Financial planning guides are some of the most important pieces of content marketing for financial advisers, and they’re the perfect pieces to use as cornerstone content for your website, driving traffic and supporting search engine optimisation.
Consider this article your roadmap for the use of financial planning guides as cornerstone website content. We’ll explore the importance of an SEO friendly site, the suitability of financial planning guides to this purpose, and the ways to make your financial planning content shine…
What is Cornerstone Content?
A cornerstone marks the ceremonial starting point of an important construction project – the foundation on which the rest is built.
In the context of your digital marketing strategy, it means almost the same thing. Cornerstone content is content which:
- Begins to raise your brand’s profile and generate website traffic
- Correctly represents your brand/the offerings of your company
- Establishes your authority in the financial field
- Creates a strong first impression on website visitors
The best examples of cornerstone content are timeless (meaning they don’t need to be adjusted constantly to change outdated references), optimised for higher search engine rankings and centrally connected in subject matter to the brand they represent.
Do your research ahead of time, choose a topic that feels searchable and deeply relevant, and make sure the title of this piece of content is just as SEO friendly as the body text!
Why Are Financial Planning Guides Ideal Pieces of Cornerstone Content?
With a better understanding of what makes something a “cornerstone” piece of content, and why this type of content is important, you might be wondering: Why are financial planning guides the ideal fit?
Financial planning guides strike the perfect balance between informative and succinct. They lend more authority than a shorter, simpler blog post, but they’re still not inaccessible to the average finance novice.
On the one hand, choosing a few of these guides to focus on as the cornerstones of your website will allow you enough room to share valuable information with potential customers and give a sense of your brand’s tone of voice.
On the other, you won’t have shared so much at once will new visitors to your website that they find themselves bogged down and unable to take it all in.
It’s a balancing act, and guides diving into core topics like “The Different Types of Pension – A Short Guide” and “Introduction to Wealth Management” are great starting points from which to build out a larger library of quality finance-focused content.
How Can You Make Your Financial Planning Content as Stand-Out as Possible?
If you’ve determined that your company needs to create some cornerstone content, and you know that financial planning guides are a great option, you’re well on the way to building a strong content marketing strategy for your business.
The next step is all about making that content as good as it can be and allowing your website to stand out from the crowd as a result.
Here are our four best recommendations for making those guides as good as they can be:
- Know your stuff and do your research – This is the best way to speak with authority and confidence in a succinct and non-long-winded way, and hopefully, it should be the easy part. Just be sure all that knowledge is as up to date as it can be!
- Strike that keyword balance and avoid stuffing – As a rule of thumb in the SEO world, you should be including one keyword for every 150-200 words [Wordstream]. Getting that keyword density right will avoid a stuffing situation that sees you penalised (and your rankings lowered) by Google.
- Edit, proofread and polish – This is especially important if you’re planning to make this guide a flagship piece, but it should always be a rule anyway: Refine, edit and fully proof your work before it comes face-to-face with your future customers.
- Don’t forget the design element – Even the most amazing piece of writing can be let down by the design that surrounds it. If in no doubt, pare it back. A busy design is a distracting design, and that’s probably not what you’re aiming for here.
For help creating financial planning guides, there’s always Clients+. Whatever the level of content support you need, we’re here to accommodate, with a comprehensive range of website content writing services on offer.
There are 27 guides covering a wide range of finance-related topics currently available for purchase from the Clients+ marketplace, with many more accessible monthly via our client portal.
