How to Write a Search Engine Optimized Blog Post That Engages Your Target Audience
By Hillary Gale
Ah, blogging. We know we need to do it, but as busy professionals, our blogging efforts often get put on the back burner.
After all, you’re in the financial services industry. You work in one of the busiest professions known to man. You’re meeting with clients, reviewing their plans and investments, occasionally counseling them (I know, that’s not what you signed up for), and doing whatever else you fancy finance ninjas do to help your clients reach their goals.
But the fact remains that blogging is one of the most effective ways to grow your business and create a long-term strategy that keeps those leads crowding into your inbox.
If you don’t believe me, check out these 31 business blogging stats you need to know in 2021. (My personal favorite is that companies with blogs produce an average of 67% more leads per month than companies that don't blog.)
Blogging can be especially time-consuming and frustrating if you don’t reeeeeally know what you’re doing. That’s okay! You didn’t sign up to be a blogger when you entered the finance industry, either – that’s for English nerds like me. ;)
But I know some of you finance ninjas also want to take care of your own business blog. So today, I’m sharing my own process and strategies that busy finance professionals can use to create effective blogs that:
Are easy to write
Engage your target audience
Appeal to the search engine gods (and improve those rankings)
Get your prospects to take action when they’re finished reading your content
Follow the steps below, and you’ll have a bang-up blog post you can be proud of in no time.
1. Figure Out Who You’re Writing For
I’m gonna be blunt: blogging will not work for you if you don’t have a specific target audience in mind. Let’s face it: the internet is saturated with finance content from big boys like The New York Times, CNBC, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Bankrate, Investopedia, Nerdwallet, Business Insider, MarketWatch, Bloomberg… do I need to go on?
No matter how beautiful and insightful and unique your blogs are, there is just no way that you’re going to beat out Nerdwallet and Bankrate, who have probably already published 14 articles each about the topic you’re writing about.
The best way to rank your financial services website on Google is to get more narrow rather than broad. When you know who your target audience is, and you know what search terms they’re using to find answers to their questions, you can call them out specifically in your content. With this strategy, you actually stand a chance at getting eyes on your content from organic searches.
And in fact, this is a better strategy to develop leads for your business anyway. If you’re writing for the clients you want to work with, and optimizing your content to be found by that audience, the people who respond to your call(s) to action will be a better fit for your business and services.
2. Draft a Working Topic Title (We’ll Come Back to It Later)
The headline (or title) of your blog post is one of the most important parts of the content. You want to make sure that your headline is interesting or engaging, and that it contains the keyword(s) your target audience is using in search engines.
But because your blog topic might shift into a new direction as you write, you don’t want to spend too much time crafting the perfect headline just yet. We’ll come back to it after that first draft is on the page.
3. Do a Little Topic Research
Next, type your topic idea into Google. You may already know some key points you want to write about, but doing some preliminary research can show you what other authors are writing about in regards to this topic and help you build out your ideas further.
Of course, don’t just copy their points – take their points and think about what you can add to make your own blog post even more useful to your target audience.
4. Refine Your Keywords
While you’re doing your research, use this opportunity to learn more about the search terms (or keywords) that your target audience is using to learn about the topic you’re writing about. The tool I use to refine my keywords and conduct in-depth keyword research is called Ubersuggest.
Ubersuggest provides a great Keyword Analyzer tool that allows you to see how often a search term is used, the age range of searchers who use the keyword most often, and suggestions for related keywords to that search term.
For example, if I type the longtail keyword “save more for retirement” into the Keyword Analyzer, Ubersuggest shows me that there are only about 20 searches a month for this particular keyword. However, the tool also reveals that the phrase “what percentage should I save for retirement” is much more popular, with about 140 searches per month.
So while I’m still going to use the term “save more for retirement” a few times throughout my post, I’m also going to make sure to use “what percentage should I save for retirement” (or some version of that) a few times as well. By leveraging a few longtail keywords, I’m increasing the likelihood that Google will recognize my content as an answer to these users’ questions.
5. Write It Out, Baby
Now you’re ready to start writing. My recommendation is just to start writing. Don’t think too hard about what you want to say – you’ll waste a lot of time this way. Just start writing without really knowing what you’re going to write yet. Your content will come out much more naturally, and you may even write down ideas that you didn’t know you had yet.
6. Include a Call to Action!
Make sure that at the end of every blog post, you include a call to action! This call to action could look different depending on the topic you’re writing about. Your call to action might be to ask your readers to download an even more valuable resource in exchange for their email address. Or you might invite them to book a call with you.
But no matter what, never post a blog that doesn’t have a call to action. You’re not being pushy. You’re inviting the people who need your help to reach out to you. If you don’t include a call to action, I can guarantee that they will just move on to the next article and possibly respond to somebody else’s call to action. Let them know you want to stay in contact!
7. Optimize Your Headline
Now that you’ve written your first draft, give it some time to marinate on the page. Don’t revise yet, as you haven’t given your brain enough time away from the writing process to look at your content with fresh eyes. For now, you can return to your headline.
To write a good headline, first make sure that it includes at least one of your longtail keywords. Then, you want to focus on making your headline engaging so that more people are encouraged to click on your article. To judge the quality of headlines, I like to use CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer.
This tool analyzes the words in your headline to determine the variety of common, uncommon, emotional, and power words you’ve included. It also ranks your headline according to word count, character count, type of headline you’ve written, reading grade level, sentiment, and clarity. Having this data provides you with some direction on how to improve your headline. Shoot for a Headline Score of 70 or above.
8. Revise It Out, Baby
Next, it’s time to revise that first draft! You might wish to come back to your content and revise after a few hours or even a day away, or you might wish to continue on as soon as you’re finished optimizing your headline. Either way, make sure you have fairly fresh eyes for this next draft.
If you’re having trouble knowing what to revise, I sometimes like to read my content aloud to myself. Reading it aloud helps me catch clunky or unclear sections in my writing that I otherwise wouldn’t have noticed. If you’re feeling really brave, have someone else read your content aloud to you to help you untangle those cringe-worthy phrases (they happen to the best of us).
9. Or Just Leave It To Me
If you find that blogging is just too time-consuming (or if your blogging efforts are working so well that you’re getting too busy with leads), it might be time to contact the professionals. At Gale Creative Agency, I help busy finance professionals crush their content marketing goals without having to work longer hours.
I get to know your voice, your style, and your target audience so that the content I produce for you sounds like you wrote it (but, you know, better – if you’re not a strong writer). I’ve seen consistent blogging efforts pay off significantly in my own business and in my clients’ businesses, and I know that blogging can help your business grow as well.
If you want to learn more, schedule a free 20-minute consultation call with me by emailing hillary@galecreativeagency.com or simply choosing a time on my calendar.