92% of online searchers never get past the first page search results. If your credit union doesn’t appear on that first page of search results for key search phrases, you’re not ranking. If you’re not ranking, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to expand your reach and ultimately get new members. I know what you’re thinking – easier said than done! How do you compete with the millions of others with similar content on the Web and outrank them? There are no guarantees, but these tips and tools should help get you a lot closer to reading Googlers’ minds and serving highly relevant content that drives masses to your website. Sounds pretty good, right?
1. Know your keywords.
It’s easy to pick short broad keywords you want to rank high for like “mortgage” or “loans,” but those have enormous competition and don’t help your content stand out from the crowd. In fact longer search strings (7-9 words) are searched five times more than search phrases with fewer words. You also want to avoid using jargon. Use commons search terms that people outside of credit union land – or even financial services world – would use.
2. Ask your staff.
Your front line staff are chock full of important data. Ask them what they get asked all the time by your members and potential members. That’s what your audience wants to know. That’s the content you should create. Not only will it satisfy a need, it will hopefully take some of the strain off of your front line staff. In fact, make it really easy and ask them how they answer those popular questions. There you have it – your next blog post.
3. Ask Google.
Go to Google and start typing in a topic into the search box. You’ll see a drop down of search phrases appear as Google tries to guess what you’re looking for based on what a whole lot of other people are looking for. Anything interesting there? A different angle on a topic, perhaps? Click on one of those and see what comes up. Is anyone else really answering that exact topic or search phrase well? If the answer is no, or even not really, that’s a great opportunity. Important note – make sure you clear your search history or use Google Chrome’s incognito mode so the suggested search phrases aren’t biased towards your individual search history.
4. Document what you come up with.
Put all of your ideas into a spreadsheet with notes. This could be months or years of content, potentially. Just get them all down. Then start running with the high priorities – those that have little competition or are number one questions asked of your staff. They may not all be home runs, but I bet at least a quarter of them will drive more traffic than the rest combined. Once you hit a few home runs, then that helps your other content rank higher and drives more traffic. One more tip – when you find the content that works, don’t’ just move on to the next to try again. Repurpose it to squeeze all you can out of it.
