"Car insurance" gets 450,000 searches a month in the UK, "mortgage" 49,500 and "debt consolidation loan" 33,100, at £32.31 per click. On words like these, page one belongs to comparison sites. MoneySuperMarket ranks for 113,854 UK keywords with an estimated 5.5 million organic visits a month, Compare the Market for 59,100 with 4.4 million (DataForSEO data, Google UK, October 2026).
A financial adviser, a mortgage broker or an insurance broker will never beat a comparison site on the product. They can win on the person: someone looking for a professional with a name, an entry on the FCA register that anyone can check, and reviews. "Financial adviser" gets 22,200 searches a month, "mortgage broker" 18,100, "insurance broker" 8,100. Smaller numbers, but behind each search is someone who wants to talk to a person.
Below: which searches can be won, why trust in this sector is proved with a register number, what the first page for "financial adviser london" really looks like, and what the FCA expects from a page that talks about credit.
Comparison sites own the products, not the explaining
Take "remortgage", 12,100 searches a month. At the top sits an AI Overview citing NatWest, Leeds Building Society, Barclays, TSB, Lloyds, MoneySuperMarket and Compare the Market. Below it GoCompare is first and Rightmove second, with a lender (Molo), Equifax and MoneySavingExpert further down. Two brokers do make the top ten, Coreco and Hudson Rose (an appointed representative based in Gloucestershire), along with Resi, a home extension company with a mortgage advice arm, and a six-year-old YouTube video by a broker. None of them ranks with a deal page. They are there because they explain what remortgaging is. A broker who tries to rank a "compare remortgage rates" page against these domains can spend months stuck on page three; one who answers the question has a chance.
Searches for the professional look different. "Independent financial adviser" gets 4,400 searches a month at £27.52 per click, "financial adviser near me" 1,900 at £27.66, "how much does a financial adviser cost" 90. Whoever types these has already decided they want a professional and is choosing which one. The cost per click confirms it: advertisers pay £25.27 a click for "financial adviser" (Google groups it with the "advisor" spelling), more than three times what they pay for "mortgage" (£7.62) or "personal loan" (£8.46). In the UK, a search for an adviser is worth more to the market than a search for a product.
| Keyword | Monthly searches | CPC | Peak month (searches) |
|---|---|---|---|
| car insurance | 450,000 | £8.90 | Jan-Aug 2026 (550,000) |
| mortgage calculator | 450,000 | £1.53 | Jan 2026 (550,000) |
| pension | 201,000 | £10.28 | Jun 2026 (550,000) |
| fca register | 90,500 | £2.82 | Sep-Nov 2025, Jan-Apr 2026 (90,500) |
| mortgage | 49,500 | £7.62 | Jan and Mar 2026 (60,500) |
| personal loan | 49,500 | £8.46 | Sep 2025, Jan, Mar, Jul-Aug 2026 (60,500) |
| debt consolidation loan | 33,100 | £32.31 | Sep-Oct 2025, Jan, Mar, Jun-Aug 2026 (33,100) |
| financial adviser | 22,200 | £25.27 | Sep 2025, Jan-Feb 2026 (33,100) |
| mortgage broker | 18,100 | £22.26 | Sep 2025 (22,200) |
| remortgage | 12,100 | £12.45 | Mar 2026 (18,100) |
| insurance broker | 8,100 | £10.18 | Sep 2025 (9,900) |
| secured loan | 8,100 | £118.19 | Sep 2025, Jan 2026 (9,900) |
| mortgage broker near me | 5,400 | £16.54 | Sep 2025 (8,100) |
| independent financial adviser | 4,400 | £27.52 | Sep 2025, Feb 2026 (9,900) |
| financial adviser near me | 1,900 | £27.66 | Sep 2025, Feb 2026 (2,400) |
| financial adviser london | 210 | £21.31 | Sep 2025 (590) |
| how much does a financial adviser cost | 90 | £3.00 | Feb 2026 (140) |
A detail worth noting: September 2025 and January-February 2026 were the peak months for almost every search about the profession. "Financial adviser" went from an average of 22,200 searches to 33,100, "independent financial adviser" from 4,400 to 9,900, "mortgage broker" from 18,100 to 22,200 in September. Pages about the profession need to be published and updated before the autumn and again before the new year, not after. You can run the same check on your own topic in a few minutes with Google Trends.
Trust is proved with a register number
Google says so in its guide to helpful, reliable content: for topics that could affect people's "financial stability", its systems give even more weight to content with strong E-E-A-T. And of the four elements, it says, trust is the most important. These are the topics Google calls YMYL, Your Money or Your Life.
In medicine, trust comes from the professional register (we cover it in our article on healthcare SEO). In UK finance it comes from the FCA's Financial Services Register, which anyone can search, and it answers three different questions:
- whether the firm is authorised, and for what: financial advice firms, mortgage brokers and insurance brokers all appear there with a Firm Reference Number;
- who the individual is: the register publishes Directory data on certified and assessed people, and every investment adviser must also hold an annual Statement of Professional Standing issued by an accredited body (as the FCA page on professional standards explains);
- whether the firm is an appointed representative, and of which principal: the register shows both, and the FCA warns that if an appointed representative goes beyond what its principal has agreed, the client may not be covered by the Financial Ombudsman Service or the FSCS.
People use it. "FCA register" gets 90,500 searches a month, four times as many as "financial adviser". And for "financial adviser" the first organic result is MoneyHelper, the government-backed guidance service, with Citizens Advice third and GOV.UK ninth: Google treats the question as a matter of rules and guidance before it treats it as a purchase.
The practical consequence is simple. Every page on the site that talks about investments, mortgages or insurance should have an author with a name, a photo, the firm's reference number and a direct link to the register entry. Not in 8-point type in the footer: on the page, next to the content. It's the cheapest trust signal there is.
Amanda Walls, founder of the Manchester agency Cedarwood Digital, on how to build an SEO strategy for Your Money or Your Life websites. A webinar of just under an hour, hosted by Clearscope, in English.
In London, six results out of ten are advisers' own sites
The results page for "financial adviser london" (210 searches a month, £21.31 per click), read on 10 October 2026 with the location set to London, is instructive. It opens with a local pack of three listings: Off Piste Wealth, 5.0 with 43 reviews; First Wealth, 5.0 with 147; Humboldt Financial, 4.9 with 251. Getting into the block takes dozens of top-rated reviews, and in London the bar is already well over a hundred for two of the three. How to build them up is covered in our guide to Google reviews.
Above the map there's a "Find results on" row: Raymond James, Bark, Yell, Facebook and FreeIndex. In the organic results Unbiased appears twice and financialadvisers.co.uk once. Directories bring enquiries, but the adviser doesn't own the page: if the subscription ends, the profile, the reviews collected there and the rankings stay with the platform. The same goes for an appointed representative whose web page sits on the network's domain and who later changes principal.
The rest of the first page is good news. Of the ten organic results, six belong to advice firms: One Four Nine Group, AMG Wealth with a London page, Amber River with a page for its Wandsworth office, IFS Wealth & Pensions, Gem & Co and My Wealth Private with an "Our advisers" page. Searched nationally, with no town, the same word behaves differently: of nine organic results, two are career profiles (the National Careers Service and Prospects) and four are guidance or directories (MoneyHelper, Citizens Advice, VouchedFor, the Personal Finance Society). Anyone who wants clients has to use words a job seeker or a casual reader wouldn't: "independent financial adviser", "chartered financial planner", the area, the type of client (business owners, doctors, inheritance tax).
The "People also ask" box says the rest. In London the questions include "What is a red flag for a financial advisor?" and "How much does a financial advisor cost in the UK?"; nationally, "What is a normal fee for a financial advisor?" and "How much does it cost for a financial adviser?". A page that explains with figures how the firm charges (a percentage of assets, a fixed fee, an hourly rate; commission on investment advice has been banned since the Retail Distribution Review at the end of 2012) answers the question Google puts in front of everyone.
For "insurance broker" the pattern is similar: a local pack with Norwest Insurance Brokers in Manchester (4.6 and 13 reviews), Pendragon Protect (5.0 and 191) and Norton Insurance Brokers in Birmingham (4.8 and 253). Here the organic results include real brokers with their own pages: the Coversure office in Nottingham, Russell Scanlan, Kensington Insurance and Merlin Insurance in London, next to the Insurance Age Top 100, a broker directory and the ABI. It's the most open of the three searches. The basics of the listing are in our guide to Google Business Profile and in how the local pack works.
Recommended reading: SEO for professional services, which applies the same reasoning about name and reputation to accountants and consultants.
A loan landing page is also a disclosure document
Anyone who arranges credit needs to know one thing before writing a service page. Under the FCA's consumer credit rules (CONC 3.5), a financial promotion that indicates a rate of interest or an amount relating to the cost of credit must also include a representative example: the rate, the other charges, the total amount of credit, the representative APR, the duration, the total amount payable and each repayment, labelled "representative example" and given equal prominence. For mortgages, MCOB 3A.5 asks for the same kind of example, with the APRC shown at least as prominently as any interest rate. A web page that promotes a loan or a mortgage is a financial promotion, whether it was written by a compliance team or by an SEO agency.
In SEO terms: a broker's "debt consolidation loans" or "secured loans" page can't be generic copy with a form. As soon as it mentions a rate, it has to show an example with the amount, term, monthly repayment, interest rate and APR. It's a constraint, but it's also the most specific content the page can have. A dated worked example answers better than ten paragraphs and is more likely to be quoted by AI Overviews. On searches like "secured loan", where a click costs £118.19, a page that converts from organic search pays for a lot of advertising.
The same logic applies to blog content. An article on "how to invest 10k" (170 searches a month) written by a named adviser, with a link to the firm's entry on the FCA register, has an advantage no anonymous blog can copy. But it's still a communication from a regulated firm: have whoever handles compliance read it before it goes live.
Frequently asked questions
Yes, on the right searches. Comparison sites win on products: MoneySuperMarket ranks for over 113,000 UK keywords. On your name, your town and the type of advice you give, a site of your own can reach page one. The page the network gives you helps, but you don't own it.
On the first page for "financial adviser london" in October 2026, the three listings in the local pack had 43, 147 and 251 reviews, rated 4.9 to 5.0. For "insurance broker" they ranged from 13 to 253. You need dozens of genuine, recent reviews, and in London over a hundred.
It's the easiest trust signal to give, and Google treats trust as the most important element for financial topics. Put it next to the author's name on every page, with a link to the firm's entry on the FCA's Financial Services Register. "FCA register" gets 90,500 searches a month: people do check.
Not "mortgage" (49,500 searches a month) or "remortgage" (12,100), where comparison sites, lenders and an AI Overview take most of the page. Better to target searches with a town and a service, questions about fees and process, and pages with a representative example, which FCA rules require anyway once a rate is mentioned.
In Google Ads data for the last year, the peaks were September 2025 and January-February 2026: "financial adviser" went from an average of 22,200 searches to 33,100, and "independent financial adviser" from 4,400 to 9,900. Pages should be ready before the autumn and refreshed before the new year.
Where to start
On your phone, search your first name and surname followed by "financial adviser" (or "mortgage broker", or "insurance broker"). Look at who holds the first result: your site, your network's page, LinkedIn, Unbiased or VouchedFor. Then open the page that comes up and check whether your FCA reference number is near the top, with a link to your entry on the register.
If the first result isn't yours, or the number isn't there, you've found the first job to do. If you'd like to do it with us, we start from an analysis of the searches for your name and your town: get in touch here, or see how we work on SEO.
