Financial advisors, like any business that has long relied on organic search for web traffic, are falling on hard times. The advent of AI search results has decreased web traffic significantly, by as much as 50% according to a Pew Research study.
What was once a great way to draw prospects to your site has fallen off, in other words. So, what’s a client-seeking advisor to do?
Samantha Russell, FMG Suite chief evangelist, delved deeply into that topic at last week’s ADVISE AI conference. Below is a list of strategies that advisors can use to improve their business authority and push their firms into the AI results that web searchers often find on sites like Google or using large language models like ChatGPT.
“One of the biggest business threats that no one is talking about, in my opinion, is this visibility crisis,” Russell said from the main stage. “It’s not that you don’t have great information, that you don’t offer a valuable service. It’s that who is being visible to AI search engines is completely changing from what was available before.”
Build authority with client reviews
One of the most significant things search engines and AI tools use to determine what to serve up to users is authority. They want to know that the person or service being featured is used by real people and is respected by those people.
“They are social proof, and they send what we call a sentiment signal to AI” Russell said. “So the job of ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Google Gemini — they want to give the best, most obvious answer to whatever the person is asking. And one of the ways that they think about it is ‘well, have other real human beings use this business and have a good experience?”
READ MORE: How financial advisors can build a brand
Before the SEC implemented the new marketing rule, no firms or advisors had reviews. But now that reviews and testimonials are allowed, they can really set people apart.
“If you don’t [have reviews], it looks very strange from the consumer’s point of view. ‘Why does this firm have no reviews, or only one or two reviews,’ right?'” Russell said. “So from the humans’ perspective, it’s not great, but from the LLM, the AI tool’s perspective, it’s terrible. It’s saying that real people have not used this business, so we’re not going to recommend it.”
Russell added that 83% of prospects say they want to read online reviews, but only 9.3% of advisors have published reviews.
“So if you’re one of the ones that does, you have a much, much better chance of being recommended,” she said
Share your expertise in the media
Search engines and LLMs also scan reputable sources for mentions that can improve authority. Advisors who write op-eds or serve as experts in media stories — known as earned media — can improve their chances of being ranked highly in searches.
“We know that tools like ChatGPT show a preference for advisors that aren’t just featured on their own website for their own social posts, but they’re also featured in credible pages. If Financial Planning magazine calls you and asks you to contribute to a story, you’re going to be associated as an expert who industry publications, known in our space for being the authority on the subject, have asked you to contribute,” Russell said. “That’s amazing for your search visibility, right?”
Being a guest on podcasts and writing long-form articles on sites like Medium also tells LLMs and search engines that you are someone whose thoughts and opinions matter.
Consider an FAQ page on your website
One of the keys to improving the chances of showing up high in search results or in AI overviews is to match the phrasing of questions prospects might ask of those search tools. Having FAQ pages can help.
For example, an advisor may write a blog post or have a question in an FAQ like “What is the best way to save for retirement when you are starting late?” That might be exactly how many people ask Google or ChatGPT, and it increases the odds that an advisor will rank highly in results.
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Advisors can even be specific. If one is trying to attract Amazon workers, it’s a good idea to build a completely separate web page with questions that include the company name — “What is Amazon’s RSU vesting schedule,” for example.
“Think about it for the different groups of clients that you serve in multiple ways,” Russell said. “So you’re adding those questions that people in this group would ask, and you’re using the identifying words that they would be thinking about when they’re going to ChatGPT and looking for help.”
And consider updating and republishing content like blog posts with the latest information.
“If you remember when you would search for things on Google, a lot of times you’d see articles that were three, four, five years old. We called it evergreen content, right?” Russell said. “It lasted a long time. AI does not like old content. It has what we call recency bias. So publishing regularly — if you have a blog post, you have a newsletter, you’re posting to LinkedIn — you want to keep at it often, because it’s really constantly looking for the freshest, most up-to-date information.”
Ask: Why not me?
If you have a website designed to attract prospects, it’s time to go to the search engines and AI tools and search for an advisor the way your ideal client would search for you.
People search today very specifically, giving background about themselves and what they’re looking for.
“Say, ‘I’m a physician in Philadelphia. I want to sell my business. I’m thinking about succession planning. I’m also thinking about these things. Who should I work with?'” Russell said.
If you show up in the results of the engines and AI tools like ChatGPT, you’re in good shape. If not, ask the tool why it didn’t show your website or select you in its AI results.
“AI tools will tell you exactly how they chose who they chose, and you can use that to your advantage,” Russell said.
The answer may be that the listed advisors have strong ties to your city, thorough Google business profiles, strong and active LinkedIn and Facebook profiles, etc. That gives advisors things to address to improve the chance of being featured in an AI result.
Monitor and nurture your online presence
When you do land a client or are doing well with a prospect, ask what they searched for to come across your website. Be specific.
“If you can get the person who asked the question to give you the prompt, even better, because that will really help you see how you’re doing,” Russell said.
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AI search results also give significant authority to sites like Reddit and Quora, in which users have conversations about topics like financial advice.
“You can go search your own business on Reddit and see if any of your clients have been talking about you there, whether anonymously or not, and how that’s being fed to these LLMs,” Russell said.
And even further, advisors can check the forums to see how people word questions and answers about financial advice and use that to inform how they build their own websites, blog posts, social media and more.
“Even if you don’t actually contribute to them, they’re great to monitor to see the types of questions people are asking that you could create future content around using the language of the contributors,” Russell said. “But with all of these groups, if you do have something to share, a great way to get your business mentioned is you could say something like, ‘That’s a great question. I’m a financial advisor in St. Louis, and I’ve been working with business owners for 20 years. And here’s some of the things we would recommend in a situation like this.'”
