Iain Thomson, Morningstar's European website product manager, outlines the importance of SEO and offers his top tips on how to achieve the best results.
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2 Get your title and description right
The title and description of your website are known as metadata and can be found in your site code. Search results show both of these (see below):
The title is one of the most important SEO factors. It should provide a description of exactly what is on a web page and be no more than 70 characters, for example:
Independent Financial Advice Shrewsbury | Your Business Name
The description has no bearing on your search ranking but it is the marketing message that encourages the searcher to click on the title. It should be no longer than 160 characters, for example:
Highly recommended independent financial adviser in Shrewsbury, specialising in retirement planning and inheritance tax advice.
3 Keyword and research
Keywords are the individual terms that are searched for; for example, “inheritance tax planning” or “pension advice”. A search engine will look for keywords within your website and, if it thinks your site is relevant to the search term, it will include your firm in the results.
Five ways to improve your search engine optimisation
Spend some time researching what potential clients are searching for and use these terms in your metadata and website copy. Keep your research generic, so look for “retirement planning”, for example, rather than “retirement planning, Shrewsbury”.
At this point, it gets tempting to try and pack your website with as many keywords as possible. Don’t do it. Search engines will penalise your site and lower its ranking if they think you are doing this.
4 Local relevance
If you are running a single practice, there is no point in trying to make your website rank highly for the generic search term “independent financial adviser”. All of the big nationwide businesses will already be trying to do this.
Focus your metadata on what your practice does and your location. This way, if your practice is based in Shrewsbury and local individuals search for a nearby adviser, they should come across you. Hence your metadata title could be:
Inheritance Tax Planning Shrewsbury | Your Business Name
5 Use the tools that are available to you
If you are using an agency to build and manage your website ask them what they are doing to improve your SEO. If a competitor is appearing higher than you are, ask the agency to explain why. Make them work for their money.
If you are using a content management system, such as Word Press or Joomla, it is likely to include tools and plugins to help you improve your SEO. Use them. Note that you may not see the results immediately as it can take time for a search engine to re-index your site.
A few hours reading about SEO and working on your site will pay dividends in the long run. Just think what an extra ten enquiries a month might do for your business.
More resources:
Take a look at adwords.google.com. This shows what people are searching for in Google and is an excellent tool for helping you identify keywords and metadata, and understanding the needs of your target audience.
Another great site for all things SEO, including education, is www.seomoz.org. What you can learn here will be invaluable to your business.
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