SEO for Finance

Understanding YMYL

When choosing an SEO agency for your finance business, you need to take into consideration their past experience as your industry is viewed differently to other industries by Google. In particular, you are considered to be a ‘Your Money or Your Life’ (YMYL) business, this is because if Google serves an incorrect result for a query related to finance, it has the potential to materially affect a persons life in a negative way, hence the YMYL moniker.

Due to this, there are sets of rules and allowances that SEOs in finance need to take into consideration, over and above your standard SEO implementations. In particular, we need to pay close attention to the search quality raters guidelines, the 200 page instruction manual that Google provides to human website raters to train their machine learning algorithm.

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Using EAT (Expertise, Authority and Trust)

One major part of SEO in the financial services industry is the concept of Expertise, Authority and Trust or EAT. Just like in the offline world, if you are going to be a successful financial institution you need you customers to see you as a trusted expert with subject matter authority, online is no different.

Therefore, to get the most out of an SEO program in the finance industry we need to make sure we optimise your site to have these optimisation flags that Google can easily understand and translate to EAT.

Using a Finance SEO Expert

Further to the rules Google sets out, the government usually has guidelines and rules on how you are allowed to conduct yourself in any advertising and marketing. As you are working in a regulated industry, its essential to hire an SEO consultant who has experience in dealing with bodies like the SEC (securities and exchange commission) and FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) in the USA and the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) in the UK.

This means being able to provision copywriters with subject matter expertise in specialised areas. If you are being pitched SEO services for finance with an ‘in-house’ copywriter then alarm bells should start to ring. Unless, the SEO agency are finance specialists the economics of keeping specialist writers on staff doesn’t makes sense and you are likely getting a general copywriter with little to no deep experience of the financial services industry.

At Type A, our SEO agency has lots of experience in the finance industry, with one of our first clients being a FTSE 250 finance company that was heavily regulated. We have worked with enterprise finance businesses for since 2016 and have developed a little black book of some of the best finance copywriters in the business as well as deep connections with the financial press which has allowed us to land press coverage in publications like the FT.com, Forbes.com, MarketWatch.com and the Fool.com to name but a few.

How does our Financial Advisor SEO service work?

Are you a financial advisor looking to improve your ranking on search results? Have you been struggling to implement an effective SEO campaign for your financial advisory business? If yes, you have come to the right place.

Being a financial advisor involves much more than just handling client assets and money. As an expert in the industry, you need to establish deep and trusted relationships with every customer you work with. It also demands the provision of top-quality services in order to expand your client roosters. But the most important thing is to invest in the right SEO marketing strategies to ensure you stay ahead of the competition in the modern, fast-paced and saturated financial planning industry. 

There are several techniques a financial planner can use to rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). However, with the most recent changes in how search engines operate, SEO has taken the mantle as the best way to improve your rankings on Google search results. But how do you go about your financial advisor SEO campaign?

One of the easiest ways to ensure a successful SEO campaign for your financial advisory business is by working with a professional SEO agency. An expert SEO company, such as ours, will take over your financial advisor marketing campaign (SEO marketing) with the aim of optimizing your website to enhance visibility. Of course, you can handle the SEO campaign by yourself. However, working with us offers you unparalleled effectiveness and efficiency within a short time and a slimmer budget. 

Besides extensive experience in the industry, our SEO marketing agency understands the ins and outs of search engine optimisation. We have teams responsible for monitoring changes in the SEO world, which allows us to make necessary changes to our SEO marketing strategies to suit the latest trends. Here is a summary of the benefits of choosing our professional SEO consultants over DIY techniques:

• We can save you time and money

• We offer effectiveness and efficiency

• We allow you access to a large pool of experienced SEO experts at an affordable fee

• We save you from expensive SEO mistakes (Google penalty)

• We give you access to data & analytics necessary for overall growth of your business

Our winning SEO marketing strategy involves various steps designed to improve your ranking on search results. Here is a breakdown of how we implement an SEO strategy to increase the visibility of your web page. 

5 Steps for Financial Advisor SEO Strategy

Keyword Research

Keyword research is the first step in creating an effective financial planner SEO strategy. This step involves identifying search words and phrases prospective clients will likely use when performing a Google search. But why is keyword research necessary for your SEO campaign?

When conducting a local search, users use specific keywords and search phrases. So, identifying common keywords in your niche and incorporating them into your web content increases the chances of your web page ranking ahead of your competition. We also use keyword research to create web content based on what prospective clients want to discover rather than what you want to tell them. 

Content Analysis

Besides keyword research, our financial advisor SEO marketing agency will perform SEO content analysis. The step involves evaluating your blog post and website content to identify aspects that could enhance or deter its organic performance. But why is content analysis an essential part of SEO for financial advisors?

It is important to note that your website might not get ranked high on SERPs, even if Google search engines have crawled through it. There are several factors that could cause this issue – and you will need the help of SEO content analysis to precisely pinpoint and eliminate them. We perform content analysis in two phases to enhance the effectiveness of the operation. The two phases are:

• Evaluating existing assets for potential issues

• Analysing top-ranking content on SERPs to identify the ranking factors (competitor analysis)

Content Creation and Optimisation

Once we complete keyword research and content analysis, the next step involves creating and optimising content for your web page. SEO-optimised content should be engaging, easily sharable and relevant to your niche. We use the researched keywords and competitive analysis to create high-quality content for optimizing your website and social media pages. These include:

• Webinars

• Blog post content

• White papers

• Social media content

Our SEO marketing company will also perform on-page optimisation to further boost your website’s visibility. That involves making tweaks to your existing content to ensure search engines understand the context of the page. That helps establish your website as an expert in your niche, which gets your business listing high on SERPs.

Build High-Quality Backlinks

Your financial advisor marketing SEO strategy wouldn’t be complete without high-quality backlinks. Backlinks are essentially a ‘vote of confidence’ from another site to your website. Their primary purpose is to inform the search engines that other sites consider you a reliable source of information for products or services in your niche. 

The link-building process can be relatively tedious and time-consuming because it involves researching links and placing them manually throughout the content. Luckily, our SEO experts understand the nuts and bolts of link building, which makes it easier for us to research and reach out to site admins to request backlinks. 

Create Quality Meta-Data

When it comes to getting your business listing high on SERPs, it is a good idea to include click-worthy title tags and meta descriptions in your content. But how does meta-data enhance your rankings on SERPs?

Creating click-worthy title tags and meta descriptions increases the chance of a user clicking on your website during a local search. The more people click on your website, the more search engines consider it a reliable source of information in the niche; consequently, your website will rank higher. 

Need Some Help Boosting Your Financial Advisor Business’s Website?

SEO is undisputedly the most effective marketing strategy to boost your rankings on SERPs. However, you might need to enrol the help of an expert to ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of your SEO for financial advisor. If you need someone to help you untangle the complicated financial planner SEO world, it might be a good idea to call us today! 

We can also help optimize your google my business profile to help you rank higher in local search result pages. Some of the steps we use to optimize your google my business profile page include claiming your business profile, completing every section of your google my business account and publishing Google posts daily. Let us help you rank your financial advisory website as high as you want it to!