I was seven-and-a-half months pregnant and my business had lost 30 percent of its revenue in two months. I knew I had to do something drastic, and do it quickly. Here’s how I was able to rank on Google page one in less than a year with a low domain authority website, zero Google Adwords spend, no consultant support, and very little other than basic knowledge of SEO. The secret I’m going to tell you is what most marketing consultants are unwilling to reveal.
Why I’m an SEO skeptic
First of all, let me just state upfront that I’m a Google Adwords skeptic. I remember I tried Google Adwords about six years ago. I spent about two grand and got nowhere. It went so badly that the consultants admitted they messed it up and gave me a month of free service. Ever since then I’ve been a nonbeliever.
I knew that SEO does work for some people, but I always assumed it was for the people who have tons of cash to spend and years of time to wait. Neither description applied to me as I was sitting there seven-and-a-half months pregnant having lost my two largest clients. My largest client was an educational app company and their funding got yanked. The other one had to terminate all vendors due to cash flow problems, which meant I had to resort to credit collections for the overdue balance and almost a year later I haven’t seen the check yet.
I tried some LinkedIn advertising, but at $7 or more per click, it got expensive really quickly. I decided to use the one bullet left in the gun: my writing skills. As a professional blogger mostly serving the financial advisor industry, I knew I could write some pretty sharp stuff. But how could I get enough eyes on it?
Sticking to the basics
I had knowledge of the SEO basics, because as a blogger I often was advised by my clients’ SEO consultants about how to integrate keywords into my clients’ articles. It took a great deal of time, but I started applying some of these techniques. I also started listening to Neil Patel’s Marketing School podcasts on YouTube, which were a great source of free advice.
I wasn’t optimistic. I had just launched my website in March 2017. It was a miracle how it happened. I couldn’t believe that by late fall 2017 people were starting to connect with me through LinkedIn or emailing me directly saying that they found me through Google search.
My best ranking is for the keyword “lead generation for financial advisors.” The article that comes up on page one is linked here for your reference. Here’s what I did.
The secret behind how I got ranked on Google page one
I’m going to tell you what I think really made the real difference: I got people to read the articles on my website.
Please allow me to explain why I bolded the word “read” and I bolded the word “articles.”
Why ‘read’ is bolded
I bolded the word “read” because I was hoping to implicitly contrast it to the word “skim.”
It’s not that hard to get someone to click on your article and visit your blog/site. You may even get them to scan the article with their eyes. But if they only stay for a few seconds and leave, then the bounce rate is very high and Google doesn’t like that. The longer someone stays on your site, the more Google trusts you. By the way, when people reach out to me, I know that they’re reading every word of these articles. They mention subtle points that I make just once, and I can tell that they are really taking it in.
So how did I get people to stay and read (not skim) my article?
I’ve found that the down-to-earth quality of the article is what really attracts people to me.
- I write in the first person voice rather than third person omniscient to avoid sounding aloof or distant. If you’re looking to capture people’s trust, present yourself as a person, a real human being, who is talking to them one on one and giving advice.
- I use humor.
- I commonly include anecdotes that illustrate my point. This is very underused. People would way rather hear a real life story than some theoretical mumbo jumbo.
- I talk about things that people can relate to. For example, in the article I review several lead vendor services. Most advisors know about these vendors or have used them before. So I’m speaking to them about something concrete in their world rather than speaking in general terms. This makes it real to them.
- I have a snarky tone. Sarcasm goes far. People aren’t that keen on being sold, so when you come across as a rah-rah-rah cheerleader it makes them take you less seriously.
- Very little commercial product pitching. See snarky comment above.
Why ‘articles’ is bolded
I ranked in Google because over the last eight months I have gotten people to read not just the ranked article, but other articles on my website. I directed a high volume of traffic to my site through backlinks that led people there, links that were placed in my author byline in guest blogs that I wrote.
To explain how that worked, as a guest author, I had placed several pieces on several high domain websites in the financial industry such as eFinancialCareers, Paladin, WiserAdvisor, and Bloomberg. So I helped Google trust me by showing Google that I’m a high quality writer—not a spammer—providing the kind of content that trustworthy websites have pointed back to.
Now, this didn’t happen overnight and it wasn’t without a great deal of outreach. To get in touch with editors of major publications is hand-to-hand combat. It took a great deal of persistence and time to understand what the publication was about, propose to write an article that would fit, and get the editor to agree to publish it.
Marketing consultants love to pile on all the services and make it seem like that is all you need. It’s not. People have to read your stuff before Google will pay any attention to you. Which leads me to my next point…
Why I did not need SEO consulting to achieve Google page one ranking
I’m going to say what many SEO consultants are not willing to tell you. The secret is the content. Now, most marketing consultants are going to tell you that you need a variety of things that cost a great deal of money so that they can get paid for doing them.
It wasn’t my highly optimized backend. True, my site is a WordPress site, which I have heard is good for SEO, but that was it. I didn’t pay a web designer to come in and make sure the backend of the website was set up right.
I also did not pay for a professional web design. The template you see on my website is exactly that. The graphics were all from pexels.com or custom designed by me. But you can see the purple banner with my name embellished on it isn’t exactly the best image in the world. It accomplishes the goal of identifying me and giving me a little brand, but it’s not Picasso.
Neither did I pay a dime for any keyword analysis. I just kind of guessed at what a financial advisor who was looking for lead generation services would type into Google. I didn’t use two keywords (primary and secondary) like they say you should, I didn’t count the amount of time it appeared in the content or the saturation level. I just wrote a really good article that had the term “lead generation for financial advisors” appearing several times in a way that was natural and conversational.
The point I’m making here is that you can’t SEO your way into Google page one. If that were true, then only the websites with the best SEO consultants would get ranked and that’s simply not true. All the keywords in the world won’t help if nobody is spending time reading your articles.
Other factors that helped
As I said, I’m not an SEO person; I’m a blogger. I can’t say that I had zero knowledge of SEO. But if I had to guess, here is what may have helped my rank.
- Title included a long-tail keyword “lead generation for financial advisors” and was a catchy title that many people could relate to. The original was “Are Lead Generation Services for Financial Advisors Worth It?” That was how I wrote it initially. I modified it a few months after publishing.
In my opinion, long-tail keywords are better than shorter ones (e.g. “financial advisor leads”). Although they are more specific and you may get less hits, I think the people who find you by typing in a longer phrase are probably a better audience. That is because they are looking for something highly specific.
- The article is long, over one thousand words.
- The image was uploaded with a name that included the keyword.
- The article’s meta description includes the keyword.
- The keyword is included in the first paragraph.
- The keyword is included a fair amount but that is done so naturally, in a way that is not forced.
Now, just to be clear, I cannot confirm that this is what made me rank so highly. My traffic sources aren’t highly transparent. Maybe there was some bot that went to my site a million times or something. Doubt it, but you never know. I have page-one rank for other articles I’ve written, so chances are there is something that is working.
How to get your business to rank on Google page one
One thing I always tell advisors who want to get more visibility for their brand is to specialize in a market niche. Most of them won’t take the risk to do this for fear of losing clients. Generalists are going to lose to a specialist every time.
It’s way harder to get attention on Google when your knowledge base is a mile wide and an inch deep. Those who take up a focus and commit to it are those who drill down with their content and reach an oasis where nobody else is providing information as sharply as they are.
Doing this requires a remarkable amount of writing skill, time, and focus. I have the knowledge base to do this because I was formerly a financial advisor. This enables me to come up with stunning insights. But most bloggers, unless they have worked in your industry, are just going to write the same boring content.
At any rate, if anyone has questions about how to do this, I’d love to hear them in the comments box and offer some suggestions. Thanks for reading!