Table of Contents
- Why SEO Is High-Stakes for Financial Advisors in 2025
- The Great Decoupling: Impressions vs. Clicks
- Transactional Search Intent: The Opportunity for Advisors
- The SEO + AI SEO Sweet Spot for Search
- SEO Best Practices for Financial Advisors in 2025
- Where Does This Leave Us?
- Traditional SEO: Still the Foundation
- AI SEO: What Advisors Must Do Differently
- Publishing Strategy for the AI Era (the CReD™ framework)
- The Future of SEO for Advisors
- What to Do Next
- Ready to Adapt?
Why SEO Is High-Stakes for Financial Advisors in 2025
Search is changing faster than ever – and for financial advisors, the traditional playbook for visibility is no longer enough. Nearly 60% of Google searches now end without a click. On top of that, AI-powered tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) are answering questions directly in the search results, leaving fewer opportunities for prospects to visit your website.
In this new landscape, simply publishing educational content isn’t enough. The firms that adapt will capture fewer visits overall – but those visits will be far more qualified, with prospects actively looking for an advisor.
The Great Decoupling: Impressions vs. Clicks
The Google Search Console graph below illustrates this shift.
Purple line = Impressions – the number of times your site appears in search results
Blue line = Clicks – how often someone actually visits your site
Historically, impressions and clicks moved together. But in the second half of the graph, a clear separation emerges: impressions climb while clicks fall.
The SEO industry calls this trend “The Great Decoupling.” In short, we’ve reached “peak search.” More searches are happening, but fewer are delivering traffic to advisor websites.
What does that mean? Informational content like “Benefits of Rebalancing Your Portfolio” is increasingly answered by AI, not by your website. However, those who reach your site are further along in their decision-making process.
For advisors, that shift means the true opportunity isn’t in chasing broad informational traffic anymore – it’s in capturing searches where prospects are no longer browsing but ready to take action.
Transactional Search Intent: The Opportunity for Advisors
The real value in SEO now lies in transactional searches – queries where someone is actively looking to hire or consult with a financial advisor (e.g., “financial advisor near me”).
Here are three strategies to capture this high-intent traffic:
Own Local Search
Show up on Google Maps when prospects search “financial advisor [city].” Make sure your Google Business Profile is accurate, optimized, and regularly updated.Target a Specific Audience
Stand out by focusing on a niche – for example, “financial advisor for tech executives.” Build service pages, articles, and partnerships (directories, podcasts, industry sites) that reinforce your specialization.Exhibit Topical Authority
Create structured, interconnected content clusters around your expertise. Example: “financial advisor to help with RSUs” – supported by articles, FAQs, and guides that prove your depth of knowledge.
The SEO + AI SEO Sweet Spot for Search
The most effective strategy is combining all three: your Who-What-Where statement.
This formula makes you the definitive answer for high-intent searches:
[Best/Top] financial advisor in [Location] for [Audience] with [Specific Need]
For example: “Best financial advisor in Austin to help tech executives with RSU planning.”
By positioning yourself this way, you won’t win every search – but you’ll win the ones that matter.
SEO Best Practices for Financial Advisors in 2025
Even with AI-powered tools gaining traction, Google remains the most influential driver of website traffic. In fact, it sends far more visitors to advisor websites than all other search platforms combined.
This means SEO is still mission-critical – but the strategies that worked two years ago aren’t the ones that will drive results today. To stay competitive, advisors must adapt to how search is evolving in 2025, starting with how users interact with Google results.
While the changes aren’t dramatic, the chart reveals a steady shift in how users interact with Google over time. Even small percentage drops in organic clicks add up — especially when multiplied across millions of searches. The takeaway: advisors can’t count on Google sending traffic as reliably as it once did.
Even small drops in organic clicks compound across millions of searches.
The above chart shows how searches are distributed today:
A growing share ends with no click at all
Fewer are making it to advisor websites through organic search results
- More are staying on Google or going to Google-owned property
Where Does This Leave Us?
The trend of fewer clicks will almost certainly continue. At the same time, AI platforms are beginning to send leads directly to advisors – a pattern that’s only going to grow as these tools become more mainstream.
Standing out now means showing up not just in search results, but also in AI-generated answers and across emerging platforms – that’s where SEO and AI Search Optimization (AEO and GEO) come in.
SEO, AEO, and GEO are each about creating a digital presence that clearly communicates your expertise, answers real client questions, and builds trust. Whether someone types “best retirement planner in Austin” into Google or asks an AI assistant “who helps tech professionals retire early,” your goal is to show up – to “surface” rather than rank – with authority and clarity.
Today, that means structuring content so it can surface in AI-powered platforms like Google’s featured snippets, ChatGPT, and Perplexity. This shift toward AI Search Optimization is changing how content needs to be structured. Advisors who adapt early can position themselves not just in search results but directly in the answers.
Let’s break down what still works, what’s changed, and how advisors can win in this evolving search landscape
Traditional SEO: Still the Foundation
AI may be transforming how search works, but the fundamentals of SEO are still essential. In fact, many of the same signals that help you rank in Google are also what AI tools rely on when deciding what content to surface.
If you don’t have a solid SEO foundation, AI won’t see you – no matter how good your content is.
Here are the core elements of SEO that still matter in 2025:
1. Clear, Intent-Driven Service Pages
Each of your core services should have its own page, written in the language your clients would use in search.
Example: Instead of a generic “Our Services” page, build dedicated pages like “Retirement Planning in Albany” or “Tax Planning for Tech Professionals.
2. Structured, Skimmable Content
Search engines and AI tools prefer content that is easy to scan and understand. Use headers, bullet points, and summaries to help both users and algorithms extract meaning quickly.
3. Local SEO Fundamentals
For most advisors, local visibility is the most important kind. Make sure your Google Business Profile is complete and consistent with your website. Your Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP) should match across the web.
4. Authority Signals
Backlinks remain one of the strongest ranking factors in Google. When trusted sites link to yours, it signals credibility. For financial advisors, valuable backlinks often come from:
Industry directories (NAPFA, XYPN, Fee-Only Network)
Guest articles or features on reputable finance blogs or media
Mentions in local business press or chambers of commerce
These backlinks strengthen your ability to rank in Google and Bing, which also increases the chances your content is included in the data AI models learn from.
5. Technical SEO
Site speed, mobile responsiveness, security (HTTPS), and clean URL structures are all table stakes. If your site is slow, broken, or cluttered, it won’t rank – and it won’t get picked up in AI either.
Key Insight: Traditional SEO isn’t separate from AI SEO — it’s the foundation. Without it, your expertise can’t be found, trusted, or reused by either Google or AI-powered platforms.
AI SEO: What Advisors Must Do Differently
Traditional SEO remains essential, but AI search tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google SGE surface content differently than Google’s blue links. They don’t just rank pages – they generate answers.
To appear in those answers, your content needs to be easier for machines to understand and paraphrase.
Here are the key changes financial advisors should make to align with AI-driven search:
1. Shift from Keywords to Topic Clusters
Instead of chasing individual keywords like “best Roth IRA advisor,” focus on building out clusters of content around high-intent topics.
Example:
- Pillar page: Roth IRAs
- Supporting content: Roth conversions, contribution limits, backdoor Roths, early withdrawal rules
Why it matters: AI tools favor depth and breadth. Clusters show expertise and make your content easier to connect and reuse.
2. Add FAQs to Your Content
FAQs match the way real people ask questions — and the way AI tools structure answers.
Instead of hiding a key answer inside a paragraph, surface it directly:
Q: How are RSUs taxed?
A: RSUs are taxed as ordinary income when they vest. You may also owe capital gains tax if you sell the shares at a profit.
3. Use Schema Markup
Schema is backend code you add to your website to help search engines and AI “understand” who you are, what you do, and how to categorize your content. Visitors won’t see it, but it tells algorithms exactly what each page represents.
For financial advisors, the most useful schema types include:
- FAQPage — highlights client questions and answers
- Person — connects your name, credentials, and bio
- Service — defines your service offerings
- LocalBusiness — ties your firm to a location
- BlogPosting — clarifies authorship and content type
Plugins like Yoast or RankMath can automatically add basic schema (BlogPosting, Author, WebPage). For advanced needs — such as listing multiple advisors or clarifying service offerings — you may need a developer or custom setup.
Key Insight: Schema isn’t visible to your clients, but it makes your site easier for Google and AI tools to read, organize, and reuse in search results.
4. Include Key Takeaways at the Top of Articles
Both AI models and busy humans appreciate quick summaries.
Add a “Key Takeaways” box that clearly outlines the main points. It improves scanability for users and increases the chances your insights are pulled into AI-generated answers.
5. Write for Answers, Not Just Rankings
Lead with direct answers. Structure your content like a conversation. Then expand with examples, caveats, and deeper explanations.
This makes it easier for ChatGPT and similar tools to quote or paraphrase your insights accurately.
Key Insight: Content is still the engine of visibility. But the structure, format, and intent behind that content must evolve.
6. Mentions Matter
AI tools don’t value backlinks the way Google does. Instead, they look for patterns of association.
When your name, firm, and niche are mentioned consistently across public sites – blogs, podcasts with transcripts, Reddit threads, LinkedIn articles, directories – it reinforces your identity and expertise.
Think of it as “repetition builds recognition.” The more often AI models see “Jane Smith, fee-only financial advisor in Denver,” the more likely you are to appear in AI-generated answers about financial planning in your area.
Advisors who make their content machine-readable, question-driven, and structured for reuse won’t just rank — they’ll surface as the answer in AI-powered search.
Publishing Strategy for the AI Era (the CReD™ framework)
Publishing content on your website is no longer enough. To show up in AI tools like ChatGPT, you need a strategy that goes beyond SEO and builds presence across the platforms where AI models learn and reference.
AI search tools pull from two sources:
- Live search
AI tools like Perplexity or ChatGPT (in browsing mode) pull real-time content from Bing or Google. This happens when a user asks about something that may not exist in the model’s training data – for example, a recent tax law change, updated market data, or a specific business name.
If your website is crawlable and ranks in Bing or Google, these tools can pull your content directly into their answers.
- Training data
AI models are also trained on large-scale public content: blogs, directories, Reddit threads, Substack posts, YouTube transcripts, and more. This is what powers the default answers when browsing isn’t enabled.
However, models are only trained up to their latest update. At the time of this writing, ChatGPT’s training data goes through October 2024. Anything published after that won’t be included until the next model update.
If your content isn’t in these places, it won’t be seen – no matter how good it is.
Here’s how financial advisors should think about modern publishing:
Your Website: The Foundation
Your website is the anchor for all of your visibility efforts. It’s where you build trust, establish authority, and convert visitors into leads.
Think of it as the central hub. Blog articles, guest posts, directory profiles, and social updates all point back to your site. That’s where prospects should find clear service descriptions, proof of credibility, and an easy next step to contact you.
The role of your website isn’t just to rank – it’s to organize your expertise in a way that AI tools and human visitors alike can understand. A well-structured site makes every other publishing effort more effective.
Authority Sites: Credibility + AI Inclusion
Guest articles or features in mainstream media or on platforms like NAPFA, XYPN, Kitces.com, or Wealthtender build trust – and those sites are more likely to be scraped by AI models during training.
Being quoted or featured here increases your long-term visibility inside AI-generated answers.
AI-Scraped Platforms: Reach + Repetition
Platforms like Medium, Reddit, Quora, and LinkedIn Articles are crawled heavily by AI tools.
Adapt your content for each platform – shorter on LinkedIn, conversational on Reddit, Q&A style on Quora. This repetition helps AI models remember and reuse your insights.
Social Channels: Distribution + Engagement
Short-form content on LinkedIn, Twitter/X, and email newsletters drives human engagement – and builds secondary signals like mentions and citations that reinforce your authority online.
Even if these posts aren’t directly scraped by AI, they can drive traffic to pages that are.
Key Insight: Publishing is no longer a one-time event – it’s a process. The framework to follow is CReD™:
Create original content on your website (your hub).
Restructure it to be discoverable by A platforms.
Distribute it to build recognition and engagement.
Following CReD™ ensures your expertise is not only visible today in Google but also discoverable tomorrow in the AI tools prospects increasingly use to find answers.
Advisors who build this multi-channel presence won’t just be visible today – they’ll be discoverable tomorrow, inside the AI-driven tools where clients increasingly turn for answers.
The Future of SEO for Advisors
The way people find financial advice is evolving – faster than most firms realize. AI is changing what shows up in search results, how those results are delivered, and who gets visibility.
For advisors, this shift brings both real challenges and real opportunities.
Challenges for Advisor SEO
- Declining clicks from traditional Google searches
- Rising competition from fintech, media, and AI-generated content
- Visibility gaps in AI models that overlook unstructured content
Opportunities for Advisor SEO
- Higher-intent leads from more qualified visitors
- Niche Visibility for topics you might never rank for in Google
- First-mover advantage in AI-driven tools like ChatGPT, SGE, and Perplexity
What it means for advisors:
SEO is no longer about rankings – it’s about recognition and relevance.
Yes, traditional SEO is still the foundation. But being found today requires more than keywords and backlinks. You need structured content, strategic publishing, and clear digital identity signals that AI tools can understand and trust.
The advisors who adapt now will own the digital real estate others can’t reach.
What to Do Next
If you’re a financial advisor looking to build long-term visibility in both Google and AI-driven platforms, here’s how to get started.
1. Audit your website
Clear, intent-driven service pages
Fast, secure, mobile-friendly structure
2. Rework your content strategy
Build topic clusters around your niche
Add FAQs, key takeaways, and schema markup
3. Publish beyond your website
Repurpose content on LinkedIn, Reddit, Quora, and reputable blogs
Contribute guest posts or expert quotes on authority sites
4. Strengthen your authority signals
Request client reviews (where compliance allows)
Earn citations in podcasts, directories, and expert roundups
5. Monitor your visibility
Track traffic with Google Analytics & Search Console
Test prompts in ChatGPT and Perplexity to see if you appear
Start small – but start now.
The firms that adapt early will build digital visibility that lasts, while others fall behind in search and AI.
Ready to Adapt?
We help financial advisors build content, visibility, and trust across platforms that matter – including Google and ChatGPT.
Learn more about our SEO services or schedule an introductory call with us today.
Brent is the CEO and founder of Advisor Rankings — a financial services SEO and AI search optimization agency that helps financial advisors grow their firms through search engine optimization. He holds an MBA in Financial Planning, which gives him a strong foundation in the technical side of the profession. With more than a decade of experience specializing in SEO for advisors, Brent bridges financial knowledge with digital marketing expertise. Since 2010, he has presented at NAPFA, FinCon, and XYPN, and appeared on several industry podcasts, including the Financial Advisor Success Podcast with Michael Kitces.
