By Jerry Goldstein

Feb. 4, 2010

Credit Union Management's online-only "PR Insight" column runs the first Thursday of every month.

Before I buy, I Google—whether I'm in the beginning stages of research or want more detailed information on my final choice. The same is true for your existing members searching for additional financial services and for potential members trying to find a particular financial product. It is also true for media representatives who use online searches for background information, to identify financial experts to interview and to fact-check their articles. Having an active and easy-to-navigate Web site is the first step, but are you sure it can be found?

Search Engine Exercise
Let's say your credit union's specialty is auto loans. Take a moment to type "auto loan" into Google or any other online search engine. You should probably narrow your search by typing in the city in which your credit union is headquartered. Does your Web address come up in the results? Add "credit union" to the search terms. Are you featured now? If not, you may be missing out on business and media coverage. In this column, I will outline eight steps for improving search engine optimization.

1. Analyze Existing Traffic
Before launching a search engine optimization campaign, it is important to know from where your current Internet traffic is coming. Ask the IT department to pull reports from your Web site monitoring software or service. You will want to look at:

• direct traffic, which results from someone typing your credit union's Web address into their browser;
• referral sites, which link from their Web page to yours (Take www.CUES.org, for example, which includes credit union hyperlinks in its membership directory and links to credit unions when they are mentioned in CUES FYI.); and
• search engines, which scour the Internet to identify the best Web site matches to a search word or phrase.

If you do not have software that monitors your existing traffic, consider asking your IT department to investigate Google™ Analytics (free) or Omniture® Web Analytics (paid).

2. Research Keyword Options
How is your Web site currently optimized? You can type the credit union's Web address into Google AdWords Keyword Tool to see what keywords are currently optimized on your site. Do you agree?

If not, what search terms would you like to point directly to your credit union's Web site? Your first response may be mortgage, auto loan or share certificate. There is a great deal of competition for broad search terms, which will more than likely be won by large financial institutions with pages and pages of information on line. So consider your niche, product specialty and location. Google AdWords Keyword Tool can also be used to research how often your proposed keywords are used in searches. You want to find a middle ground between words that are searched 100,000 and 10 times a day.

3. Select Keywords
Choose keywords that you can own-those keywords or phrases that best describe what financial products and services you offer, and where your credit union can be most competitive.

4. Implement Keywords on Your Web Site
Now that you have identified your keywords, use them, use them, use them. I recommend developing content that includes the five to six keywords on every Web page on your site. Your IT gurus can upload the content as well as infuse metadata and metatags with your keywords. Your IT staff will know what this means, but basically metadata and metatags are more words that help the search engines find you. Keep in mind that the more keywords you have, the more content you will need.

5. Use Keywords Within Press Releases
Once your credit union's Web site is optimized, you will want to incorporate these same keywords into your public relations material, such as press release boilerplate, language and titles; feature article text and titles; press kit documents; and executive interviews. Then link these pieces back to your Web site. Wire services like BusinessWire now offer keyword tools to enhance the search engine optimization of your credit union's press releases.

6. Use Keywords With Marketing and Social Media
Other keyword-loaded content to consider includes:

• your blog;
• your social media presence, e.g. Facebook and Twitter;
• white papers;
• brochures; and
• print advertising.

7. Address Technical Considerations
It is worth noting that graphics, flash and video may make your Web site more appealing, but search engines either have difficulty reading them or do not count them as much as written content in search engine archiving. Images are hard for search engines to read, so words are your best bet in SEO. This is where you may need to rely on your in-house IT experts or a Web site design company. I also recommend registering your Web site's site map with search engines, such as Google, Bing and Yahoo.

8. Measure and Monitor
It will take about two months for your monitoring software to show the effects of your optimization changes. Is your Web site traffic trending up or down? What is your bounce rate? If your traffic is up, but your bounce rate is high, your Web site is not capturing the right visitors. How many of your visitors are coming from direct traffic, referral sites and search engines? Is it changing? From these answers, you can make minor adjustments to your keywords and fine-tune your search engine optimization.

Jerry Goldstein is vice president of Atlanta-based William Mills Agency, a public relations agency serving the financial services industry. I invite you to follow William Mills Agency on Twitter.

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