4 Simple Tweaks You Can Make Today to Improve Your Advisory Firm’s SEO

When you see “SEO,” how do you feel? People usually react with one of three emotions:

1. Confused

2. Annoyed

3. Excited

I tend to fall into the “excited” group but admittedly there are super-technical parts of SEO I still don’t quite understand. There’s also plenty that just make me want to throw up (the phrase “maximize SERP real estate” comes to mind).

Most advisors (and Directors of First Impressions, we see you) don’t need to dive so deep into SEO.

I know—bummer, right?

But don’t get me wrong—SEO is important.

People treat SEO like it’s a silo all its own, but really, the lion’s share of it falls under the umbrella of content marketing. Most of it has to do with keyword research and publishing regularly building internal links and earning backlinks to your articles.

But there are a couple quick steps you can take right now to improve your advisory firm’s SEO that don’t require an editorial calendar or a full-time writer or hiring a marketing consultant.

That’s what I want to share today – here are two steps you can take today to improve your SEO standings.

1. Register with Google My Business

2. Make sure you have Name, Address, Phone Number on every page of your site

If you have already taken care of those two items, you can stop reading and go watch a funny video (I recommend this one).

But if you haven’t, let me just encourage you to do so now.

Improve Your Advisory Firm’s SEO with These Four Steps

1. Register with Google My Business

Registering with Google My Business is super easy. You can do it right here.

If you don’t know why you should register with GMB, it’s so when someone searches for your firm’s name, your official info will show up on the right side of the results page (no ad buy required!).

There’s not much more to tell you other than you should do it. It should take no more than 20 minutes, and it will make sure your location, phone number, hours, etc. are immediately seen by anyone who searches for your business.

After you’ve registered, Google will send a postcard to your physical location with a code to make sure the address you list for your business is legit. That normally comes within a couple weeks, so keep an eye on your mailbox.

2. Add NAP Info to Footer of Every Page on Your Website

Listing your firm’s Name, Address and Phone number is so important that the SEO world has created an acronym for it: NAP.

There’s not much else to say on this one. Go check your site’s footer to make sure it lists your location and contact info. If it doesn’t, make sure you put it in the footer, don’t just type it into the bottom of the site.

3. Take Ownership of Your Firm’s Page on Online Directories

When we create a website for an advisory firm, we always ask, “What region of the country do your clients live in?” Nine times out of ten, the answer these days is, “Our clients live across the entire country, and we even have a few in Europe and Asia.”

Despite the (inter)national appeal of many advisors today, local SEO is still an important part of building authority for your website on search engines. That’s why it’s important that you claim business listings on a number of online directories like:

• Google My Business

• Facebook

• Yelp

• Yahoo

• Bing

• Foursquare

One note: Even if you never created a page for your firm on these services, one most likely already exists – that’s why we say claim the listing rather than create one.

But if one doesn’t already exist, then go ahead and create one.

4. Make Sure the NAP Info on All Directories Matches the NAP Info on Your Site *Exactly*

When I say “exactly,” I mean exactly. Don’t abbreviate the state on one and spell it out in another. Don’t put a comma before “LLC” in one and not include a comma in another.

The internet is an insanely crowded place full of legitimate info and fake info posing as legitimate. Google’s algorithm is tasked with sorting through everything and presenting what it believes to be the “correct” answer to any inquiry.

Finding the exact same information from multiple reputable sources goes a long way in proving legitimacy to Google.

Like I said above, SEO is a complex issue. But if you take these four steps, you have a good chance of leapfrogging over the majority of advisory sites who have yet to lift a digital finger for SEO.

Want help creating your advisory firm’s SEO strategy and increase your chances of ranking highly? We help advisors perform SEO audits and create SEO-enriched content that can get you closer to the top. Click here to schedule an initial consultation.