Financial advisors are sitting on the most powerful referral system ever created – and most are still not making full use of it. Clients increasingly rely on Google to research financial topics and find a potential advisor; most only consider the top few results. That means search engine optimization (SEO) is the key to consistent website traffic, lead generation and authority within your niche.
By placing you at the top of relevant searches, SEO drives new client acquisition and helps increase your assets under management (AUM). But given the volume of information out there about SEO, it can be overwhelming to get started.
This article provides a complete overview for financial advisors, explaining how you can improve your website’s rankings and turn it into a powerful source of new leads and clients.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a process designed to improve your website’s search engine rankings and ensure it appears at the top of relevant searches. In order to achieve that, the search engine must be able to easily read and index your website, find “keywords” that suggest your website is relevant to the search, and deem your website to be high-value and authoritative.
There are three ways financial advisors can approach SEO, and ideally, any SEO strategy contains all three:
Google promotes a concept called Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) that affects information that can affect people’s “health, happiness, financial stability or safety.” Any page that meets this criterion – which all financial advice inevitably will – is placed under greater scrutiny in terms of validity, accuracy and recency.
The best way to make your content rank is, therefore, to use the EEAT guidelines Google provides, ensuring that every web page demonstrates:
This might seem like a lot to ask of already time-poor advisors; will your business really benefit from all that effort?
SEO is an important marketing channel for most modern businesses, but there are three clear reasons search is particularly important for financial advisors:
Search engines are one of the most common ways for people to discover financial advisors today. This happens in two ways:
Many “traditional” advisor marketing channels are heavily saturated; just think about your last in-person networking event. This creates a lot of competition and ultimately means advisors must spend more time and resources to secure a new client.
Search is still a relatively underutilized marketing channel – making it far easier to “cut through the noise” and generate results. There are two basic reasons most advisors do not yet make full use of search’s potential:
Financial advisors live and die by their reputation, and search rankings are increasingly influential on the overall impression people have of your business. Advisors who rank highly on Google for relevant searches are sub-consciously perceived as more authoritative and successful because they are the “go-to” person for the query.
The bottom line? Increased visibility on search engines helps financial advisors attract new leads, build their reputation and generate a higher marketing ROI due to the relatively low level of competition in the field. But what is the most cost-effective and time-efficient way to improve them – and generate actual leads and new client acquisitions using SEO?
Your first step is to determine which keywords – i.e., terms people use in search bars – for which you want your website to rank. Our experience working with financial advisors suggests two factors are crucial:
People use search engines for a variety of reasons – and they are not equally useful to your business. For example, your ideal prospect might search for “investment strategies,” but so might people who are training to be a trader. As a result, even if you rank for that keyword – it might not produce a lot of useful traffic for your business.
Focus instead on keywords that are unambiguously relevant to your practice and service offering. These don’t have to be exclusively “sales-focused” terms, but they should at least suggest the person searching is likely to be in the market for financial advice in the future.
While advisors can benefit from targeting broader terms like “financial advice” or “best financial advisor,” these are highly competitive keywords, with hundreds of advisors across the country investing in SEO content to rank for them. A better approach is to focus on local terms, such as “Financial advisor in {your location},” which have a few benefits:
The next step is to ensure your entire digital presence is optimized to send the right signals to search engines and actually convert prospects into leads. There are several aspects to this, including:
Taken together, these will not only improve your website’s rankings – but will also ensure more people who discover it through Google turn into qualified leads and, ultimately, clients.
You can now begin creating SEO content that will help build authority for your website and rank for relevant keywords. For most advisors, the best strategy is focusing everything on maximizing local SEO – using two key kinds of content:
Producing new content is vital, but you also need to keep an eye on the performance of existing pages – and identify opportunities to make improvements or include new keywords. Given the pressure Google places on advisors to provide up-to-date and authoritative content, it is vital that information is regularly revised to reflect the latest market trends or regulatory changes.
We split this effort into two categories:
SEO can be a challenge for busy advisors who want results but cannot afford to put in the time required to produce, optimize and manage their SEO content.
ProperExpression takes the pressure off your shoulders, developing, executing and proactively improving your SEO strategy with a full team of experts – from content specialists to skilled developers.
Want to explore how we could help SEO become your best lead generator?