Finance SEO Case Study: How We Helped this Firm Build Their Book

SEO Organic Traffic Case Study for a Niche Wealth Management Firm

This finance SEO case study covers one of our ongoing projects. We work with a boutique wealth management firm in Canada that now dominates Google and YouTube for its niche.

Article by Colette Nichol, Story Strategist, Solo Filmmaking, and Organic SEO Consultant

Before we started working with this advisory firm, it was growing due to referrals from its circle of influence and client referrals.

Growth was slow and steady. To be clear, they weren’t struggling. They were already successful.

But they wanted to be found on Google so that they could get found by prospects directly.

Now, the majority of their new clients come from organic traffic.

They have a robust stream of qualified prospects, and the business continues to grow yearly at a rate well above the industry average. 

Should they set their sights on a $1B book, they will certainly achieve that with this current marketing and lead generation channel. 

CLICK HERE: To learn more about Financial Advisor SEO >>

Success Highlights

• Organic traffic from about 100/month to 16,000/month in 4 years
• From 1-2 discovery calls per month to over 30 in the first 24 months
• Client minimum increased from $500k to over $2M due to an excess of leads
• Position #1-5 on Google for the most important keyword
• Book more than doubled in under 4 years, with the majority of leads coming from organic traffic
• High-value clients with investable assets over $5M coming from organic website traffic

Important Notes about Story Envelope’s Secret Sauce

While this case study gives you a basic overview of what we did to achieve success, I won’t reveal any industry-specific secrets or technical tactics that allowed us to outperform the competition. 

We keep top-secret tactics confidential because we don’t want a client’s competitors to know how to replicate our successes.

We offer non-compete contracts to all our clients so they can feel secure that we will not work with anyone who is directly competing against them within the same market. 

One key ingredient in our secret sauce is that we are obsessed with deeply understanding our clients’ ideal clients and using great design and high-quality visual and text-based content that’s enjoyable for visitors to read and consume. 

Custom video is another ingredient in our secret sauce.

High-end videos that create a connection and feeling of trust with the visitor are often a key element in our website strategies. 

We’ve created a process that allows us to understand the essence of a business and craft a strategy that helps business owners achieve their goals. 

Who & What

This case study focuses on a wealth management firm based in Canada.

It is owned and operated by a husband-and-wife team who are focusing on serving clients with complex, multi-jurisdictional needs.

With our help, they have created a robust website that provides massive value to their clients and prospects. 

Through our SEO-guided content, we’ve created a resource center that drives thousands of visitors per month.

If paid ads were used to capture this traffic, it would cost over $16,000 US per month. (Fun fact: their SEO strategy doesn’t cost $16,000 per month!) However, even with paid ads, you couldn’t replicate this traffic since many users will never click on a Google advert, prefering to click on organic results.

Before Doing SEO

Before doing SEO, this wealth management firm had a small website with just a few pages.

It didn’t rank for any of the key niche terms that were critical to its business success. And the website was not generating leads from organic traffic. The majority of their business came from referrals. Since they are an excellent firm that provides an outstanding service, their retention rates were high and they had well above average referral rates.

Goals

This firm had an ambitious vision.

They wanted to rank at the top of Google for everything related to their specialized market. And that’s what we’ve done.

They didn’t have specific goals around how many new leads they wanted. Instead, they wanted to make sure that anyone searching for the highly specific information related to their specific wealth management client base, could find them. This “getting found” goal was smart.

Because they already had a successful and growing business, we could hunker down and focus on building the foundation properly.

We only work with growing successful businesses that are interested in long-term growth. This allows us to take the time needed to build a foundation that will allow for massive growth over the medium and long term. 

Call to Action

We integrated Calendly into the website to allow for a smooth booking experience.

Our most important goal was to increase the number of 15-minute calls. 

However, at a certain point, we became too successful. We decided to filter out the calls to only allow the most qualified leads to schedule a call. They increased their client minimum, and we increased the filtering on the call booking page.

We ask that all our clients use Calendly as it is the best call scheduler on the market.

There’s no sense in getting a ton of traffic if you aren’t going to convert it to a discovery call. 

In addition to improving the call conversion rate, we implemented a few different lead magnets. Based on the lead magnets that we integrated throughout the website, they have built a robust email list. They went from no niche-specific email list to over 2000 niche-specific leads. 

What Worked

We created service pages for all the most relevant services.

We ensured these pages were robust and helpful, focused on providing useful education and service information. These pages all began to rank quickly, and calls started coming through. 

We have a comprehensive method that allows us to create the “perfect” service page based on our understanding of your ideal client and what the Google algorithm needs to surface pages. Basically, we’re perfectionists when it comes to strategy and execution, which is why we are able to get outsized results for our clients. 

After creating the new service pages, we created pillar pages, which are long and helpful guides that give potential clients useful education and information.

By being a guide to your potential clients, you build trust and traffic at the same time. 

Next, we crafted premium videos and launched a YouTube channel. We also started a blogging strategy to boost traffic further. 

The winning strategy includes the following: 

• Service pages for all the most important services and client types
• Pillar pages (guides) for all the most important problems clients face
• Complete upgrade of the home page – turning it from a brief overview to a comprehensive SEO-optimized “sales page” for the business
• New website design
• Custom video strategy, including a sales video and multiple educational videos
• Lead magnet creation and execution to capture email addresses and start building an email list of ideal clients
• Blogging to support service pages and guides
• Custom graphics to support engagement
• Full ideal client avatar assessment
• Ongoing strategy calls to pivot as necessary

Results/Wins

This project has seen major wins throughout the process. 

The first big win was increasing monthly organic visitors from 100 to 1000. When that happened, we saw 10+ discovery calls booked each month. As the project progressed, the discovery calls increased to 30 per month, and we decided to increase the filtering. They bumped their client minimum from $500K to $1M. They still had too many calls to handle, so they increased their client minimum to $2M. 

Over the past 4 years, they have doubled their book. The majority of their new clients now come from organic traffic. 

Most advisory firms are not willing to do the work and invest in the way that this firm has over the past five years.

When you do what nobody else will do, you reap the rewards. 

Their focus on creating educational and helpful content across their website, blog, and YouTube channel has resulted in traffic and leads growing dramatically. 

They are continuing to grow their book each year at a rate far beyond the industry norm. 

The exact numbers are confidential. 

What We’re Still Doing

This wealth management firm is an ongoing client.

We think of ourselves as this firm’s partners in growth and are here to make sure that they continue dominating the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

As we continue working with them, we are doing the following:

• Creating SEO-optimized videos and blogs
• Updating old content so that it stays fresh
• Ensuring that service pages are up to date and performing well on Google
• Creating mobile-optimized custom graphics to drive engagement
• Acting as a marketing strategy sounding board
• Ensuring the website is optimized and up-to-date

We recently completed a website overhaul for this client, so that they can finally have a unique website unlike any of their competitors. 

Challenges

The main challenge with any financial service business is dealing with compliance. 

Over the years, we’ve dealt with a difficult compliance process that sometimes resulted in posts getting stuck for months at a time. 

Despite these difficulties, we’ve helped this client navigate the compliance process and keep their project moving. Our process now is much smoother, allowing posts to be approved more quickly and easily. 

So, What Would Page #1 of Google Do for Your Business?

If you’d like to learn more about how we can help you, please get in touch.

You may be in a niche where dominating Google isn’t outrageously expensive. Let me be clear: some niches are super competitive, and getting to Page #1 is costly. 

However, most local businesses do not fall into that category. In fact, most local businesses can massively increase their organic traffic and walk-ins if they have a solid SEO strategy that’s properly executed. 

Schedule a 15-minute Call to Discuss Your Business

If you’re serious about getting on Page #1 of Google with your business, please reach out and schedule a call. I’d love to hear about your goals and see if our services align with your needs.

CLICK HERE: To Schedule Your Free 15-minute Consultation

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Please note that these results are not typical nor are they are guarantee that your business can see results like this. Every niche and area are different. In addition, the effort that you put into a campaign is what you will get out. The more involved you are in the marketing of your business, the better. The business owners who get the best results are those who are actively involved.