Link Building for Financial Advisors

A solid digital footprint that includes social media accounts and a professional financial advisor website is essential for growth-focused advisors who want to expand their reach and attract new clients. Search engine optimization (SEO) can make it easier for prospects to find you online, and building links is a key component of a sound SEO strategy. Here’s what you should know about the value of SEO link-building for financial advisors.

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Understanding SEO Link Building

SEO is not just one thing; instead, it’s a set of strategies designed to help you increase your visibility in search engine results.

Keywords are one part of SEO strategy. Keywords are individual words or phrases that a potential client uses to find information through a search engine. Examples of financial advisor keywords include things like “financial advisor near me” or “best wealth advisor.”

How well you optimize your website or social media accounts for keywords can influence where your site ranks in search results. Links also influence your rankings.

There are three types of links to understand when applying SEO tactics.

Internal links. Internal links connect one page of your website to another. For example, if you publish a blog post on your site about wealth management, you might link it internally to a related post on retirement planning.
Outbound links. Outbound links are external links to other websites from your site. For instance, in your blog post on wealth management, you might include an outbound link to a survey or study on the same topic.
Inbound links. Inbound links or backlinks are links to your site from another site. For instance, if a major financial news outlet publishes an article that includes a link to your blog post on wealth management, that’s an inbound link.

All are important for SEO, but of the three, inbound links are typically considered to be the most valuable. When another site links to your site, that sends a signal to search engine algorithms that you are a trusted authority. In turn, that can push you higher in search rankings.

SEO Link Building for Financial Advisors

An advisor reviewing their link-building strategy.

Increasing internal and external linking on your website is a straightforward process. With internal linking, you simply need to connect pages in a way that makes sense. So, you might link related blog posts to one another or include a link to a relevant product page on your site.

There are some rules to know about internal linking for good SEO:

Anchor text, meaning the word or phrase that you’re linking, should reflect the content of the page you link to.
Links should be evenly scattered throughout the page and be relevant to the page content.
All links should be functional, and any links that generate a 404 error should be updated promptly.

With external linking, it’s important to choose authoritative sites to link to that aren’t competitors. If you want to link to a survey on retirement planning, for instance, it makes more sense to link to a government website rather than another financial advisory firm.

Backlinks are more difficult because most of the time, you have no direct control over which websites link to you or which pages on your site they link to. There are, however, some things you can do to encourage more inbound links to your site.

How to Get More Backlinks to Your Advisor Website

The most basic rule to know about SEO link building for financial advisors is that you have to give someone a reason to link back to you. That means creating quality content that’s so good or authoritative that other sites will want to share it.

With that in mind, here are some of the most effective strategies for building backlinks.

1. Incorporate Research or Data

Creating content that references original research or summarizes existing data can help you establish authority and potentially generate more inbound links.

Some of the ways you can leverage data to get links include:

Conducting a survey on a topic that’s relevant to your target audience and sharing an analysis of the results.
Writing a round-up blog post that includes a list of related statistics from reputable sources.
Drafting a white paper that offers a research-based look at financial trends or issues relevant to your audience.
Completing a case study showing how you helped a client achieve their financial goals step by step.

2. Create Unique Visual Assets

Images and videos can enhance your content’s shareability, helping you gain more inbound links in the process.

For example, if you’re publishing a lengthy post or article breaking down the results of a recent study, you could highlight the most important points in an infographic. Or you might create one or more charts to summarize the data.

The link-building happens when other websites insert the assets you’ve created into their articles and include a credit and link back to your site.

You could also create unique resources and tools for other sites to link back to. For example, you might develop a retirement planning calculator or an interactive tool that allows people to visualize investment returns.

3. Balance Evergreen Content With Trending Topics

Evergreen content is content that has a long shelf-life, meaning it’s just as likely to be relevant 50 years from now as it is today. Good SEO link building for advisors includes evergreen content, but it doesn’t ignore the value of trending topics.

Trending content may lose its relevancy fairly quickly, but it can generate traffic to your website if other sites value your take on a particular topic. Searching for trending topics on social media or monitoring financial news outlets can give you an idea of what people are most interested in at any given moment.

4. Focus on Outreach

You can’t always wait for inbound links to find their way to you. It’s also important to be proactive in generating links through outreach, collaboration and partnerships.

Some of the ways you might do that include:

Writing a guest post or article for a financial blog or publication with a link back to your site included somewhere in the content.
Offering yourself as an expert interview source to journalists seeking quotes for finance-related articles.
Being a guest on an industry podcast or taking part in a live roundtable discussion with other advisors.
Collaborating with financial influencers or industry thought leaders to create shareable content that includes links to your website and theirs.
Posting thoughtful and helpful responses to finance-related questions in online forums like Reddit or Quora.

Your existing network is an excellent place to begin looking for opportunities to conduct outreach. You can also leverage platforms that allow you to submit responses to journalist queries to try and gain more backlinks.

5. Get Listed

Getting your firm listed in online business directories is another way to build links for SEO, with relatively little effort. Some of the places you might consider getting listed include:

Google Business
Yelp
Bing Places
Yellow Pages
Foursquare
Manta

Creating profiles on these types of sites can help with building backlinks and it can boost your rankings in local searches. That’s huge if you’re trying to attract more clients in your local area.

Bottom Line

An advisor reviews SEO link-building for financial advisors.

Link building can be a powerful way to level up your SEO and draw more traffic to your firm’s website. The secret to success lies in knowing how different SEO links work and how to generate them naturally to boost your site’s authority.

Tips for Growing Your Advisory Business

It can take time to see results from SEO link-building efforts and other digital marketing approaches. If you’re looking for a way to amplify your firm’s online presence, you might consider partnering with an advisor marketing platform. SmartAsset AMP offers a holistic marketing approach to help you find leads for your business. Schedule a demo to learn how you can leverage it to further your growth goals.
Streamlining your marketing processes can save time and ensure that you’re focusing your energy on the right things. For example, creating a social media calendar can make it easier to keep track of the content you’re posting. Utilizing AI tools, meanwhile, can help you generate content quickly.