100 Best Local Citation Sites for Financial Advisors
Can financial service providers use citation sites?
What is a citation and what does it have to do with local SEO?
To put it simply, a citation is an online reference to any business—listed on a website known as an online directory. Examples of online directories include sites like Yelp or YellowPages.
These citations tend to include key information about a business, such as their business address, primary phone number, email, and more. They may also contain links to the company website, blog, or social media pages. Some companies also choose to make their businesses more accessible by adding relevant photos or videos to these listings.Â
Primarily, these citations tend to be focused on service area or business location, which makes them very beneficial for enhancing local SEO. Though, some business directories focus more on specific industries rather than location.Â
What are the benefits of a financial service directory?
When you use a business directory to promote your business, you are investing time and/or money into a service that will help bring in new clients even when you are not actively working on it. This makes it a very cost-effective business decision that will likely bring you exponential positive results. You see, the more often your business is featured in online searches, the more often search engines will continue to recommend your business. This allows you to devote a majority of your time to your existing financial advising clients.
What is the purpose of a business directory for financial advisors?
A citation is designed to increase the chances of a business being discovered by people searching online. High-quality citations usually help achieve this faster and more often—especially above competitors that choose not to use citations as part of their SEO plan. In general, citations make business more visible to search engines that, in turn, are more likely to recommend these sources to people searching for businesses like this online. Ideally, the goal of any citation is to get the business to the point that it is featured within the top search results for a certain key word or phrase. This makes the business more visible to potential customers.
Best 100 Financial Advisors Directory Submission Sites for Local SEO
What are key tips for creating citations for local financial service businesses?
The most important thing to remember when creating your citations is to maintain the following key qualities. These will help ensure that your listings are attractive to search engines and to the public.Â
- Consistency. When you add information to your citations, make sure that they match any other citations you have already made—as well as your current website. This consistency will help your citations to increase traffic and prominence as much as possible.
- Quality. When choosing online directories to list your citations, make sure that the sites are relevant to your business. Be sure to only list on directories that reference your service area and/or your speciality. Listing your business outside of these parameters will most likely confuse search engines and clients—rather than expanding your online reach.
- Quantity. As you search through our list of online directories for financial businesses, you'll notice a column titled "site traffic". This refers to the frequency that the directory is visited by the public. In general, you'll want to focus your citations on sites with more site traffic, since this means that they have higher authority—are more trusted—by your potential clients.
- Priority. Just like you do in your everyday business, it's important to keep your clients in mind when you write citations as well. Always make sure that the information that you include is concise, clear, and consistent to avoid confusing or deterring your potential clients. This will also prevent issues with search engines not properly referring to your business.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. How do I create a citation for a financial services business?
You can actually create financial business citations yourself; you can also hire a service or individual service provider to help create your citations. Resources like Brightlocal make it easy for you to create citations yourself, if you want. Brightlocal can also crete professional-grade citations for you. Alternatively, you could hire an individual to create the citation; try freelance marketplaces such as Fiverr or Upwork.
2. How much does it cost to list my business on a financial services business directory?
Listing on online directories usually doesn’t cost anything—though some sites do charge a fee. The main cost will likely be creating the citation itself. Making citations on your own can cost as little as $0. A service, such as Brightlocal, costs about $2 for each citation. Hiring a freelance service provider for a minimum of $5 per citation.Â
3. What are the different kinds of business citations?
Business citations are usually categorized in two different ways: structured and unstructured. Within structured citations, there are four subcategories: global, national, local, and industry-specific. Structured citations are created with specific directories in mind, which contain businesses similar to yours. Unstructured citations are usually used in general directories, so they do not need to be as specific.
4. What is local citation management for a financial service business?
Using local citation management for your financial services business means that you are choosing online directories that are most likely to be used by local customers. The best citation sites in your area will recommend your business and encourage customers to come to you through their high authority. This means that they are the most used by the general public. So, when checking through the list of directories above, make note of the ones with the highest traffic.
