Search engine optimisation, or SEO, helps people find your business when they search online for financial advice.
At its best, good SEO looks a lot like good client work: it starts with what people need. Instead of relying on shortcuts, packing your copy full of keywords or trying to game Google, it means explaining your services clearly, answering the questions clients and prospective clients are already asking and making the expertise behind your advice easy to find.
That work needs to happen across your website, not just on your homepage. Your service pages, adviser profiles, articles and contact information all help search engines understand what your firm offers. Increasingly, they can also help AI features such as Google AI Overviews find, interpret and reference your business.
In this article, we’ll share 10 practical ways to improve your financial advice business’s online visibility without turning SEO into another full-time job.
You can find more information on the business development support available to ValidPath Members, including marketing, here.
1. Give each important service its own useful page
A short list of services on your homepage tells people what you offer, but it doesn’t explain any of those services properly.
To improve your visibility in relevant searches, you can create a separate page for each important area of advice you offer, such as:
- Retirement planning
- Pension advice
- Investment advice
- Inheritance tax planning
- Protection
- Later-life planning
Each page should explain what the service involves, who it’s for, what it can help with and how someone can take the next step. That gives prospective clients useful information and gives search engines and AI tools enough context to understand each service.
2. Use the words prospective clients actually search for
A keyword is simply a word, phrase or question someone types into a search engine.
The language clients use may not be the same as the language used within the profession. You might talk about “retirement cashflow modelling”, while a prospective client searches for “how much money do I need to retire?”
You can do some simple keyword research by:
- Writing down the questions you hear during enquiries and client meetings
- Typing a service into Google and reviewing the suggested searches
- Looking at the related questions and searches shown on the results page
- Using Google Search Console or a specialist keyword research tool to identify related phrases and understand search demand. Some tools offer free features, while more detailed data may require a paid subscription.
However, the largest search volume isn’t always the best opportunity. A more specific phrase may attract fewer searches but be much more closely connected to the advice you provide and the clients you want to reach.
Keyword research should help you understand what prospective clients need, not give you phrases to force into your copy. Repeating the same terms unnaturally can make a page harder to read, while tactics such as keyword stuffing are designed to manipulate rankings rather than help users.
Clear, natural language gives search engines stronger context about what a page covers. It also makes the content easier for AI search features to interpret and use when answering more detailed questions.
3. Make every page title and heading clear
Every page on your website should make its subject obvious as soon as someone opens it.
For example, Retirement planning advice is a clearer main heading than Plan for tomorrow. The second may sound appealing, but it doesn’t immediately tell the reader or the search engine what the page covers.
When editing a page, you may also see a field called an SEO title or page title. This is the wording Google usually shows as the clickable heading in its search results.
You may also see a field called a meta description. This is a short summary added in the page settings. It doesn’t normally appear on the page itself, but Google may show it underneath the title in search results.
Both should describe the page clearly and give someone a reason to visit it. Your website provider can show you where these fields are managed. Google also recommends clear, concise titles that help people quickly understand why a result is relevant.
4. Add short answers to common client questions
The questions clients ask you every week can improve your website.
You could add a short questions section to an existing service page, covering areas such as:
- When should I seek financial advice?
- What happens during the first meeting?
- What information will I need to provide?
- Can you review my existing pensions?
- How will your fees be explained?
These answers help prospective clients understand the service without searching elsewhere. They can also provide useful starting points for more detailed educational articles, giving you opportunities to answer common questions in greater depth and link back to the relevant service page.
They also give search engines and AI Overviews clear information that may help them answer more detailed questions. This doesn’t guarantee that your website will be included, but direct and well-structured answers make your content easier to understand.
Keep each answer concise and relevant to the page it appears on. Where a subject needs more explanation, you can link to a separate article.
5. Link related pages using words that explain where the link goes
Links help visitors move between useful pages on your website. They also help search engines discover your content and understand how different pages are connected.
The wording of the link should explain what the reader will find.
For example: Read our guide to preparing for retirement.
This is more useful than: Click here to learn more.
You could link:
- An article to the service it discusses
- A service page to the relevant adviser profile
- An adviser profile to their articles
- One useful guide to a related article
- Each important page to your contact page
You don’t need to add links everywhere. Add them where they help someone continue their research or take the next step.
6. Keep your Google Business Profile complete and up to date
Local SEO for IFAs helps firms appear when someone searches for financial advice in a particular area.
A Google Business Profile is the listing that can appear in Google Search and Google Maps. It may include your location, contact details, opening hours, website, photographs, services and reviews.
You can find your profile by searching Google for your firm’s name and location. If you don’t control it already, you may need to claim and verify the listing before making changes.
Check that the information matches your website and update it whenever something changes. Complete and accurate information makes it easier for Google to connect your business with relevant local searches.
Genuine client reviews can also help prospective clients understand other people’s experiences of your firm. Make sure any process for requesting or publishing reviews follows the rules and approval process that apply to your business.
For more guidance on setting up and optimising your Google Business Profiles, local content, reviews and community marketing, read Local Marketing for IFAs: Attracting Clients in Your Area.
7. Only create location pages for areas you genuinely serve
If your firm has offices in several locations, a separate page for each office can help people find the most relevant information.
A useful location page might include:
- The office address
- The areas it serves
- The advisers based there
- The services available
- Directions and contact details
- Relevant local experience or community involvement
Avoid copying the same page several times and changing only the name of the town. Each location page should contain information that’s genuinely specific to that area.
You should also avoid creating pages for places where you don’t have a real presence simply to attract searches. A smaller number of useful, accurate pages is better than a long list of thin location pages.
8. Show the real advisers and experience behind your content
Financial advice is a high-trust service. Prospective clients, search engines and AI tools all need evidence that the information on your website comes from credible people.
Google uses E-E-A-T in its quality guidance as a framework for assessing whether content is helpful and trustworthy. It isn’t a single score your website receives or a target to hit. Instead, it’s a useful way to review whether readers can see who created the content, what qualifies them to discuss the subject and whether the information is accurate and transparent.
- Experience: Has the person dealt with the subject in practice?
- Expertise: Do they have relevant knowledge and qualifications?
- Authoritativeness: Is the person or firm a credible source?
- Trustworthiness: Is the information accurate and transparent?
For more detail, read Google’s guidance on creating helpful, reliable, people-first content.
You can demonstrate E-E-A-T by:
- Creating dedicated team bios for your website
- Naming the adviser who wrote or reviewed an article
- Linking articles to adviser profiles
- Listing qualifications and specialisms accurately
- Adding publication and review dates
- Including genuine adviser quotes
- Sharing suitable client stories or testimonials
- Using real photographs of your team
- Referencing reliable sources
AI can help organise your notes or create a first structure. The knowledge, examples and final checks, however, should still come from your advisers. Google says AI can support research and structure, but producing large quantities of generic content without adding value may breach its spam policies – and certainly won’t be helpful to your audience.
9. Make your expertise visible beyond your website
You don’t need to write a long thought-leadership article every week to demonstrate your expertise.
When time is limited, an adviser could share a short LinkedIn post answering one common client question or explaining one useful observation. With more support, someone could interview the adviser and turn the conversation into a post or article. Where there’s time for a fuller article, the same idea can also be used in shorter LinkedIn posts, client emails or videos.
LinkedIn can be useful because each insight is connected to a named professional profile. It gives prospective clients, search engines and AI tools another public source connecting your firm to real people and their expertise.
For practical ideas from another advice firm, read Member Insights: Marketing your IFA Business on Social Media Q&A. It explains how one ValidPath Member approaches organic social media activity as part of their wider marketing.
The aim isn’t to publish as often as possible. Choose an approach your firm can maintain and focus on sharing something genuinely useful. Remember that website and social media content can be a financial promotion if it invites or encourages someone to engage with a financial product or service. Any such content must be clear, fair and not misleading and should follow your firm’s approval process.
10. Keep your website quick, mobile-friendly and up to date
A prospective client may leave if your website is slow, difficult to use on a phone or full of outdated information.
You can carry out a simple check by opening the website on your phone and visiting its most important pages.
Look for:
- Text that’s difficult to read
- Buttons that are hard to click
- Pages or images that load slowly
- Broken links
- Outdated adviser information
- Old services or contact details
- Articles containing outdated figures or rules
Large images and videos are a common cause of slow pages. Before uploading a new image, you can resize or compress it, or ask your website provider to do this for you. You can also ask your website provider whether Google Search Console has been connected. This is a free Google service that shows whether Google has found your pages and which searches are making them appear.
You don’t need to check it every day. A simple review of your main pages every few months can help you spot useful improvements.
Your SEO checklist
Use this checklist to review your website. Start with the three priority actions, then work through the remaining improvements as time and resources allow:
- PRIORITY: Give each important service its own useful page
- Use the words prospective clients actually search for
- Make every page title and heading clear
- Add short answers to common client questions
- Link related pages using words that explain where the link goes
- PRIORITY: Keep your Google Business Profile complete and up to date
- Only create location pages for areas you genuinely serve
- PRIORITY: Show the real advisers and experience behind your content
- Make your expertise visible beyond your website
- Keep your website quick, mobile-friendly and up to date
You don’t need to address everything at once. Start with the three priorities above, then work through the other practical improvements as time and resources allow.
Make your expertise easier to find
SEO is only one way to market your business. Building your referral network, client-book acquisition and wider business development can all help you grow.
ValidPath Members can access practical support with marketing plans, referral networks, lead generation, reviews, social media and online visibility – helping them attract the right clients while retaining control of how they market and grow their firms.
Contact ValidPath today to find out how our marketing and business development support can help you attract more clients and grow your IFA business.
