How Financial Advisors Can Craft The Perfect Blog Post: A Step-By-Step Guide

Blogging is no longer an “extra” but a necessity. If you want to drive more traffic to your site or boost your SEO ranking, blogging is the way to go. Generating compelling blog content for your advisor website is key to establishing yourself as an authority in the financial advising industry.

53% of marketers say blogging is their top content marketing priority.

Creating click-worthy blog posts can do wonders for businesses. However, it can be a challenge to come up with relevant and interesting blog content that readers actually want to read. Follow our step-by-step guide to creating compelling blog content to optimize your digital marketing strategy.

Before Posting:

Step 1: Research

Every great blog post starts with some basic research. Before you start writing your content, take a look at your Google Search Console to determine top keyword queries that you can use within your blog posts. Your top keywords will help you determine what blog content will perform best for your website. For example, if your top keyword associated with your website is “financial advisor New York,” you should be utilizing that keyword as much as you can in your website content. That way, when people search for that keyword, you’ll be more likely to appear closer to the top of the results in Google.

Another great way to research what kinds of blog content will be optimal for you to post is to look at analytics from your current blog posts. Once you know what’s working well and what isn’t you will better be able to decipher what blog content will be best for you to post.

Step 2: Plan

Maybe you have lots of blog ideas floating around in your head – that’s great! Go ahead and map it all out in an editorial calendar. Having a strategic plan in place is critical in order to stay organized and make sure you are consistently posting noteworthy content on your blog. Your readers will come to expect new content, so it’s pertinent that you make sure you provide them with that in a timely and organized manner. Keep in mind that it’s important to be sensible about how much content you can post.

Once you have determined blog ideas and when you want to post them, it’s extremely helpful to map out a strategic plan to make that happen. We recommend using an editorial calendar like the one below [download here!] to help you reach your blogging goals and plan effectively to reach them.

Step 3: Write Write Write!

Once you have researched and planned when you want to post your blogs for the month, the next step is to put your thoughts and ideas down get to writing! After you get your thoughts down on paper you can go back and edit afterwards and clean it up, but it’s crucial that you get it all down first. Even if what you first put down isn’t good, that’s okay!

Step 4: Source Images

Finding attention-grabbing images that boost your blog is essential. In fact, Blog articles with images get 94% more views. When you’re finding images for your blog, think of what you would want to see if you were reading an article or a blog. Would you want to see paragraphs and paragraphs of text or would you want to see text and interesting visuals to support it? Studies show that on average, your visitors will only read about 18% of your blog post, due to short attention spans. To keep your readers engaged and interested in your blog, keep the flow of your blog eye-catching and viewer-friendly. You want to give your readers a blog that not only provides them relevant, helpful, and interesting information but also a visually appealing blog as well.

Step 5: Final SEO Check

We can’t express how important it is to make sure your SEO is good-to-go on your blog! Make sure that your blog posts have meta descriptions so that they rank higher in Google. Meta descriptions tell search engines and searchers what your blog is about. If you don’t include compelling metadata descriptions, then you will probably not be getting the clicks from visitors that you need.

Using header tags within blog posts also helps boost your SEO ranking. There are six different heading HTML tags: <h1>, <h2>, and so on to <h6>. The h1 tag is considered the most significant tag in a search engine’s ranking, and it appears as the largest heading on web pages. Using h1 tags helps searchers understand what your website and blog are all about.

Right After Posting:

Step 1: Share On Social

After you have posted your blog, your next step should be to share it on your various social media platforms. You can make a Canva and add a catchy caption to share on social. Sharing on social media is a great way to leverage your blog content. In addition, sharing on social also gives you the opportunity to share the link to your blog which increases traffic both to your blog and your website. This also gives your followers the chance to further engage with you and tell you what they liked about your blog or they can share or like it.

In the example below, Twenty Over Ten uses social to share a recent blog post.

Step 2: Internal Link

Once you have shared your new blog on social, make sure to internally link it as well. Unsure what an internal link is? An internal link is a link that points to another page on the same website. So, for example, linking your newest blog post within your older blog posts wherever applicable is considered internal linking.

Linking is crucial for boosting your SEO ranking as well because without internal links, your content can’t rank! With a strong internal linking strategy, you can show Google which content is related and which of your articles are most relevant and valuable.

You can internally link content by sharing related posts at the end of your blog which also keeps readers on your website longer as they browse through other articles and content you’ve created. For example, on the Twenty Over Ten blog, we include links to three additional related blog posts at the bottom of every post.

Recurring

Step 1: Re-share On Social

We can’t emphasize this enough – sharing on social is key to enhancing your blogging strategy. Re-sharing on social is a great way to get content in front of your followers even after the content has been posted. Think of it as a reminder to your followers to read your blog. Let’s face it, people get busy and don’t have time to read every blog they come across. That’s why it’s perfectly okay to re-share your blog on social and give them that extra reminder that you have content that’s worth reading.

Step 2: Include In A Newsletter

Use your newsletter to direct readers to other areas of your online presence, such as your most recent blogs. You can do a monthly round-up of your top blogs and include them in your newsletter. Provide a quick summary and then link to your blog for the full-read. Or, you can include brief descriptions and then link to your website for more details. This exposes subscribers to your blog content and keeps them engaged with your content even after it has been posted.

Step 3: Historically Optimize

Say you’re looking at your Google Analytics and see that a killer blog you posted a while ago has generated a lot of clicks but recently those numbers have plummeted. This is where historically optimizing your blogs comes into play.

Optimizing your older blogs is a great way to freshen up your content that you have posted a while ago without having to generate new blog content. It’s important to make sure your blogs are up-to-date with relevant statistics, graphs, keywords, and more. Optimizing your blogs also gives you the chance to link to newer blogs you have posted which boosts your internal linking strategy.

Let’s Sum It Up

Crafting the perfect blog post takes a lot of patience and diligent work. However, every bit of effort spent doing so is worth it. Creating awesome blog content is so important to boosting your SEO ranking and more. These tips to perfecting the perfect blog post should help, so be sure to utilize them to enhance your blogging strategy.

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