Here are 8 ways you can grow a client base as a financial advisor using SEO at the cornerstone of your strategy.
Create Great Content
Great SEO begins and ends with great content. So you’ll need to create great financial content if you want to rank you website in search engines and get organic traffic.
Here are our top recommendations to help you create great financial content for your website.
One of the most important elements to consider when creating content is what you’re helping a user to achieve. In essence, how your expertise and your knowledge can help solve problems for a user should be a key foundational aspect of your content strategy.
Even better, if you can answer user queries directly on page via your content.
Financial services is complex and personal to each individual, so stick to solving broader, topical questions rather than trying to give individualised advice or specific direction. For example, think about content people will always search for like:
| Keyword | User Intent | Value your content creates |
| how to open a pension | Understand the ways it is possible to open a pension, some financial knowledge may already exist. “pension” could relate to a personal pension or a company pension for staff | helps user improve their understanding of the various ways they can go about opening a pension. Crucially, seeing your content will help these users remember your brand and may help them trust you with further questions in the future. |
| do i have to pay tax on savings | Understand when or how much interest they can earn through savings accounts and investments before they have to pay income tax. | this is a great piece of content to write as a financial advisor because you can give users specific figures (£1,000 or £500 for higher rate tax payers) but crucially, many users searching may need more help determining how much they have earned in years gone by and so may benefit from working more closely with a financial professional. |
| dividend tax rates 23/23 | Business owners trying to understand the tax they’ll pay on dividends from their LTD in a specific financial year. | Wealth managers can benefit from creating this kind of content because it can help attract highly relevant clients to the site. For example, the user here is trying to understand how much tax they’ll pay on a dividend. Advice and expertise to help them save money can be valuable. |
| how to calculate corporate tax | Business owners trying to understand how to calculate and potentially forecast their corporation tax commitment for the year. | Again, relevant for wealth managers looking to attract customers with a complex financial situation including business income, assets, investments and personal income that you can help to become more tax efficient. |
Search engines tend to be one of the first places to turn for advice, even on complex financial matters where much of the information is still lower quality or not thorough enough to make an informed decision.
Creating content that;
- provides user value and helps them solve a problem (or even understand how to solve the problem they have)
- relies on your expertise and experience of your sector
- displays a high level of authoritativeness
- is linked to your established financial advisor practice and helps display high levels of trust
Will help your brand stand out and get noticed by the right type of clients that you can turn into leads.
Here’s more about creating an SEO strategy in the financial services space.
Create a YouTube Channel
Written content is great, but people are time poor. Gaining an audience is possible through sites like YouTube which has high levels of engagement and allows users to absorb information while working on other projects.
Creating a YouTube account which details specific financial services products, what they do and how they can be used can help you build an engaged audience that can become clients.
Your channel could help users solve issues by;
- explaining complex financial topics in detail to improve their understanding
- explain how financial products can be used to solve problems and which types of product best suit the situation different people might find themselves in.
- run walkthroughs of software, services, investment platforms or tools that can help your clients achieve tasks faster and help them understand how a professional would approach setting up their accounts
Keywords related to financial services and financial products attract high search volumes, with
Define Your Value
One of the best ways to help build a client base is to quickly define your value in all of your digital communication.
What this means is, if you’re offering a new service, working with a new investment partner or have a new qualification then mention this on your website, social channels and any other marketing you run.
Focus your messaging on the outcomes that this product or service aims to achieve rather than what the product or service is.
For example, if you’re now able to offer pension advice and retirement planning to clients, frame your marketing, web content and posts around helping users to understand a pension and retirement planning can help them achieve and live the lifestyle they want when they retire, rather than focusing on the specific mechanisms that drive pension investing.
Focus on a niche
Focusing on a niche can also help you grow an audience and a client base and it is a well known strategy for helping to grow traffic to websites.
Rather than writing one or two pieces about every service you offer, going into high levels of detail on a single topic can help you attract those interested and searching for related topics.
For example, if you’re a generalised financial advisor, but your true specialism and expertise is within pensions and retirement investing then consider writing extensively around pensions, pension investments, funds for pensions, retirement planning and retirement advice you’ll attract those searching for this type of information.
This increased discoverability within the pensions niche can help you win clients who use your content to learn about their options or stay up to date with information.
How to Define Specific Content
Think about what you enjoy doing and what you want to do more of. If there’s a specific area of the business you enjoy working on or a part of the business that makes more money or even if you existing site content performs best in a certain niche then you could chose to focus there.
Identify existing content you have in the niche and review the performance of those pages using:
- google search console to identify keywords driving traffic to the page
- google analytics to identify where users go after viewing a guide
- Identify additional questions users are searching for or questions existing clients
- with your list of user search terms and questions map out subtopics you can cover as part of the content strategy – for example pension subtopics might include; tax, investing, saving, PAYE and income tax
- create a list of content to write about
- start writing – create your content one page at a time and make sure you link relevant content pieces to each other. Ensure all of your content pieces link back to your services page.
Help define your SEO strategy with some of the best free Google tools.
If you need help defining a content strategy for your business, speak to an SEO consultant.
How to Grow an Audience and Build a Client Base Outside of SEO
If you’re a brand new business or need results faster, then other methods can yield faster results than SEO.
You may sacrifice some control over the type of clients you attract and the type of work you are doing, but to build a client base and attract customers quickly try these methods.
Use Social Media
Social media is great for promoting your business sites like Facebook, Twitter (X), Threads and LinkedIn are the perfect platform. to market your skills, explain to potential customers what you do and network with your potential customers.
As you create content for your website, don’t forget to share it on social media to help generate traction.
Make sure to create a social media account for your business on all of the big social sites and don’t forget any niche specific social networks you can join too.
Solve Problems on Reddit
Reddit is a great place to find specific, focused, user generated content about almost any topic and niche. Personal finance threads and financial advice threads are great place to flex your knowledge and provide value to users with questions.
Create a profile, build a bank of answers that you can repurpose to help users struggling with specific issues and join relevant communities.
Focus your community on the “newest” posts and when a user asks something you can help with, get answering.
Make sure you have your website or social media profile linked in the bio so any users you help can reach out and contact you if they wish.
Reach out to Contacts
Who have you worked with before? Old clients, customers, employers and contacts might have work you can help them complete.
If you’re starting out and looking for work then referrals are your most powerful form of generating work.
In something as important and sensitive as finance, people want to work with those they trust, so gaining referrals from contacts and people who already know how good how helpful you can be should be a priority.
Partner with Businesses
Partner with relevant businesses looking for services you offer. If there’s a larger employer in need of finance experts offering pensions advice or investment guidance why not try speaking to them to see if they’re interested in what you have to offer?
Helping organisations can help set you up with many leads going forward and lead into more work.
by Ben Ullmer
