A Financial Advisor’s Guide to SEO Best Practices
What Is SEO?
An important part of your content marketing strategy, SEO helps your advisor website climb onto the first page of a Google search.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a digital marketing strategy that focuses on helping your website rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs), so more people can find your website organically.
There are three core components that can affect your ranking on SERPs:
The types of content that searchers—your prospective clients—are looking for
How search engines work to find, index, and share content in results pages
How you can properly promote and optimize your website
SEO is an extremely dynamic process. To make sure that your website stays on the first page of major search engines, you also need to understand emerging trends, such as voice search, keep up with new features in search-related products and tools, and adapt to technological advancements like machine learning and algorithm changes.
Why Should Financial Advisors Invest in SEO?
Having a strong online presence is crucial for any business, including financial advisory firms.
While you can do this by being active on social media, your website is still one of the few owned media you can incorporate to create the best financial advisor marketing strategy.
SEO is a powerful tool that can help financial planners increase their online visibility, attract more website traffic, and generate leads.
Increased visibility can lead to higher rankings in search engine results, which in turn drives more organic traffic to your website. For financial advisors, this can be particularly beneficial as it allows them to reach a larger audience, showcase their expertise, and ultimately, grow their client base.
Relevant keywords help search engine algorithms find and index your site, while high-quality content ensures that people who land on your web pages stay there—boosting your credibility.
SEO is a powerful tool for lead generation. You can build trust by providing quality content that answers a user’s search intent. You can slowly turn visitors into leads this way. Besides educational content, you should also have content that encourages visitors to take the next step—whether that’s contacting you or joining your email list.
SEO Best Practices for Financial Advisors
To leverage the power of SEO, you need to understand and implement several best practices. These include conducting keyword research, optimizing on-page elements, crafting relevant content, improving user experience, building quality backlinks, and focusing on local SEO. We’ll break these down further below.
Conduct Keyword Research
The keyword research process involves identifying the search terms and phrases that your potential clients use when they’re trying to solve problems you can help with. Using a keyword planner, you can find keywords that connect your services with the people who need them.
Understanding these keywords lets you tailor your website to match what your potential clients are searching for. It's about speaking their language and making sure your website appears in their search results when they're looking for the services you offer.
When conducting keyword research, it's important to look for keywords with a high search volume and low competition. High search volume means that a lot of people are using these keywords in their searches, which means more potential traffic to your website. Low competition, on the other hand, means that not many other websites are targeting these keywords, which can make it easier for your website to rank higher in the search results.
Optimize On-Page Elements
On-page SEO involves optimizing the content and HTML source code of a page by incorporating your identified keywords into various elements of your website.
The content on your website should naturally and strategically include your keywords. This helps search engines understand the topic of your page and website—as well as how relevant it is to a user's search query. Aside from the main content, here are several other places where you should optimize your keywords:
The titles of your pages, which are often the first thing a user sees in search results, should also include your keywords.
Meta descriptions provide a brief summary of your page's content.
URLs that contain relevant keywords can help crawlers put the information on your page in context and connects your web page to relevant topics.
Headings (H1, H2, etc.) are used to structure your content and improve readability.
Image alt texts, which provide descriptions of images.
Craft Relevant Content
The content on your website serves as a platform to showcase your expertise, provide value to your audience, and answer their questions.
But it's not just about creating content—it's about creating the right content.
Your content should answer their questions and meet their search intent. For example, if you're a financial advisor specializing in retirement planning, you might create content about different retirement savings strategies, how to calculate retirement savings needs, or the pros and cons of various retirement accounts—things your potential clients might be looking for.
Incorporating relevant keywords into your content helps search engines understand the topic of your content and how it can benefit searchers. But remember, your primary audience is your users, not search engines. So, while it's important to include keywords in your content, make sure to do so in a way that is natural and adds value to your audience.
Improve User Experience
Improving the user experience on your website is a multi-faceted task.
One of the key aspects to focus on is the loading time of your website. A longer loading time means more chances for visitors to leave. This becomes a problem when your bounce rate increases and negatively impacts your SEO ranking. You can optimize the loading speed of your website by compressing images, minimizing the use of heavy scripts, and using a reliable hosting service.
In addition, you also need to pay attention to the user experience on mobile devices. With more people using smartphones to find answers, creating a mobile-friendly website is a must. Make sure that your website is responsive and automatically adjusts to fit any screen size. Ensure that the text, images, and experience are still easy to digest even on a small screen, especially if you have interactive elements on your website.
Lastly, the structure and navigation of your website play a significant role in user experience. A well-structured website with easy navigation helps users quickly find the information they're looking for. This enhances the user experience and helps search engines index the content of your website better. To improve website navigation, you can use clear and descriptive menu labels, implement a logical page hierarchy, and include a search function.
Build Quality Backlinks
You can think of a backlink, also known as an inbound link, as an endorsement from another website.
This is different from internal links, or when you link to articles within your own domain. Internal links will help prospective clients on your website find and consume more of your content.
But when a reputable (and relevant) website links to your site, it lets search engines know that your content is helpful.
However, not all backlinks are created equal.
Links from authoritative and relevant websites are more valued than those from lesser-known or unrelated sites. Links from websites known for bad content can even drag down your credibility.
You need to be picky when acquiring backlinks; make sure that you’re focusing your efforts on high-quality backlinks that support your website’s credibility.
One effective strategy to acquire these valuable backlinks is through guest blogging. Guest blogging involves writing articles for other websites in your industry. It allows you to share your expertise with a wider audience and provides an opportunity to include a backlink to your website.
However, landing guest blogging opportunities often requires networking. By establishing relationships with industry leaders and influencers, you can open doors to guest blogging opportunities on their platforms. This not only helps you acquire authoritative backlinks but also positions you as a thought leader in your field, further enhancing your website's credibility and appeal.
Don’t Forget Local SEO
Local SEO is the practice of optimizing your online presence to appear in local searches, such as “financial advisors near me”.
For financial advisors, this can involve registering for local directories like Google My Business, optimizing content for location-specific keywords, and encouraging clients to leave reviews and testimonials.
Local directories not only increase your online visibility but also provide a platform for potential clients to find your business based on their location. Optimizing your content for location-specific keywords is another strategy that can significantly improve your local SEO.
This involves incorporating keywords that are relevant to your location into your website's content, meta tags, and even the URL if possible.
One way you can do this well is by using client reviews and testimonials. They serve as social proof of the quality of your financial services and can significantly influence a potential client's decision to choose your business over others. Encouraging your clients to leave reviews on your Google My Business listing, your website, or other review platforms can help boost your credibility and enhance your online reputation. More positive reviews can also improve your website's ranking in local search results, making your business more visible to potential clients in your area.
Partner With Asset-Map to Scale Marketing Efforts
SEO is not just about targeting the right keywords or link building.
A successful SEO strategy goes beyond just driving traffic to your website. But at its core, SEO is about understanding your audience, their behavior, and what they’re looking for.
SEO is a part of your marketing engine—the end goal here is to get more prospects and increase your revenue.
Ultimately, it’s most helpful to focus on creating a great user experience for searchers. Create content that meets what your searchers are looking for. On top of that, you’d like to optimize it for crawlers using keywords so search engines understand the topic of your content and you can rank higher on SERPs.
Asset-Map offers a series of tools to help you improve your client experiences, such as visual maps, a discovery tool, and other financial management tools. On top of streamlining your processes, Asset-Map can also help you pull household data to inform your keyword research.
Get a demo today and see how else Asset-Map can help you improve your client experience and support your marketing strategies.