Financial advisors must focus on search engine optimization (SEO) in order to generate leads and remain competitive in their local market.
Here’s how SEO for financial advisors works and what you need to specifically address if you’re hoping to get the best results for your digital marketing strategy.
Local SEO: Where You Want to Show Up
Most financial advisors have a brick-and-mortar location and offer financial services to clients from nearby communities. Still, online presence is a must.
If I were to Google “financial advisors” right now, the first thing that would appear on SERPs is the Google Map Pack.
In fact, this is exactly what shows up for me when I search that term:
Think of the last time you performed a Google search for something near you, like a movie theater or a restaurant.
Chances are that you didn’t scroll down to the top-ranking results, but instead looked at the businesses that popped up on the Google Map Pack.
You saw the top results in your area, the overall reviews, and were able to go directly to the website or get directions.
The Google Map Pack plays a crucial role in driving traffic to your website. This is why I emphasize it so heavily when doing SEO for financial advisors.
When conducting local searches, around 40% of clicks are going to the Google Map Pack, with the first results receiving around 37% of said clicks.
If you’re not appearing in the Local 3-Pack, you’re losing out on a lot of potential clients you could be reaching organically.
This is why my approach to SEO for financial services ensures that we’re optimizing for both Google Map Pack and with the goal of ranking #1 in organic results (which still receive around 30% of clicks in comparison).
Keyword Research
Search engine optimization is something I’d say people online are aware of, but not so familiar with that they know what it involves or how to leverage it to ensure their business is visible and relevant.
I was gobsmacked to learn that around 58% of companies don’t optimize for local search. You have to cater to search engines to market your business effectively.
Optimization begins with keyword research, and you have to target the right keywords to rank.
One of the most common mistakes that an independent financial advisor will make is targeting keywords they couldn’t possibly rank for.
Optimizing your content for “financial advisor” is going to pit you against national companies that will prevent you from ever seeing the first page of SERPs, let alone the top of the first page.
The sweet spot for financial advisors looking to grow their online presence is long-tail keywords.
Long-tail keywords are long keywords or phrases that are much easier for a financial firm to rank for on search engines.
You might not be able to rank for an SEO keyword like “financial advisor”, for example, but you could very likely rank for “financial advisor in (insert your city here)” or “financial advisor in (insert your state here).”
Targeting long-tail SEO keywords for your niche can be a useful strategy when it comes to your search engine ranking, too.
If you’re a financial advisor who offers financial guidance to dentists, you could look for keywords like “financial advisor for dentists.” If you sell insurance, it might be “financial advisor insurance agent services”.
Keyword research can be a challenging element of SEO for financial advisors, which is why financial advisors entrust GB Digital with their keyword research and broader FinTech SEO needs.
SEO Strategy
Everything that I touch on in this guide is a component of an effective SEO strategy.
From keyword research to technical SEO audits to link building and outreach, a successful SEO strategy focuses on every aspect of SEO and details a plan of action required to see the desired results your business expects.
While I go into greater depth in the following sections, some elements of SEO strategy that are pertinent to SEO for financial advisors include:
- Technical SEO: Technical SEO encompasses basic on-page SEO (optimizing H1s and URLs), improving website crawlability and indexability, and schema markup. This search engine optimization strategy is often overlooked.
- GBP Optimization: Your Google Business Profile plays a major role in local visibility and financial advisor SEO success. I help you by creating one GBP per office, optimizing your GBP, helping you build your reputation with Google Reviews, and more.
- Off-Page SEO: Link building and outreach are necessary search engine optimization focuses if you want to be viewed as an authority in your space and boost your SEO ranking over time.
- Ensuring NAP Consistency: Your business name, address, and phone number need to be visible on your website, on your contact page, and elsewhere throughout your website and business directories, which supports local SEO efforts.
- Page and Content Creation: Bottom-of-the-funnel pages and location-based pages will help you with search engine ranking, drive online visibility and conversions, and support your financial advisor business.
I work with you to conduct an SEO audit and develop an SEO strategy that will produce fast, tangible results so that you can remain competitive in the wealth management space.
Google Business Profile Optimization
Remember the Google Map Pack I mentioned before? Those businesses that popped up did so because they have a Google Business Profile.
Formerly Google My Business, a Google Business Profile is a free local SEO tool that communicates essential information to prospective clients in the area.
It tells you more about your rating among past clients, tells them where you’re located and what your hours are, and helps you connect with your clients. This is crucial to your online presence.
Optimizing your GBP isn’t a particularly difficult task, but it can be easy to miss certain elements if you’re not sure what you’re doing.
I help my clients improve their local ranking by focusing on:
- Ensuring they’re listing their business in the right categories. For example, categorizing your business as a financial planner. Financial planner is the term that shows up, so you want to make sure that you show up alongside other financial planner suggestions.
- Adding custom photos to your GBP to show both Google and potential clients that you are indeed a real financial planning business.
- Encouraging customer reviews and engaging with said reviews. Clients will read these reviews, and having more positive reviews may boost your search ranking.
- Publishing weekly updates to indicate to Google that you’re an active wealth management business, all while potentially engaging visitors along the way.
Your Google Business Profile is instrumental in local SEO, which is why I take the time to make sure financial advisors have a Google Business Profile that will rank when providing them with SEO services.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is, you guessed it, SEO that involves optimizing the technical elements of your website to help you rank higher.
As I touched on briefly earlier, this can mean optimizing elements of your webpages that go beyond the content. For example, taking care to optimize the URL of your page, the H1, the title tag, and the meta description will ensure your pages are visible.
Other things like site speed and error pages (500 or 404) can affect your SEO efforts as well. Your financial planning website needs to be properly laid out so it’s crawlable and indexable.
If it’s not, it can make it more difficult for users to navigate your site and affect your ranking negatively when slow loading speeds and broken links abound, all of which affect user experience.
Remember, user experience is important too. User experience can reduce traffic, which lowers your ranking. If neither search engines nor visitors can use your website, no amount of link building or content creation will help.
Another element of technical SEO that I frequently highlight is schema markup.
Schema markup, in layman’s terms, is code that tells Google exactly what your business is and what services you offer. Doing this enables Google to display your content for keywords that are relevant to your company and services. It also allows Google to show rich results.
Excellent examples of schema markup can be found on Schema.org. I often point to financial service examples like FinancialService, InsuranceAgency, AccountingService, and BankOrCreditUnion.
Setting up Google Search Console will also be necessary for your search engine optimization strategy. Google Search Console proves useful for technical SEO, helping you catch issues and troubleshoot them quickly.
Create Content
Creating content is not a “write it and they will come” type of deal.
Some businesses are churning out wealth management and financial advisor content constantly, receiving little in return for their efforts.
It reminds me of Cassandra from The Magicians, forced to write eternally and getting next to nothing for all the work she does.
Financial Advisors When All of Their Informative Content Is Going Unnoticed
Content needs to be optimized, informative, and compelling. Remember, you’re creating content for both the search engine (Google) as well as real people coming across your website for fiduciary financial advisor services.
I focus on several types of content production to ensure the best results in your SEO campaign.
Take, for example, webpages. Creating an optimized page for each of your financial services or each location that you cater to is a great way to start ranking and generating organic traffic.
This helps you appear to Google users who are seeking out relevant services that you offer, driving business to you.
The other obvious form of content used in content marketing is blogs or articles.
It’s not enough for you to know that you can successfully financially advise your clients. They need to know it too.
Optimized blogs and articles regarding financial advice or similar topics prove your financial advice capabilities and establish you as an authority in the space while bringing in leads.
My secret to creating great content for my financial advisor clients isn’t just optimizing the content. I also enlist the help of experts. Expertly written content guarantees that your content will rank, is factual, and provides visitors with real insights and actionable advice.
You want your content to be representative of your business, not spammy and written haphazardly in an attempt to get more clicks from users on search engines.
Link Building
Link building is among some of the more complex and nuanced search engine optimization strategies out there.
Even experts in the SEO space don’t always have a solid grasp on it, which can make it difficult to leverage link building in such a way that it bolsters your financial website.
Link building has to be done the right way in order to reap the benefits that it has to offer. You can have someone else link to your homepage, to your financial advisor service pages, and to your blogs and articles all you want.
But if you don’t do it correctly, it won’t provide you with the search engine optimization support you’re looking for.
The key to successful link building lies in proper anchor text distribution.
There are three main types of anchor text: blended (which contains a blend of the key phrase and other elements like a page title), exact match, and natural (which features no key phrase).
Let’s imagine that you’re working on a link-building strategy targeting your financial planning homepage. You’d ideally want your anchor text distribution to be around 80% to 90% natural anchor text, under 10% blended anchor text, and less than 5% exact match anchor text.
If you don’t get this just right, it could completely ruin your chances of getting your homepage or other pages to rank. Your off-page SEO efforts will be for naught.
Thankfully, link building and outreach aren’t something you have to tackle alone. You can always work with a seasoned SEO agency to manage these elements for you to avoid any potential setbacks while attempting to grow organic traffic to your financial advisor website.
The GB Digital Approach to SEO
Attempting to tackle SEO strategy, use various tools (Google Ads, Google Keyword Planner, Google Analytics), and help your financial website become more visible can be challenging. It’s not something financial professionals may want to undertake themselves.
That’s where Garit Boothe Digital comes in.
GB Digital supports financial advisors just like you by focusing on the three main areas of SEO: technical, content, and backlinks.
We conduct an SEO audit and develop a comprehensive SEO strategy that supports your business’s growth and profitability. Here, we emphasize both quick wins and sustainable growth, helping you rank fast and get strong results well into the future.
Why trust GB Digital with SEO for financial advisors?
We’re specialists in the financial space, which means we know both how to make sure your business rises to the top of SERPs and remains competitive with those providing similar products and services.
Our expert writers produce high-quality content that potential clients can trust. Whether you want CPAs or other financial professionals powering your SEO growth, you can rest assured that the final product will always be factual, helpful, and compelling for greater conversions.
Book a Discovery Call to tell us more about your project and how the team here at GB Digital can support you!
