How do you get new members to Google you?
Note: this post isn’t going to be about the “secrets” of SEO (although that probably would make a good topic for another post.) We aren’t going to spend time talking about keywords, inside and outside links, etc. It also isn’t going to be a post about what might be wrong with your website. This post is all about one question: How do you get people to find you when they Google something?
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Google owns 91.62% of the search market, crawling 8.5 billion websites daily and processing 8.5 billion queries a day (that’s 99,000 every second)!
But when you look at your own website’s analytics, you might be depressed to discover that 90%+ of your top results are simply the name of your credit union. And you probably aren’t getting many direct click-throughs on your loans, savings accounts, or any of those other products and services that make a credit union a credit union.
So how do you boost those results?
By answering their questions.
If you look at a list of the most asked questions on Google, you might think that most people are using Google instead of their brains. But the main point is that they are asking questions; i.e., searching for answers.
And they aren’t always inane questions. Those queries are also about money questions, from everyday household budget concerns to critical financial decisions about the future that they need to make asap.
They want solutions, not products.
Marketing your products feels intuitive, but here’s a marketing secret: It only pays off if someone is already looking for your product. Since we know so many people are asking Google all sorts of questions, we should use that to our advantage.
If someone searches for “credit union auto loans in [city]” you might get to the front page, but that’s going to limit your audience. If you instead focused on answering the wide variety of financial questions that can pop up when you’re buying a car, you’d be casting a much wider net. While that person is reading the answer to their car question on your site, you can show them, “Hey! We have auto loans while you’re at it!”
It’s also worth remembering that there are loads of financial questions about cars in general. While not everyone needs an auto loan, they might be able to use a personal loan to get new tires, for example. (A lot of people need some inspiration to understand the power of a personal loan.)
It only works if you make it real.
Often people are searching for real solutions to real problems, and real problems aren’t always pleasant or easy to discuss. Here are some real-life, uncomfortable search queries to consider:
- I lost my job what should I do?
- I totaled my car now what?
- I totaled my car and still owe money…
- Who keeps the house in a divorce?
- How to apply for disability in…
- How to get out of credit card debt
- My (parent/spouse/other) died. What should I do now?
To be fair, your credit union might not have a solution for every question. It even might seem odd to try to answer even the ‘good’ questions on your website.
Plus, for a lot of questions the top results will be sites like Quora and Reddit – but they aren’t exactly the most reliable answers with the most expertise. Your credit union would be a much more trustworthy source for a lot of questions, which should definitely boost your rankings and clicks.
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