The findings were dismal, if not completely unexpected: Almost 50% of firms are getting little to no traffic from their website. Whereas Indyfin found that the top 25% of firms were getting more than 100 visitors monthly. Taking this into account, one can easily surmise that a lot of improvement can be made for some 75% of firms when it comes to improving their websites and online presence and engagement.

It should come as little surprise then that among those firms garnering the largest share of monthly traffic are larger wealth management firms, most with a national or large regional footprint, which fall into the aggregator, rollup, partner category. Among these firms are Creative Planning, Edelman Financial Engines, Facet Wealth, First Command, Fisher Investments, Mariner Wealth Advisors, Mercer Advisors, and Wealthspire Advisors.

In its analysis, Indyfin found that content is king; creating relevant content that resonates with clients and prospects increases website traffic. Another big factor? Keywords. Website keywords are used to index content and optimize it for search queries. When relevant keywords are considered and embedded into a firm’s content, they significantly improve a firm's odds of ranking for organic search. Indyfin’s research shows that firms that use more than 100 keywords on their websites correlate heavily with firms that earn over 90% of their total website traffic. Unfortunately, nearly 31% of all firms analyzed in this study have fewer than 10 ranked keywords within their content.

Yes, keywords can make a big difference according to Indyfin’s findings. On average, firms with rich content strategies ranking for more than 5,000 keywords have an average of over 6,522 monthly visitors organically. Though through regression analysis the company also uncovered that low traffic sites can increase traffic by two new monthly visits by simply adding a single keyword.

Indyfin found that very few wealth management firms have a well developed online marketing strategy, one that combines organic and paid growth strategies—as 99% of firms do not spend money on paid search. However, the company found that when firms make the investment, the data shows that a strategic approach pays off, with firms spending more than $1,000 a month with some firms spending over $100,000 a month.