I’ll come right out and say it: SEO for financial advisors is a waste of time and money — IF you do it the way that 90% of internet gurus recommend.
If you’re tired of seeing competitors outrank you on Google, and the standard SEO “best practices” aren’t working, you’ve come to the right place.
You need to rethink your entire SEO strategy to align with the new direction Google is going in its recent updates. In this SparkLaunch guide, we will give you the top SEO tactics for businesses in the financial sector.
2024 SEO Trends for the Financial Sector
Google holds more than 90% of the search engine market, worldwide. This dominance underscores not only the importance of why the finance sector should care about their SEO footprint, but also how. Google’s updates in 2023 and 2024 have changed the SEO landscape even further, so read on to find out what matters most to search engines in 2024.
Essentially, it’s non-negotiable to understand recent trends for financial services providers and SEO:
- Google’s E-E-A-T
- AI and SEO automation
- Mobile user optimization
- Google reviews of businesses
Google’s E-E-A-T has become much more important to financial advisors and RIAs for generating organic traffic. The tips we share below are designed to boost SEO according to this update: enhancing your Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness within all digital facets of your brand.
You’ll also need to learn more about using Google reviews to boost your company’s impact. In 2023, 98% of consumers checked Google reviews before finalizing a purchase for a local good or service. The power of positive reviews from your clients could be a game-changer in the financial services field.
8 Actionable Keyword Strategies for RIAs to Keep Your Company Competitive in 2024
Here are the top things your team of financial advisors and RIAs need to understand to boost the power of your SEO in today’s tumultuous digital landscape.
1. Incorporate Ethical SEO Practices in Your Site
The latest update of Google’s search engine algorithm places more importance on ethical SEO practices. Sites that have higher integrity ratings can benefit from ethical SEO. For the financial industry, this is critical. Here are some ethical SEO practices you should consider adopting for your site:
| Ethical SEO Practice | Why This Matters |
| Get Links Naturally | Use authentic ways to build links to your site – such as guest blogging, publishing content and mentioning other brands |
| Avoid Keyword Stuffing | Don’t resort to manipulation to rank higher in the search engines. This includes stuffing your content with keywords and lowering your quality. |
| Improve User Experience | Make sure your site offers value to potential customers. Encourage site audits so you can check the user experience. |
It’s also crucial to conduct extensive keyword research if you want to improve your ranking. This means looking over your data analytics and determining what keywords offer the most value. The top sites in the search engine rankings still rely on well-researched keywords. In 2023, the top listing on Google gets the most clicks, more than 27%.
Of course, this isn’t the end-all key to SEO success. It’s how you use this data that makes a difference. Keyword volume data measuring estimated frequency and popularity shouldn’t be your primary directive for content—the volumes reported by mainstream SEO tools are often inaccurate and can be misleading.
Instead, consider the best way to use keywords to offer unique value to your target audience.
Understanding How to Avoid Being Labeled Spam
Google has also announced three new aspects to its anti-spam policies for search engine purposes. Sites that use certain tactics could be labeled as spam, pushing their rankings to the bottom of the list.
Site administrators should avoid practices like site reputation abuse, scaled content abuse and expired domain abuse. Using your site’s reputation for publishing content on other third-party sites to manipulate search engine rankings and boost traffic is now considered spam since the content is neither useful nor valuable to visitors.
Additionally, creating tons of low-quality content that isn’t helpful to potential customers could also impact your search engine performance. Marketing managers who buy expired domains to redirect traffic to their own sites also may risk being categorized as spam.
2. Improve Your Content Quality To Get a Boost From Google’s March 2024 Update
Quality content is also key for financial pros looking to capitalize on Google’s recent changes to the algorithm. The foundation of a successful online presence for financial service providers, such as financial advisors and RIAs, is very much built with compelling content that is not only high-quality but also relevant to site visitors.
Start your content strategy by featuring a variety of information on your site. You should strive to have a mix, such as:
- Blog posts and articles
- Infographics, charts, and slides
- Case studies and reviews
Your content should aim to provide helpful, real-world advice to potential customers of your business or service. It should be written by experts or people on your team with experience so that it comes across as trustworthy and credible.
Another key factor in effective content is how it is presented. Highlight tangible results and positive outcomes, but also encourage users to explore further and consider your services. This can be done by creating content offering advice to specific user demographics or building interactive tools, like calculators related to financial planning.
Ultimately, potential clients need engaging content that won’t bore them to death or have them clicking out of your site. Visual content tends to capture attention effectively, and can be used to convey complex information in a simple way.
The Value of Video Content for Ranking and Conversions
Video marketing is here to stay. Embedding videos on your website can make a marked impact on your search engine rankings and conversion rates.
How? Videos can help improve user engagement, increase time spent on your website, and provide an additional touchpoint for your audience to connect with your brand.
Consider optimizing your videos with relevant titles, descriptions, and tags so you can further enhance their visibility and reach. Most of all, create valuable videos that provide answers to your site visitors’ potential questions.
3. Optimize Your Site to Align With NavBoost
Next, your team needs to understand the concept of NavBoost. During Google’s recent antitrust trial with the U.S. Government, the world got hints of how their ranking algorithms work. NavBoost, also called Glue, is Google’s system of measuring user clicks, hovers, scrolls and swipes.
NavBoost works to make search engine results more relevant to users by remembering activity. Now, teams need to make strides in enhancing their site’s user experience to align with this proprietary algorithm.
The user experience should be a priority when designing an initial website or reworking an existing site. One of the most effective ways to improve user experience is to boost your website’s speed.
Here is a breakdown of what you should focus on with your site:
| Site Optimization Strategy | Details | Benefits |
| Fast Loading Speed | your site should load in three seconds or less | avoid user frustrationkeep the audience’s attentionreduce bounce rate |
| Easy to Skim | content should feature small, easy-to-digest paragraphs, bold print, subheadings and be skimmable in only a few minutes | users get information quicklyvisitors can make a fast decisionhigher rate of social media sharing |
| Effective Mobile Site Design | your mobile version should be optimized for a smaller screen layout and be easy to navigate on a smartphone | get an advantage over competitorsimprove site performance and speedhigher rate of conversions |
| Image Optimization | keeping image files small, fast loading and adding tags and other details | faster site loadbetter accessibility for all usershigher ranking in the search engines |
| Check Links Regularly | Review internal links periodically to check for broken sites, missing pages and other mistakes | improve user experiencekeep site visitors on your pages for longerprevent a drop in the search engine rankings |
4. Harness the Power of User-Generated Content
Now let’s talk about how to improve your SEO with user-generated content (UGC). In February 2024, message board site Reddit made a $60 million deal with Google to train its AI models. Google recognized the value of user-generated content, and so should you.
Here’s how it can power your financial SEO.
Authenticity
Authenticity is key when putting together a UGC strategy. Customers in the financial sector need to trust your brand. Visitors can see right through UGC which looks too much like an advertisement.
Look for potential UGC from:
- Video testimonials
- Social media mentions
- Online reviews
- Comments on community sites like Reddit
Influencer Partnerships
Partnering with affiliates and influencers gets even more voices talking about your brand and boosting your company’s reputation. Your business may offer an incentive to affiliate partners if they help convert site visitors to customers.
Use Social Media to Encourage Engagement and Gather and Original Data
Original data and research you obtain firsthand can significantly enhance the value and credibility of your content. Social media is not only a great way to build your online presence and publish content, but it’s also a great tool for data collection.
Consider conducting surveys, polls, or interviews to gather unique insights and data points related to your industry or target audience. Remember that even simple methods, such as analyzing publicly available data or compiling statistics from reputable sources, can yield valuable original data that can set your content apart.
By presenting this data in an engaging and visually appealing manner, you can create content, for social or otherwise, that is truly unique and valuable to your audience.
5. Understand How AI Impacts Your Site’s Content and Performance
AI is a potential goldmine of opportunity for improving your site’s SEO rankings. There are different strategies to master if you want to use AI to support your site’s goals.
However, using AI to generate content for your site could be a mistake. Google’s updates reward sites with original information that differentiates itself from competitors. AI tools often use similar ideas and content, frustrating search engine users.
You can employ AI to help with some content creation tasks, such as:
- Optimizing title tags, meta descriptions or image tags
- Brainstorming possible blog post topics
- Finding personalization strategies for content that caters to your customer base
- Adding keywords strategically to existing content to optimize it for search engines
Remember: AI is not a replacement for a well-thought-out content creation strategy, but it can enhance and heighten your content to help your company reach its goals.
Use AI to Spot Trends and Expand Your Keyword Research
A better strategy is to use AI to assist you in spotting trends in the financial industry and expand your use of keyword research:
- Focused Keywords give you more results in your SEO efforts. AI can identify the keywords your audience is searching for.
- Search Intent refers to the why behind users’ search engine habits. AI can help you figure out not just what the keywords are, but why someone may be searching for the topics.
- Competitive Analysis with AI helps you understand what the top-ranking pages in this industry are doing and provides lessons for your own goals moving forward.
AI can also help identify topic and content clusters for your team to focus on. This gives your readers a more comprehensive overview of information for questions they may have about the topic.
For example, you might have a pillar page about “Retirement Planning Strategies,” covering various aspects of retirement planning broadly. Supporting this pillar page, content clusters (in the form of individual pages, articles, videos, or graphics) could include subtopics like:
- “401(k) Investment Guide”
- “Social Security Benefits Explained”
- “Estate Planning for Retirees”
Each of these subtopics would link back to the main pillar page and to each other, creating a cohesive content ecosystem that boosts SEO and user navigation.
6. Focus on Specific Local SEO Strategies for Big Benefits
We’ve also learned in the update how vital local SEO can be in finding more success in your own backyards. Enter: Local SEO strategies. This is one of the most cost-effective ways you can increase your reach and get more customers, especially for small businesses.
One aspect to pay attention to in local SEO is your business profile page on Google Maps. If your business has a complete profile, customers may be more likely to consider using your services, up to 50% more, according to Google. Providing specific, up-to-date details about your hours, services, images and phone numbers could give your company a reputation boost—this demonstrates to potential clients (and Google) that you’re present and active.
Next, take a moment to review the feedback section on your Google Maps business page. Positive reviews are incredibly powerful on a local level. Negative reviews can be devastating. Encourage your clients to leave positive reviews by sending reminders after completing a service for them. Address any negative reviews immediately to conduct some damage control.
It takes some creativity to win at local SEO. These strategies can help:
- Develop hyper-local content that capitalizes on news, events, and resources that resonate with the local community.
- Create landing pages tailored to different neighborhoods or communities you serve.
- Engage in community initiatives like charity drives or fundraisers.
- Implement schema markup in your site’s code to make it easier for search engines to pull up specific details about you.
- Remember that many “near me” queries happen on smartphones, which is yet another reason to make sure your site is mobile-friendly.
There are many things you can do here. Our team can help in a number of ways, whether that’s determining specific microneighborhoods to target or optimizing local landing pages.
Most of all, neighborhood businesses need to build relationships with local customers and their communities—in person. Be active in your area and be visible. Participate in local Chamber of Commerce events and networking activities. Engage with your clients in person and online to give your business a face and your brand a personality.
Rethink the Way You Do Local Keywords
While “keyword + city” keyword ideas may seem like a logical starting point for local SEO, they are also the most obvious (and therefore the most competitive) keywords, and may not yield the best results. Instead, consider exploring topics based on your prospects’ age, interests, income, risk appetite, life stages, and events.
For example:
- generational wealth transfer strategies
- how to protect my inheritance
- investment options for retirement
- how to minimize property taxes
- best investments for college fund
By aligning your content with your target audience’s specific needs and interests, you can create more relevant and engaging content that resonates better with your prospects.
7. Turn Site Visitors Into Potential Clients With Higher Conversion Rates
All of this talk about marketing and SEO doesn’t matter if your conversion rates are low. The point of SEO tactics for your business is to improve your conversion rates and get more clients.
Some site visitors are just browsing for information and not ready to commit to a purchase. Other site visitors may be turned off by something about your site or your company. Conversion rates are the percentage of site visitors who either click on something on your site or complete another action that is one step closer to being a new client.
To boost your conversion rate on your site, your team may have to do a little tweaking of the elements and navigation. Here are some tips:
- Keep forms short and simple to avoid abandonment
- Incorporate customer testimonials throughout your site
- Improve your CTA (call to action) verbiage to encourage action
- Include an exit pop-up action to keep site visitors from clicking out of your website
8. Use Data Analytics To Evaluate Your Site’s Performance and Make Changes
The last piece of a strong SEO plan is measuring your site’s performance. This type of marketing is always a work in progress. Your SEO team should be using performance metrics and data analytics tools continuously to make changes as needed.
Your site should be analyzed on a monthly or weekly basis for the following KPIs (key performance indicators):
- Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) – This is the total cost your company invests in converting one site visitor. It is calculated by adding up the costs of your entire SEO marketing budget and dividing it by your number of conversions.
- Return on Investment (ROI) – This is the net benefit of using SEO marketing to increase profitability. To calculate this figure subtract the investment you made into marketing from your revenue. Then, divide that figure by your marketing investment to get the ROI percentage.
- Keyword Rankings – To track your keyword’s performance, you’ll need a tool like Google Analytics. Check your keywords’ performance and rankings to see how effective your current content strategy is and to identify weak points.
Get More Out of Your Website
If you want your website to do more for you, you need a revamped SEO strategy that utilizes the most effective online marketing tools for 2024. SparkLaunch can provide a team of pros to devise your next SEO steps toward success.
Juggling marketing tactics and running a viable financial services business at the same time isn’t a viable way to build your business and increase your profitability. The new trends in SEO and online marketing are not for the faint of heart. Let us handle the heavy lifting when it comes to SEO and keyword research.
Contact us today by scheduling a discovery call so we can learn about your needs and develop a strategy to reach your goals. Our process starts with understanding what you want and where you want to go, so let’s get started!
