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As a financial advisor, you work hard to create a strong website that will boost your SEO rankings and help your firm to show up more when people are searching for financial advisors. There are a lot of moving pieces to do this, but one that we want to focus on today is the importance of optimizing title tags for pages on advisor websites.
In the example, above the title tag is the actual blue text “Las Vegas, NV | Financial Advisor – Arista Wealth Management” this is the link in the SERPs that a searcher would actually click on to get into your website.
Taking a look at the example above again from Twenty Over Ten client, Arista Wealth Management, they kept their page title short and sweet. They included their location first, the keyword “Financial Advisor” and then their brand name. We recommend keeping your title tags to 50-60 words, so this one checks all the boxes from the formula we outlined above.
Remember, that your page title needs to have your brand in it, especially in a way that people will recognize it. If people search for a topic and see your brand several times, even if they don’t click on it the first time, then they will be more likely to click on it again if they see it. This is similar to including a call to action in different locations throughout your page because you don’t know what will trigger particular people to take the next step.
Related: 5 Must-Know Digital Marketing Facts for Financial Advisors
Creating Strong Page Titles
At Twenty Over Ten, we work with financial advisors to help them better optimize their websites for search engines for Google. So we know a thing or two about the top SEO ranking factors to pay attention to. First things first, however, what exactly is a page title? It is also known as a title tag and is a short description of a webpage and appears at the top of a browser window and in Search Engine Results Page (SERPs).
In the example, above the title tag is the actual blue text “Las Vegas, NV | Financial Advisor – Arista Wealth Management” this is the link in the SERPs that a searcher would actually click on to get into your website.
Why Do Title Tags Matter?
Title tags are the second most important on-page ranking factor and as mentioned above they are the main text that describes your online content in a SERP.- Boost your organic keyword rankings
- Entice searchers within the SERPs to get them to click on your listing
The Formula for the Perfect Title Tag
We follow a few good rules of thumb when developing title tags when working with clients:- Incorporate keyword phrases that best describe the page
- Make each title unique to each page and put important keywords first
- Keep them 50-51 characters long
- Primary KW – Secondary KW | Company Name
TITLE TAGS AND CLICK-THROUGH RATES
Search engines, such as Google, use a CTR (Click-Through-Rate) to figure out how relevant a certain keyword is. If you can get a title to rank higher even though it’s lower down in the search, your SEO rankings will increase.
Taking a look at the example above again from Twenty Over Ten client, Arista Wealth Management, they kept their page title short and sweet. They included their location first, the keyword “Financial Advisor” and then their brand name. We recommend keeping your title tags to 50-60 words, so this one checks all the boxes from the formula we outlined above.
USING STRONG KEYWORDS IN YOUR TITLE TAGS
Once you’ve identified a few strong primary keywords then don’t forget to include them in your title tags. Keep in mind that the page title is one of Google’s most important ways of knowing what the topic of the page is, so without a primary keyword, this can really lower your rankings. First impressions are everything, so when someone is searching, make sure that visitors take notice of your title with the keywords that you use. As we’ve mentioned before, people are busy, and when they are searching for an advisor or whatever they may be looking for, they quickly scan. What does this mean? You want for your title to stand out and quickly catch the eye of your readers. So, you should have the primary keyword at the beginning of your page title to entice people to click on them, as Google will highlight it when people search for it. Something to keep in mind, however, is that some keywords are used by many people in the industry, so your firm could get buried. You can change it up a bit and focus more on a niche by using a different word at the beginning or the end of the primary keyword in order to make your page title stand out from the competition more.Additional Tips to Keep In Mind for Optimizing Page Titles
Now that you know more about what exactly a page title is and the basics for standing out amongst your competitors, there are a few other things to keep in mind so that your titles continue to help you to rank continuously higher in search engines.WHAT IS THE OPTIMAL TITLE LENGTH TO USE?
This depends, as you want to include enough information in there to make visitors want to click the link and find out more, however, you need to be strategic since you don’t want the wording to get cut off. You don’t have a lot of space to get your point across since Google starts cutting off title tags after around 50–60 characters.INCLUDE YOUR BRANDING
People trust brands, so if you’re a big name in your industry, make sure you prominently display your brand name in your title tag. as this will entice people to click and generate more traffic, thus boosting rankings.
Remember, that your page title needs to have your brand in it, especially in a way that people will recognize it. If people search for a topic and see your brand several times, even if they don’t click on it the first time, then they will be more likely to click on it again if they see it. This is similar to including a call to action in different locations throughout your page because you don’t know what will trigger particular people to take the next step.
WATCH FOR KEYWORD STUFFING
We’ve talked about the importance of keywords so that your firm shows up in searches, but when you use them too much, Google will penalize you. This is known as “keyword stuffing” and it’s similar to “spamming” your readers with a certain word too much.MAKE SURE EVERY PAGE HAS A UNIQUE TITLE
Having these helps search engines understand that your content is unique and valuable, and also increase CTRs. With all of the pages out there, it may seem really hard to create a unique title for every page, but you should be able to create one for almost every important page of your website. When we are optimizing page titles and title pages for clients’ websites, we use the formula: primary keyword | secondary keyword | brand name. You want the strongest keyword to show up first, followed by the next strongest one, and so on. It really does a lot when it comes to showing up in search engines.How to Customize Title Tags On Your Twenty Over Ten Website
Now that you’re armed with the best practices and formula to optimize your title tags let’s take a look at how you can customize them within your dashboard.STEP 1:
Once logged in, access your page settings from your sidebar by clicking the gear icon to the right. (Note: Each page within your main navigation will have separate page settings. You’ll want to customize your title tag for each individual page within your main navigation.)
STEP 2:
Scroll down to the “browser page title” box under the URL slug. Here you can completely customize the text you want to appear my simply clicking in the box and typing. After you have added the title of your choice, click the save button.
Related: 5 Must-Know Digital Marketing Facts for Financial Advisors