Your Google Business Profile: Tips & FAQs for Financial Advisors

Get tips and answers to FAQs about Google Business Profiles and Google Reviews for financial advisors and wealth management firms. And learn how advisors succeed with testimonial marketing powered by Wealthtender’s industry-first SEC-compliant online reviews platform.

Given the prominent role of online search in the everyday lives of Americans, it’s important to establish your presence on Google since they control a majority of searches conducted online. Fortunately, setting up a Google Business Profile is an easy and no-cost way to improve your firm’s visibility in search results. Essentially, Google provides businesses with a free billboard to advertise their goods and services on the internet highway.

Essentially, Google provides businesses with a free billboard to advertise their goods and services on the internet highway.

Of course, financial advisors must consider regulatory restrictions prescribed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, FINRA, and state regulators in order to compliantly maintain a Google Business Profile. Unfortunately, one of the most popular features of Google Business Profiles, Google Reviews, opens the door to considerable risk that could land advisors in regulatory hot water.

In this article, we dive deeper into the good, bad, and ugly of Google Business Profiles and Google Reviews for financial advisors, including ways financial advisors who join Wealthtender can turn Google Reviews into compliant testimonials and strengthen their SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in the process.

The Regulatory Risk of Google Reviews

Google Reviews are popular and well-known among consumers. Financial advisors may already have unsolicited reviews written about them and displayed on their Google Business Profiles. Assuming these are favorable reviews and unsolicited, that’s terrific, as advisors are gaining SEO benefits and visibility among consumers.

However, because reviews on Google lack the required SEC disclosures to be considered advertisements (e.g., testimonials that advisors can promote to grow their business), advisors can’t tell prospects to “check out our reviews on Google”. Doing so opens the door to “entanglement” and/or “adoption”, terms defined by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that trigger additional compliance oversight and disclosure requirements.

Further, we’ve now heard from multiple advisory firms that asked their clients to write Google Reviews, and they ended up with multiple reviews containing promissory language and misstatements of material facts that have turned their Google Business Profiles toxic.

Imagine erecting a billboard on the side of a highway and providing your clients with a ladder and invitation to write whatever they want without an easy ability for your firm to edit or remove language that is clearly prohibited by regulators in advertisements. Understandably, your clients aren’t familiar with the regulations, so they’re not to blame and only have positive intentions.

Here’s a real-life example of a Google Review written by a well-meaning client about the wealth management firm she works with in Georgia:

To be clear, the advisory firm that received this review has many positive reviews on its Google Business Profile and appears to be a reputable firm that likely delivers valuable services to its clients. But while the client who wrote the above review had good intentions, her review includes language that appears both promissory and unsubstantiated.

Could a prospective client reading this review draw false conclusions about what to expect if they become a client of this firm? Of course.

Will you find a compliance officer or securities attorney who would permit this testimonial to be utilized in a firm advertisement? No way.

Can the advisory firm displaying this review on their Google Business Profile expect an SEC examiner to say they’re happy about it? Doubtful.

Put yourself in the shoes of the compliance officer or founder of this advisory firm trying to explain to an SEC examiner how your firm isn’t responsible for what commuters read on a billboard advertising your firm as they drive down the highway. Google Business Profiles are like digital billboards for your firm, opening the door for regulators to consider everything you post or solicit within it as being subject to the SEC Marketing Rule’s requirements and prohibitions.

Google Business Profiles are like digital billboards for your firm, opening the door for regulators to consider everything you post or solicit within it as being subject to the SEC Marketing Rule’s requirements and prohibitions.

This is one of the many reasons we launched Wealthtender as the industry’s first SEC-compliant online reviews platform and designed Certified Advisor Reviews™ for compliance with the SEC Marketing Rule.

↗️ Related Article: Kitces Podcast Sparks Debate on Google Reviews

Importing Reviews from Google to Wealthtender

To assist firms that have received Google Reviews, Wealthtender offers a tool that is popular with advisors in our community to import reviews from Google to Wealthtender.

When reviews are imported to Wealthtender from Google, they go through the same compliance process as all other reviews, so disclosures can be added to satisfy requirements prescribed in the SEC Marketing Rule.

By ensuring the required disclosures are prominently displayed with each review, advisors can compliantly promote reviews on their Wealthtender profile page.

Google Reviews Imported to Wealthtender Strengthen Advisor SEO

Importing Google Reviews to Wealthtender also strengthens SEO for advisors. Once advisors have collected around 3 or 4 reviews on their Wealthtender profile, Google starts to display the gold stars earned by the advisor in search results.

For example, in this Google search for advisor Emily Rassam, Google prominently features Emily’s Wealthtender profile with accompanying gold stars, sending positive signals to Google’s algorithm to help her rank higher in search results.

These gold stars also attract the eyes of consumers who are more likely to set up an initial appointment with advisors like Emily, who have reviews, vs. those they may get referred to who don’t.

Consumers Often Search for Advisors by Name (Not their Business Name)

Another benefit of importing Google Reviews to Wealthtender is that consumers often search for advisors by their name, not the name of their business.

Since Google Reviews are displayed within Google Business Profiles that generally only appear in search results when consumers search the name of a business, these reviews are often not seen by prospective clients. By importing Google Reviews to an advisor’s profile page on Wealthtender, the gold stars earned by the advisor will appear in search results when consumers search for the advisor by their name.

Another benefit of importing Google Reviews to Wealthtender is that consumers often search for advisors by their name, not the name of their business.

Wealthtender Reviews Appear in Bing (Which Also Powers ChatGPT)

While Google continues to be the most popular “traditional” search engine used by consumers, times may be changing. After Microsoft announced its strategic investment in OpenAI, the company responsible for ChatGPT, the partnership resulted in ChatGPT increasingly relying upon the Bing search engine (owned by Microsoft) to generate its results. Concurrently, the Bing search engine has seen an uptick in search traffic as consumers interested in newer technologies like artificial intelligence turn to Bing.

By importing Google Reviews to Wealthtender, wealth management firms and advisors can ensure their reviews appear prominently in Bing (and other non-Google search engines) and are accessible to ChatGPT.

The screenshot just below shows how a Wealthtender profile appears in the Bing search engine for advisory firms with Wealthtender reviews. In this example, the reviews published on the Wealthtender profile for Abundo Wealth were imported from Google. Without reviews published on their Wealthtender profile page, a consumer searching Bing would be very unlikely to find Google Reviews for Abundo Wealth.

Exporting Reviews from Wealthtender to Google

On the flip side, Google doesn’t permit third-party review platforms to integrate directly with Google Reviews. All Google Reviews are submitted directly within Google Business profiles by individuals with existing Google accounts and who are willing for their full name to be publicly displayed.

Even if Google permitted third-party review platforms like Wealthtender to integrate with Google Reviews, doing so would risk advisors landing in regulatory hot water, given the shortcomings of the Google platform that lacks the ‘clear and prominent’ disclosures required by the SEC. This is one of the reasons why we launched Wealthtender.

Note: Most compliance officers we speak with never plan to let their advisors request or promote reviews on Google unless Google updates its platform to accommodate SEC Marketing Rule disclsoure requirements. On the other hand, some compliance officers have expressed comfort in letting advisors collect reviews on Google but are hesitant to let advisors mention or link to their Google Reviews due to a) adoption or entanglement concerns (terms defined in the SEC Marketing Rule), b) their lack of regulatory disclosures, and c) the inability/difficulty to remedy instances where a Google Review includes language prohibited by the SEC Marketing Rule (e.g., promissory language, misstatements of facts, etc.).

Suggested Best Practices to Compliantly Collect and Promote Online Reviews

Given the current shortcomings of the Google Reviews platform as it pertains to satisfying the guidelines prescribed in the SEC Marketing Rule, and based on our conversations with compliance officers/consultants, we believe best practices for advisors to compliantly maximize the potential of their online reviews include:

1️⃣ Collect reviews on Wealthtender to benefit from the platform we designed from the ground up for regulatory compliance

2️⃣ Import any unsolicited Google Reviews to Wealthtender so they become compliant testimonials (watch how-to video)

3️⃣ Get Wealthtender reviews indexed by search engines for SEO benefits (occurs automatically)

4️⃣ Use widgets from Wealthtender to display reviews compliantly on advisor websites (learn how and view examples)

5️⃣ Create SEC-compliant social media posts using templates we offer (e.g., this LinkedIn post by an advisor)

6️⃣ Incorporate client testimonials into advisor marketing funnel activities (read the UFPG case study)

The Twist: “Reviews from Around the Web” in Google Business Profiles

Of course, anything this complicated wouldn’t be as fun or interesting without a little twist.

Google knows that consumers benefit from reading online reviews about businesses, including online review platforms other than Google Reviews. And Google recognizes Wealthtender as a reputable online review platform for financial advisors. This is why gold stars appear in Google search results when advisors earn reviews displayed on their Wealthtender profile page. Often, Google will also link to Wealthtender reviews within an advisory firm’s Google Business Profile.

Advisory firms that join Wealthtender with multiple advisors have profile pages on Wealthtender for their advisors and a firm profile page. When advisory firms collect reviews on their firm profile, these reviews get indexed in Google search results, just as individual advisor profile pages do. Often, but not always, the reviews will appear in a section of the advisory firm’s Google Business Profile called “Reviews from the Web.”

For example, at the time of this writing, you can search Google for “Rather & Kittrell” and see a section of their Google Business Profile that shows they have more than 100 reviews on Wealthtender with a link to their firm’s profile page on Wealthtender.

Beyond Rather & Kittrell, here are a few additional examples where you may see Google Business Profiles that include a “Reviews from the Web” section for advisory firms featured on Wealthtender:

• Google Search for: PAX Financial Group
• Google Search for: Beacon Wealth Consultants Virginia
• Google Search for: Diazo Wealth

While we love sharing these examples, and we do what we believe best to increase the likelihood that a “Reviews from the Web” section will appear with an advisory firm’s Wealthtender reviews, unfortunately, we can’t make any guarantees. As they say, “Google is going to do what Google wants to do”, so all we can do is follow their guidance to improve the odds of appearing prominently across their platform, but ultimately, we simply don’t have control to know when or why they will link to Wealthtender reviews.

Of course, we know that the reviews on an advisory firm’s Wealthtender profile do get indexed by Google and consistently appear within search results; they simply don’t always appear within the “Reviews from the Web” section of the Google Business Profile itself.

Note for Solo Advisors: Wealthtender offers an add-on benefit for solo advisors interested in the SEO benefits of an advisory firm profile that costs $10/month (or $100/year for annual subscriptions). Solo advisors can then utilize our Review Sync feature to automatically collect and display reviews on both their individual advisor and advisory firm profiles. The primary benefit of this add-on is gaining the visibility of indexing reviews to also appear in search results for the advisory firm, but as explained above, we can’t promise or expect that reviews will appear within the firm’s Google Business Profile itself.

A Creative and Compliant Way to Add Reviews to Google Business Profiles

We’re always thinking of ways to get creative (while remaining compliant, of course!). And there is one approach advisors can consider to compliantly make their testimonials accessible through their Google Business Profiles.

Specifically, the approach is analogous to creating a compliant social media post, like this “Five-Star Friday” LinkedIn post, using an SEC-compliant template provided by Wealthtender. But instead of posting the graphic to LinkedIn, the graphic with the testimonial and required disclosures can be added as a “photo” to an advisor’s Google Business Profile. Of course, the typical photos added to Google Business Profiles are of a business storefront, pictures of staff, etc., but adding images featuring testimonials should work fine as well.

Next Steps: Getting Started with Wealthtender

At Wealthtender, we’re dedicated to helping you get found online and convert more prospects into clients. Beyond our industry-first Certified Advisor Reviews™ designed for compliance with the SEC Marketing Rule, financial advisors and wealth management firms that join Wealthtender gain recognition for their areas of specialization and SEO benefits to rank higher in Google search results.

Whether you’re already part of our growing community of financial advisors and wealth management firms that have chosen Wealthtender as their digital marketing partner, or you prefer to grow on your own, we hope the information in this article helps you feel more confident about your approach to compliant testimonial marketing.

If you have questions this article did not answer, please email yourfriends@wealthtender.com or schedule a Zoom call. We look forward to hearing from you.

To learn more about Wealthtender and get started, please visit this page and choose the plan best for you.