline then we can work to improve those numbers.

But a good website – even a bad one – is useless if one cannot find it. So it’s time to talk about optimising your website so it’s easy to find. Almost all website visits result from search engines like Google. Let us take a bit of time to look at search engine optimisation (SEO).

A well designed website will signpost visitors to the content they want. Not all visitors will be potential clients. Good content may attract other financial advisers. You may want to attract new advisers and staff members. And of course some of your visitors will already be clients.

Optimisation Foundations.

When I speak to SEO experts their first question is invariably, “is your website WordPress?” I’ll speak more about WordPress later on, but it is an excellent choice if you want a well optimised website.

You will likely have heard of ‘keywords’ and ‘keyphrases’. In the simplest terms a search engine will match the user search terms with ‘keywords’ found on your pages. Keyword density is a term meaning the number of times a searched-for word appears on your page. That’s its original meaning. It is more complex than that today. In the late nineties and early noughties SEO was as simple as adding variations on your keywords. Google has become much more sophisticated. Their algorithm ranks pages based on ‘authority’. How well does the page reflect the search terms? “Financial adviser” yields different results to “Financial advisor Birmingham”. Even though they have a keyword in common.

Use Google’s own “Keyword Planner” to find phrases relevant to your services. A high rank for very general phrases is very difficult to achieve. A general search for “financial advice” gives me these organic results: Citizens Advice, Money Saving Expert, Which, The FCA.

Organic results include any free search engine results. They are not paid advertising. So anything on-page that isn’t an ad, or PPC. PPC (Pay Per Click) results for the same search show us Vanguard, Fidelity, and Charles Stanley.

It would be difficult to compete with those budgets, and that level of authority. Stick to more specific, local searches. These can give you excellent results. “Financial advice Birmingham” may give better results for local businesses. It also features Google Local results in a prominent position on the page.

Easy wins for the rest of us.

As promised, here’s a list of SEO ‘wins’. I’ve called them ‘easy’ because they’re routine during the development process – or should be. Retrofitting into an existing website might not be routine for non WordPress users.

1. Speaking to Google.
Check your SEO files are in place. Google (and other search engines) use software called robots to read your website. This feeds into their algorithm and determines (in part) your page ranking. You can help these robots by adding two files to your hosting: robots.txt and sitemap.xml

A sitemap is a list of all the pages on your site, in XML format. You can generate an XML file with free online tools. WordPress users can install an SEO plugin (such as Yoast). This can generate a sitemap for you.

A robots file is a very short txt file that is the first thing a visiting robot will look for. It can also include a link to your sitemap, which helps the robot navigate your site.

2. Google Local.
It’s free, and connects to Google Maps. Make sure you have signed up for Google Local. Take your time when filling in your details. It is excellent free local exposure.

3. ‘Description Meta’.
It is this that Google shows as the description under your search result. It is understood that this feeds into the ranking for the page, both with organic SEO results and PPC. Add description meta into the HEAD of each page.

4. Connect to search engines.
Even if your site has been live for some time it is worth checking this. Google console allows us to see what Google sees (for Bing see Webmaster Tools). You can connect your sitemap and check the visibility of your web pages.

5. Page structure.
The latest standard for web pages is HTML5, ask for this during any development process. Also ensure your Page title, keywords and copy make sense when considered together. Wrap your page title in an H1 ‘header’ tag. These standards help search robots understand the page, and so improve SEO ranking.

If you don’t have a website, or are in the market for a new one.
WordPress became famous as the most popular blogging platform. Now it can boast being the World’s number one content management system. Some sources claim WordPress is behind more than a third of the websites on the internet. That’s some stat. So they don’t need me to proselytise on their behalf.

I would nevertheless suggest WordPress for your website. It is very well understood by search engines and beloved of SEO experts. It’s not as easy as: install WordPress – hey presto, Profit! But a well made WordPress website does so much for your SEO that it really is the number one recommendation.

I don’t need to take any interest in SEO, do I?

At its core SEO is a method used to make sure your website is easy to find. One can spend a great deal of time and money on optimisation. Good positioning on search engines can be very powerful. It can gain you many new contacts and potential clients. It’s a moveable feast too, which requires regular monitoring. Experts can help you.

It’s fine if you don’t want any of that. What I’ve been advocating is a proper foundation for your website. That it should be fast, and secure. That it should reflect your branding and aspirations for your business. That it should speak to your target audience. That it should contain useful information. If your website is all that, and more…

Then it should also be easy to find.