SEO case study · Finance & Professional
Pennimore Wealth
Independent financial adviser · Edinburgh
How a four-adviser Edinburgh practice outranked national wealth brands for local retirement planning
- Sett
- K/2 N14 K2 Y3 G12 R8 G16 W5 G18
- Threads
- Dress white, Broom gold, Rowan red, Forth navy
- Plan
- Local
The cloth, one band of weft per month. Scrub the loom to watch it weave.
Month 10 of 10
Consolidate and hand over
- 63%Google Business Profile · % map-pack share
- 49Adviser profiles · qualified enquiries / month
- 107Review generation · Google reviews (total)
- 4,033E-E-A-T signals · organic sessions / month
I.The challenge
Four advisers, one city, and national brands wearing their colours.
National advice platforms took the top spots for 'financial adviser Edinburgh', and Pennimore's site had no adviser bios or credentials.
Pennimore is a four-adviser independent practice that most clients find by recommendation. Online, though, the searches that matter most (adviser, retirement planning, pension advice) were held by national directories and platforms with thousands of reviews and a single “Edinburgh” landing page.
For a your-money-or-your-life topic, Google wants to see who is giving the advice and why they can be trusted. The site showed a group photo and a contact form. The Business Profile had the wrong category and 23 reviews.
- ANational advice directory4.6 ★ · 1,900 reviews · Online
- BUK wealth platform – Edinburgh4.4 ★ · 640 reviews · George St
- CHigh-street bank financial planning3.9 ★ · 210 reviews · Princes St
- APennimore Wealth4.9 ★ · 107 reviews · Financial planner
- BUK wealth platform – Edinburgh4.4 ★ · 640 reviews · George St
- CNational advice directory4.6 ★ · 1,900 reviews · Online
II.Diagnosis
The audit: where the cloth was thin.
A local-pack grid across 49 points of the city, a crawl of the site and an inventory of every citation and review. Eight findings carried most of the weight.
- 01 · LocalHigh
Wrong primary category
Business Profile listed as “Financial consultant”, not “Financial planner”, so it rarely qualified for adviser searches.
- 02 · LocalHigh
Split NAP after the move
14 directories still showed the pre-2022 Leith Walk address; Google treated two locations as half-trusted.
- 03 · TrustHigh
No advisers on the site
One group photo, no names, no Chartered or DipPFS credentials, no FCA references: weak signals for a your-money topic.
- 04 · TrustMedium
Unsigned guidance
Eleven pension and tax guides had no author or reviewer, and two quoted allowances from a past tax year.
- 05 · ReviewsHigh
23 reviews, last reply 2023
National platforms showed hundreds of ratings; Pennimore had no request process and left reviews unanswered.
- 06 · ContentMedium
Cannibalised retirement page
A 280-word service page competed with the homepage for “retirement planning Edinburgh” and lost to both.
- 07 · TechnicalMedium
Heavy mobile hero
An autoplay video pushed mobile LCP to 4.6s; no structured data of any kind.
- 08 · ContentMedium
No neighbourhood relevance
Clients came from Morningside to Musselburgh, but the site only mentioned “Edinburgh” once, in the footer.
III.The threads
Four tactics, dyed and counted, woven into one sett.
Built on our Local plan. Each tactic is one colour of thread; each moves one measure. Weave them together and no single thread has to carry the cloth.
Google Business Profile
Dress white · moves map-pack visibility
- Primary category changed to Financial planner; 11 services written out with fee basis
- Citations unified on 14 directories after the office move
- Fortnightly posts tied to tax-year deadlines and a seeded Q&A
Adviser profiles
Broom gold · moves qualified enquiries
- A page for each of the four advisers with Chartered status and FCA reference
- Specialisms, typical clients and a worked fee example on every profile
- Book-a-call routed to the right adviser, tagged for enquiry quality
Review generation
Rowan red · moves reviews
- A personal, compliant ask after each annual review meeting
- Two-tap link, no incentives and no gating of unhappy clients
- Every review answered within two working days by the adviser
E-E-A-T signals
Forth navy · moves organic sessions
- Every pension and tax guide signed by an adviser and dated
- Retirement hub rebuilt; outdated allowances corrected
- FinancialService and Person schema; mobile LCP 4.6s → 1.9s
IV.Month by month
Ten picks of the shuttle.
Each row is that month’s band of cloth, drawn from the modelled figures: watch the stripes thicken as the work compounds.
- 01
Audit and baseline
Crawl, local-pack grid across 49 points in the city, review and citation inventory. Fixed the Google Business Profile primary category and services list.
- 02
Citations cleaned
The old Leith Walk address corrected on 14 directories and the FCA register details matched to the site footer, so every listing told one story.
- 03
Four adviser profiles
One page per adviser: Chartered status, FCA reference, specialisms, the people they typically help and a plain-English fee example.
- 04
Review request flow
A compliant ask after the annual review meeting, sent by the adviser personally, with a two-tap link. No incentives, no gating.
- 05
Retirement hub rebuilt
Thin 280-word page replaced by a hub on drawdown, annuities and pension consolidation, each guide signed and reviewed by a named adviser.
- 06
Neighbourhood pages
Morningside, Stockbridge, Corstorphine and Musselburgh pages built around real meeting options, not keyword swaps.
- 07
Schema and speed
FinancialService, Person and Review markup; hero video removed, mobile LCP from 4.6s to 1.9s.
- 08
Profile posts cadence
Fortnightly Business Profile posts tied to tax-year dates; Q&A seeded with the questions clients really ask at first meetings.
- 09
Local authority links
Talks for two Edinburgh community groups and a chamber of commerce pension briefing earned local citations and links.
- 10
Consolidate and hand over
Enquiry-quality tagging in the CRM, reporting handed to the practice manager, and a review rhythm that runs without us.
V.Results
The finished cloth.
+96%
Qualified enquiries
25 → 49 qualified enquiries / month
18% → 63%
Map-pack visibility
18 → 63 % map-pack share
+118%
Organic sessions
1,850 → 4,033 organic sessions / month
23 → 107
Reviews
23 → 107 Google reviews (total)
Modelled scenario for a fictional business — not a client result. Rankings and traffic are never guaranteed; see our Terms.
Ranking register
Organic positions for the terms that bring qualified enquiries, month 0 against month 10, and whether the practice now holds a map-pack place for a searcher in central Edinburgh.
| Keyword | Searches/mo | Before | After | Map pack |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| financial adviser edinburgh | 1,300 | 14 | 3 | ✓ Yes |
| independent financial adviser edinburgh | 720 | 11 | 2 | ✓ Yes |
| retirement planning edinburgh | 390 | 19 | 1 | ✓ Yes |
| pension advice edinburgh | 480 | 23 | 4 | ✓ Yes |
| chartered financial planner edinburgh | 170 | – | 2 | ✓ Yes |
| inheritance tax planning edinburgh | 210 | 31 | 5 | No |
| financial adviser morningside | 90 | – | 1 | ✓ Yes |
| pension transfer advice scotland | 260 | 42 | 8 | No |
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