The late Thomas P. (Tip) O'Neill, Jr., former Speaker of the House once said "All politics is local."  

Well, you can officially quote me on the following "All wealth management is local."  It doesn't sound as catchy and, to be honest is not always true, but in general it is a good rule of thumb: People who are looking for personal wealth management assistance via the web will most likely do so by adding a local component to their search ("Money Manager in Boston" for example).

In our opinion, the easiest way to improve the search engine performance of your web site is to go to Google's Local Business Center and create a free listing. 

What is local search?

Nearly all the major search engines have a Maps component; you are probably familiar with Google Maps.  Any time someone goes to Google and searches for a service in a specific area they will be presented with a Google Maps Display somewhere at the top of the page.  The map will show a few listings along with the businesses in that area.  How did these businesses get such a high profile listing in the search results?  Well they most likely did the following, which you can do today in a few minutes for free:

Step 1) Visit the Google Local Business Center

Step 2) You'll need to sign up for a free Google ID if you don't have one already and then you'll be able to create your business profile. Once you submit your information, Google will send you a postcard (2-3 weeks) in the mail with a confirmation number, just to ensure you are who you say you are.  You can also select to confirm by phone, which I recommend for obvious time-saving reasons.

Step 3) Once you receive your confirmation number, just plug it into your Google account and you're on your way.

So now what?

Now, when someone goes to Google.com and searches for "Money Manager" (people search more frequently using the term "Money Manager" rather than "Wealth Manager"), they'll get 10 pages of paid listings in addition to pages of web sites that have been working hard for a very long time to build their Google Page Rank and may have spent countless hours and dollars to tailor their sites to perform well in search engines.

Now go to Google.com and search for the following: “Money Manager in Portland, OR”

You'll see that only only a few money management firms have listed themselves in Google Local for the Portland Area.  Working with Financial firms and their clients for almost 10 years, I can safely say that the majority of people who are searching for personal wealth management assistance via the web do so with a local component to their search.

Finally, most of the major search engines have this type of local search profile component, so if you're feeling industrious, here are a few more links:

local.yahoo.com
superpages.com
local.com

Good Luck!

Jay Bellew
Founder, Creative Director
Jab Web Solutions Inc