By now it’s no secret that SEO is the hot topic of 2018’s marketing trends. Maybe you’ve heard of the the huge payoffs of investing in SEO and you’ve probably researched and possibly even implemented many beginner tips for jump starting and improving your site’s search presence. Now you may be wondering what to do next. Here at Twenty Over Ten, we like to say that SEO is most definitely an ongoing strategy and we often say it is a moving target that can have compounding benefits for months and years to come.
The bottom line is – when you keep publishing fresh content on your website, updating business information and building more links, your site begins to earn higher rankings in search engines and you may even see an increase in traffic. For today’s post we’re going to assume that you’ve already took our advice on making your meta descriptions rock solid, you’ve created killer page titles and have verified your site with Google. Once you’ve done all of those things, you should see your SEO improve incrementally over time.
However, it isn’t uncommon for your site to reach a plateau or for your growth to stall for organic search traffic. Given the amount of time and money you’ve probably invested, we understand that this can be incredibly frustrating. Luckily, it won’t last forever if you take action. Here are five steps you can take to get your SEO rankings climbing once again!
1. Create a content strategy to sustain progress over time
Content is a HUGE factor when it comes to SEO success. A good goal to have when it comes to SEO is to always keep increasing the amount of original content you’re pushing out. Keeping up with your blogging can result in huge payoffs! Not only do new and returning visitors like to see consistent new content on your site but so do search engines. That’s why having a long-term content strategy is such a useful tactic for your site’s SEO improvement in the long run. Have more questions about blogging such as how often you should blog, how long your posts should be and more? Check out this helpful Q&A.
So what you might be saying now is “okay, so how do I go about creating a content strategy in the first place?” Great question! A great place to start is by developing an editorial calendar. Your editorial calendar should plot out your potential blog posts and landing page topic ideas that speak to your target audience, leverage your firm’s expertise and use your target keywords.
On the other hand, if you are already blogging consistently and seeing little to no return, you should consider a different content avenue. A popular trend this year has been including video instead of just written articles. Try starting a YouTube channel as a new way to reach your target market. Publishing content on another platform like this could also help generate an entirely new audience base for your advisor business.
2. Improve your link building strategy
Building links is a great way to improve your website’s ranking over time. Google measures authority based on the types of sites linking to your individual pages and domain. Therefore, the more valuable links you have leading back to your site, the higher your pages will start to rank in search engines.
If you’re struggling to earn backlinks, try reaching out to other influencers in the financial industry to use them as guest bloggers, interact with them on social media or even ask them to collaborate on a blog post. Seeking partnership opportunities with mid to high-level sites that’ll link back to your website and blog posts is the best way to improve your chances of obtaining high quality backlinks!
3. Consider targeting a new niche
Your niche market is the specific audience you cater your site and content to. If your SEO rankings have plateaued, it may be because the people who need your services the most aren’t even finding your website at all. If you haven’t already established a niche for your firm, you should work on that immediately.
Targeting your website and marketing to a specific customer segment can help you reach potential clients more effectively and eventually obtain more clients. Are you catering your blogs and website copy to the people who are actually visiting your site and could be potential clients? If your keywords don’t match your content or you haven’t done the research to see what your audience is searching for, your SEO might not be doing as well as it could be.
Even if you do currently have a niche, make sure it’s still working effectively for you. If not, you may want to consider expanding your current niche or transitioning to a different target that matches your services better.
4. Promote, promote, promote!
Even the best content is only good if people are seeing and sharing it! The more people that see what you’re putting out, the higher chances you have of gaining potential clients and website visitors. Use all of your communication outlets to effectively promote your content at all times.
This could include sharing your blog posts and other articles across your social media channels, newsletters, partner websites, etc. As an advisor, social media in particular is a critical outlet to make use of. Most people are visiting multiple sites everyday, so pushing out content on these channels will help your firm gain great exposure.
5. Make use of data
There’s tons of ways for you to keep track of your key SEO metrics and data. Tools like Google Analytics enable you to gather information on your overall site traffic and blog post hits, while Google Search Console helps keep track of your keyword query rankings. Checking out your analytics helps tremendously in identifying which of your pages and blog posts get the most views, how long visitors stay reading and which pages may need some work.
If you don’t already, start regularly monitoring this data. Not only will it help you see what you need to improve, but it will also show you what works well and what maybe isn’t working so well so you can make adjustments. Once you’ve gathered your key metrics, you can focus your marketing efforts on driving more traffic to your low-performing pages and blog posts, enhancing highly visited pages and developing a content strategy that your visitors will enjoy.
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