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There is no point in having a website that is not picked up by search engines like Google. Through search engine optimisation, financial advice firms can make their businesses more visible to more potential clients who are searching the web for an adviser.
There are plenty of things that financial advisers can do to climb the rankings in Google’s results pages without consulting a specialist in SEO. But how effective is a DIY strategy, and is there a point at which advice firms should hand their SEO over to an expert in that field?
The basics for beginners
At its most simplistic level, SEO is about people who want to find your business online being able to do so, and there are things advisers can do themselves to improve this.
“Entry level SEO can be done by anyone with certain level of resources and writing skills,” says Ben Jayston, head of SMB SEO at search marketing agency Vertical Leap. “But you need tools to help you do it as doing it manually is tough.”
Advisers might want to start by looking at how people are currently finding their website. “Google Search Console is a free tool to understand their web traffic better and find out how people are searching for you online,” says Carmoola head of SEO Ed Beardsall. This tool can also flag up technical issues, and training on how to use it is available online.
Another free tool recommended by Beardsall for firms that have bricks and mortar premises is Google My Business, which links your brand to a physical office. He says this can help to build trust in your brand, as a physical presence indicates this is not a ‘fly-by-night’ firm.
SEO experts say it makes sense for financial advisers to start their SEO locally. Jake Cassedy is SEO lead at Tank PR. He says it is that when someone is looking for a local service, Google shows a ‘map pack’ in the results with financial adviser firms nearby.
“Start by trying to get your map listing featured in here,” he says. “To do this, make sure you have claimed the Google Business Profile for your company, which is free.”
Check all the information is correct and up-to-date, make sure it links to your website, personalise your profile with photos of your office and team, then try to get some reviews on there. “This is all really important for showing up highly in Google maps,” says Cassedy.
Web pages need a title to show Google’s algorithm what they are about – and a ‘meta description’. “The description isn’t used by Google, it’s customer facing and needs a call to action at end, such as ‘call now to speak to adviser’,” says Jayston. “It’s a little elevator pitch, but there’s a craft to it because it’s limited to 165 characters measured in pixel width.”
To get an idea of what this means, the letter ‘w’ is wider than ‘i’ so it will take up more of the pixel width allowance. Exceeding the limit can result in Google shortening your description, possibly mid-sentence.
“One example is that the word ‘analysis’ is often truncated just after the ‘l’, which means people laugh at it,” says Jayston. “That’s an extreme example but if you miss out the call to action it’s not going to make much sense, and you’ll see ellipses at the end of it.”
The value of keywords and content
People who are new to SEO may see that a lot of attention is given to keyword research and analysis, which refers to the words people are using to search for services like yours.
“Take some time to really think about who your target audience is. Knowing your audience and their interests will help inform which keywords you want to target,” says Gareth Hoyle, managing director of SEO reporting firm Coveragely. “If you’re unsure, do some keyword research to determine the competition and popularity of certain phrases through either Box, Google AdWords Keyword Planner, KWPlanner or Keyword Tool. These tools can help you find out what people are searching for plus the volume of people searching for each term, and therefore how competitive they are.”
However, Hoyle warns that ‘keyword stuffing’ – where you include your keyword too many times across your site – is penalised by Google. “So only use it where it’s necessary and where it fits naturally to avoid it negatively impacting your SEO,” he says.
While keywords remain essential, SEO experts say that Google’s algorithm – which visits, or ‘crawls’ web pages to find out what is on them – has evolved. “Today, it prioritises websites that are genuine authorities in their field,” says James Barber, head of strategy at SEO agency Go Up. “Instead of obsessing over search terms, focus on demonstrating your expertise.”
For financial advisers, creating content which ‘delves deep into complex financial topics’ – as Barber puts it – is one way to climb up the rankings. “Provide in-depth explanations, offer valuable insights and build trust. This is the key to long-term SEO success.”
However, creating ‘keyword optimised content’ as part of a wider SEO strategy will be time consuming for advisers and business owners, who will potentially be wearing several hats in the business already. So, although they could do down the DIY route with some of their SEO requirements, they will need to weigh up if it would make more sense to outsource it.
“As with all projects of this scale, it’s a balancing act between time, resources and skillsets. That’s where a specialist SEO agency can help,” says Ian Gallagher, account director at R & Co Communications. Gallagher says partnering with an agency that will work as an extension of your team and immerse themselves in your business can be much more effective than trying to learn about it and do it yourself as you go along.
“Plus, agencies are more likely to have invested in the myriad tools and software packages required to optimise websites – and you’re paying for their time and expertise to free you up to concentrate on your day job,” says Gallagher. “And importantly, agencies will understand the finer points of Google best practice when producing optimised content for your website.”
Jayston says that as a self-taught SEO professional, he would not want to deter anyone from having a go at it themselves. But it is a steep learning curve and doing it badly risks damaging your brand, so he thinks advisers are likely to reach a point where they need help from someone with more experience.
“Technical SEO can be dense. For example, Google monitors how long it takes for web pages to load and takes account of user experience when ranking websites on its results pages,” says Jayston. A tool called Lighthouse can be used to test page speeds, but would that mean anything to advisers?
“The technical data is probably going to be way beyond entry level SEO’s ability to understand and implement,” says Jayston.
Google updates often mean that content that was previously ranked highly by the algorithm falls down the rankings. Fixing this can take a long time and is something that Jayston would leave to the experts. “I think you will need a higher level of expertise to know what to do when a site fails,” he says.
