Quick Tips

Continuing our quest to help Financial Advisors improve the performance of their websites in search engines, we recommend that you take a few minutes and visit the Open Directory Project at www.DMOZ.org

Since many leading search Directories and Meta Search Engines draw their results in part from DMOZ.org, submitting your site is certainly worth your time. 

We suggest that Financial Planners and Independent Investment Advisors submit to the following section:

/Business/Financial_Services/Financial_Planning/

You can get to the sign-up page for this section directly through this link:

http://www.dmoz.org/cgi-bin/add.cgi?where=Business/Financial_Services/Financial_Planning

Article by Jab Web Solutions Inc.
www.jabwebsolutions.com

This Month's Quick Tip: You Own Your Domain Name, Right?

Did you know that you may not actually be the registered owner of your domain name?  You may be the owner of Smith Wealth Management, and your website address may be smithwealthmanagement.com, but the registered owner of the domain may be your web designer, your hosting company or the domain name registrar themselves.  Please take this simple, but important step to ensure you own your domain name.

Go to NetworkSolutions.com and click their "Who Is" link at the bottom of the page.

Punch in your domain name and check the registration information.  Your company should be listed as the Registrant.  Whoever is listed as the registrant has ownership of the domain name.  Most Domain Name Registrars and Web Hosting companies will list their customers as the registrant, but in many cases, they may be listing themselves as the registrant, leaving you at their mercy if you were to ever try to move to a new host or another registrar.

Focus on the Big Three Search Engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN (live.com) as they comprise roughly 90% of all searches in the U.S.

Don't be fooled by offers to "submit your website to the 1000 top search engines" as there are not 1000 top search engines.  Many of the smaller search engines and directories actually draw their search results from the Big 3.

*Source: Nielsen Online reports December 2007 data for the Top U.S.  Search Providers. Top search providers, ranked by total searches. Searches represent the total number of queries conducted at the provider.

To brand your business, is to place full light on what your advisor firm has to offer to its potential clients and the community. Business branding can be achieved easily through the use of creativity and efficient marketing.

Many small firms struggle to grow their practice, not because they are not offering the best service in the community, but, because no one ever knew they were there.
 
Creativity is key to branding a business. With the use of creative logos and slogans, a business can create a brand recall with prospects. Brand recall is important to a businesse's success, because prospects that cannot remember your products or services, will not be viable prospects for long.

When creating a logo, businesses should focus on a creative, unique symbol memorable to potential clients. Logos should never be too complex or cluttered. Simple and to the point, works best, when striving to brand your business. In order to get a better idea of the types of logos that are successful for businesses, look to the kings and queens of successful business marketing. Motorola, for instance, uses a simple "M" to evoke brand recall with it's customers. Hewlett Packard, along those same lines, settled on an "hp" for their logo, and many prospects no longer recognize the company's name but recall the logo easily.

Slogans, another creative cornerstone in business branding, are trademarks of successful businesses. A catchy slogan, paired with the unique logo is like hitting the consumer with a one, two punch. Slogans should be comprised of only a few words and hit the point of your business on the head. Retail giant Wal-Mart, decided on the word "Always" as their slogan.  Paired with a creative font, and slight slant of the word, nationwide recall was achieved.

Business branding can also be achieved with creative marketing. Your business must stand out to the consumer as the only option available for the service you provide. Creative marketing should center on the characteristics that make your business different from others available to the consumer.

Business branding is the key to the success of every business. Prospects will respond to businesses that have created a familiar and comfortable face in the community. Creativity and efficiency will brand a business quickly and lead to immeasurable support and income via satisfied clients.

As you already know, the NASD has changed it's name to FINRA.  Be sure to make the change to your disclosure text on your website.  For more information regarding the name change, see www.finra.org

Always be sure to test your website in each of the the major browsers before going live and after after a substantial design change. Your website may look great on your computer with your monitor and through your favorite web browser, but it may look different in another browser and/or in a different monitor.

Since the early days of the internet, we have seen the rise and fall of many diffent web browsers. From the dominace of Netscape in the 90's to the increasing popularity of Firefox today, one thing remains constant, well thought out and professionally designed websites created 8 years ago, look as good today as they did when they first went live.  The trick is to design a site with the different web browsers in mind and to never lean too heavily on the flavor-of-the month site building technology.

The most popular browsers today are Explorer 7.0 Explorer 6.0 Firefox 2.0 Firefox 1.5, Netscape 9.0

I suggest that you install at lease the latest versions of IE and Firefox on your computer and test your sites thoughouly in each.

Alternately, you can contact your friendly web design studio and ask them to run a comprehensive browser and screen resolution test of your site.  If you're considering Jab for your upcoming website make-over, we'll run a complimentary report on your existing site, including the digital snapshots of how your site looks in each browser.

We’ve all heard that first impressions mean a lot, and this catchphrase is especially true when it comes to advisor websites. If the website of a financial advisor appears unprofessional, unclear, or hard to navigate, visitors will click away before they have a chance to see what that advisor has to offer. Potential clients will move on to a website that’s easier to navigate and more professional in appearance.

Nearly all the major search engines have a Maps component; you are probably familiar with Google Maps.  Any time someone goes to Google and searches for a service in a specific area they will be presented with a Google Maps Display somewhere at the top of the page.  The map will show a few listings along with the businesses in that area.  How did these businesses get such a high profile listing in the search results?  Well they most likely did the following, which you can do today in a few minutes for free.