Over the past few months, we’ve been hard at work on a Marketing Makeover for one lucky advisor! Before we completed our marketing makeover, we were sure to capture his site’s old SEO score so we could determine how much it improved by moving to the FMG Suite platform. Check out the results.

The “Before” Picture

SEO is complex and ever-changing, but can be affected by both the way a website is built and the keywords and content that appear on the site. The tool that we used to evaluate the SEO score of each website, SEO Site Checkup, took into account both the structure and content. SEO Site Checkup gave the old site a score of 48/100. The main problems with the site were low keyword density, no meta tags, poor page titles, and no XML site map. This is common in older sites that are built with outdated technology.

Keyword Density

The Keyword Density tells another story of SEO, focusing on how often keywords are used within the text of a website. Many SEO experts consider the optimum keyword density to be 1% to 3%. The overuse of keywords is referred to as keyword stuffing and may cause a web page to be penalized.

Using a tool called SEO Book, we found that the top two phrases present on the old site were “San Diego” and “Thomas Dobransky,” at 7.25% and 6.22% respectively, which may be too high for optimal SEO. “Investment Advisor” or “Investment Advice” both showed keyword density of less than 3%. However, other keywords relating to the services offered by the advisor were entirely absent, including terms such as “wealth management,” “estate management,” and “financial advisor.” All in all, there were only 134 total words and 67 unique words on the site.

The “After” Picture

Just by moving the advisor’s site to the FMG Suite platform and writing new copy with SEO in mind, we saw an immediate 40% increase in the SEO score. SEO Site Checkup gives the new version of the site a score of 67/100.  Additional SEO work using a professional SEO company, an established footprint of the new site over time, and regular traffic and updates to the site will improve the SEO score in the future.

The new version of the site showed a much more diverse keyword density. The top keywords were Retirement, Financial, and Tax at 1% to 2%. Top phrases were Retirement Plan, Second Opinion, and Thomas Dobransky, at between 0.5 and 1%. There were 1068 total words and 406 unique words, which is a significant increase from 67.

SEO is an important component of website design and can help support your lead generation and referral process by helping people find you. If your website’s SEO score is too low, it’s difficult for referrals and prospects to locate you via search. To update your site’s framework and copy, work with a reputable website company who can create your site with SEO in mind.

For our next installment of Marketing Makeover, we’ll discuss custom blog creation and review how to choose blog topics, what to write and how to attract readers to your blog.