Whether you love or hate financial blogs, they can produce exceptional results and support your overarching financial marketing strategy.
Companies who blog receive 97% more links to their website. Is that enough to get you started if you haven’t already?
Even if you have started your blogging journey, we have some top tips on how to get them ranking.
Blogging has evolved to be way more than a way to share personal opinion. It is now a way to share information, discuss professional views and demonstrate thought leadership.
Blogs are a great way to provide useful information to clients and prospects.
Although arguably the most important need for blogging is search engine optimisation (SEO). This is because blogs help with many factors that relate to search ranking factors.
When your business regularly updates its blog section with high quality posts on topics relevant to your audience, it can make a huge difference to how your website ranks on search engines.
Especially if you follow a proven SEO strategy.
Our content team here at Opulent Media Group has joined forces to share our thoughts on how to create awesome posts for financial service websites. We hope you find it useful.
If you would like to discuss your financial content or SEO strategy, please contact us.
What is a Financial Blog?
Blogs in the financial industry should:
- Provide valuable insight and information on a particular financial topic
- Share recent industry news
- Inform readers about general business news (new starters, new partnerships, new qualifications)
- Inspirational stories, testimonials and case studies
While your posts can be as long or short as you like, we always recommend aiming for 1000 words or more (known as long form content).
However, there is no point making a blog longer for the sake of it. The content must be useful and of good quality.
Remember that search engines give all content a quality score before ranking.
1. Why should my business use financial blogs?
Financial service companies can reap many benefits by starting a blog on their website.
A weekly post in the form of a financial newsletter or weekly roundup could reassure clients and prospects that you’re on the ball and consistent in your messaging and advice.
Clients often don’t hear from their financial adviser as frequently as they should, which can cause concerns.
A simple weekly blog dropping into their inbox or social media feed can alleviate these worries, build trust and rapport.
They will eventually view you as an authority in this space if you regularly provide them with valuable, useful content. They are then also more likely to refer you to someone or to turn to your services when they need financial planning advice.
A third reason is that blogging can be a great way to increase website traffic and conversions (via your contact form or other CTA’s).
Google might display your content higher in search engine results if it considers your content useful and relevant to its users.
This can lead to more people clicking on your content, which could lead to organic inquiries.
2. How can you start blogging?
Financial planners and financial advisors may be tied to a specific network or larger brand, which could limit your ability to create content and publish it to your website.
You will need to consult them first to discuss the limitations and approval/compliance process.
It is then time to decide if you have the internal resources, and time to write your own.
Can you commit to consistency? On average blogs take 2 hours per post to write, but that is without proofing, link building, SEO research, publishing and more.
Remember, consistency is key when it comes to content.
If not, you could consider a marketing agency to write your content for you.
Here at Opulent Media Group, we are dedicated to financial industry marketing.
We offer various content packages, which are written internally by our industry specialist content writer.
Contact us to find out how we could help.
3. What are blog best practices?
You need the following essential ingredients to create a great financial planning blog:
Prepare a list of relevant and engaging topics for your blog posts. Nobody wants to read boring, uninteresting or unbalanced content.
Consider what’s hot in the news, and what’s been popular in client conversations recently. Is it nearing the end of the tax year? Is something a hot topic in the news? What occasions are nearing that you could play on? For example, a Valentine’s related post could be ‘fall in love with your pension pot’ or ‘financial planning for couples’.
Consider which topics are good for SEO (search engine optimisation). Some topics are easier to rank for on Google than others. This is where you will need to conduct some research and incorporate the results into your content calendar.
When writing a blog, always remember to think about your audience. What are they expecting from you? What do they want to know? What will capture their attention? What will get them thinking about your services and why they need them?
Consider the structure and length of the post. What tone should you use to reflect your brand? Should it be long form content, or does the topic suffice being short and concise?
It is also a good idea to think about the actions you want your readers to take after reading the post. Are you asking them to navigate to other posts? Are you asking them to share this post with their audience? Are you requesting them to contact you? We always recommend signing off with a call to action.
Our final nugget is the importance of setting a goal for your blog as a whole, and then ensuring that every piece of content you write supports it, and the SEO strategy in which you are following.
On average, companies that blog receive 434% more indexed pages and 55% more website visitors. So if you’re not already blogging, why not?
If you need some assistance with your financial marketing content, our friendly team is here for a no obligation chat.
