How Expensive are Financial Services Keywords?

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There are two ways for Advisors to appear on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for relevant keywords:

  • As part of the Organic Listings
  • As part of the paid advertisements

    • Organic Listings


    Companies that appear on the SERPs organically in either the Local pack (Google Maps), or the traditional listings, are perceived by the search engines to be the ‘best answer’ to the searcher’s query – in the eyes of the search engines, they have earned that position and appear there for free.


    Organic listings, both Local and traditional, are what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) works to achieve.

    Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising


    While SEO is a long-term process and solution, often taking months before the benefits are recognized, top ranking can be achieved quickly (same day) through PPC. Paid ads appear at the top and bottom of most pages – and are clearly marked as Ads.


    How do PPC Ads work?


    To set up a PPC campaign, a business sets up a Google Adwords account (or Bing Ads), selects the keywords that they want to bid on, sets a maximum bid amount, and determines a monthly budget.

    Each time a search is made, an instant auction occurs among the businesses that have selected that keyword – a winner is determined based on highest bid and Google’s assigned quality score (a score based on the relevancy of the designated landing page, visitor actions after reaching that page, and the history of previous ads you’ve run), and the results appear on the SERP.

    The auction winners only actually pay the bid price if their ad is clicked on by the searcher.

    25 of the Most Expensive Financial Keyword s


    While individual results may vary as actual prices are in constant market fluctuation and will change based on demand and your location among other factors, the following Google “Suggested Bid” prices will give you a snapshot view of prices and relative value of Financial Services keywords.

    Note: I’ve removed many terms associated with “Insurance Quotes”, “Term Insurance” and “Tax Payment Issues”, which are among the most expensive keywords, but wanted to give an overall view of the industry.


    Until recently, Google also showed paid ads along the right-hand side of the page, as would be expected, early results show keywords becoming more expensive as a result of the fewer available spots.

    PPC prices can be used to determine the value of organic clicks to your website, or to evaluate the cost/value of any SEO work you are considering.