The UK has one of the strongest markets for financial services. In 2021, it contributed over 8% of the UK's total economic output, worth £173.6 billion, and accounted for an estimated 3% of jobs.
But the industry is also becoming increasingly competitive.
Those wanting to stand out and gain a secure foothold in the sector must craft a strong online presence. Sustainable growth can only be achieved by those willing to adapt to the finance industry's developing regulations and the ever-changing digital marketing landscape.
SEO (search engine optimisation) for financial is becoming an increasingly common sight. Once frowned upon as an unscrupulous method of tricking search engines and people, modern SEO is a vastly different practice.
Today, search engine optimisation involves various practices aiming to improve user experience. This is essential given the fact that people are extra cautious about the services they use when it comes to money.
SEO can help you to appear more trustworthy to your potential clients, and people are more likely to want to work with companies they view as reliable and experts.
Financial services SEO will ensure your company ranks highly on search engines, meaning more people are more likely to view you as authoritative and trustworthy. The more impressions (people seeing your site on search engines), the more traffic (visitors) you'll receive. Traffic increases will typically result in higher conversion rates.
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SEO (search engine optimisation) is one of the most cost-effective digital marketing strategies.
It involves making alterations that improve your website's chances of ranking highly in the SERPs (search engine results pages). This practice consists of a range of on-site, technical, and off-site improvements that make your site more user-friendly and crawlable and indexable for search engine bots
SEO offers companies in the financial services sector a variety of benefits compared to most more traditional marketing tactics.
What are some of the key benefits of SEO for financial services?
Essentially, financial services SEO helps more of the right people find your business, web pages, and posts. Moreer impressions, especially from qualified leads (those interested in your expertise or service), will generally lead to increases in traffic. You'll also notice an improvement in your conversion rates, both hard (sales) and soft (contact and email or newsletter signups).
The potential increases in website impressions, traffic, and conversions are further heightened now that search engine use is at an all-time high.
According to the latest data, over 8.5 billion searches are made daily on Google. Inevitably, the more people that start their online journeys on search engines, the more potential for growth your company has.
Furthermore, businesses in financial industries are expected to meet incredibly high standards, and neither search engines nor consumers will choose a financial services company that fails to meet these expectations.
Search engine optimisation can convince people that your financial services business is trusted and reliable. People naturally view the first few results on search engines like Google as authoritative and industry leaders. Therefore, by improving your SERP rankings, you'll increase feelings of trust and ensure you receive even more impressions, traffic, and conversions.
Your rankings in search pages can also enhance brand awareness by increasing visibility. As more people see your informational content, they become more familiar with your company and see you as credible and an industry expert.
Last but not least, financial services SEO is highly cost-effective. It is a long-term, sustainable, and affordable digital marketing tactic. With a relatively small sum, you can continuously improve site visibility, traffic, and conversions.
And, despite its low-cost, search engine optimisation is known for providing a consistently high ROI (return on investment).
Of course, even something as effective as financial services SEO is not without its pitfalls.
So what are some of the challenges you should be aware of?
Search engine optimisation for financial services can be complicated. It requires several on-page, technical, and off-page tactics to successfully and sustainably boost your rankings, traffic, and conversion rates.
Below, we've listed some top tips to help you navigate financial services SEO.
Running a complete SEO and competitor analysis is always a good idea. This will help you identify areas of successful optimisation and where you should focus your attention to level up your visibility and traffic potential.
Given the highly competitive nature of the financial services market, competitor analysis is non-negotiable. You must understand what your rivals are doing if you are to outrank them and capture your target audience's attention and trust.
Web Choice competitor analysis dives into your competitor's content strategy and keyword rankings. This information helps our team identify gaps in your strategy, pinpointing easy wins to enhance your site's visibility and traffic.
One critical aspect of on-page optimisations is researching and targeting keywords.
Search volume and keyword difficulty
You'll likely come across many words and phrases when first researching which keywords relate to your financial services company and area of expertise.
Typically, these keywords will be displayed with relevant data like their search volume (how many people search for the term) and keyword difficulty (how easy it is to rank for).
While many assume the highest volume keywords are the ones to target, it can be challenging to rank for them immediately. Therefore, it often pays to initially focus on lower volume, less competitive keywords to build your reputation as a credible industry authority.
If your company offers financial services to a particular region, you will want to target local SEO keywords. These usually have lower search volumes but can help you reach more qualified leads.
Relevance
You'll likely end up with an overwhelmingly long list of potential keywords in your initial research stages. So how do you choose which of these will be the most beneficial to target?
Aside from how many people search for them and how tricky they are to rank for, you'll also want to consider how relevant they are to your financial services. Remember that you want to encourage those interested in your business to visit your site. Of course, this will include any keywords, phrases, or questions people may search for when first developing an interest in your area of expertise.
Search Intent
Once you have a list of keywords, it's time to start creating content around them. You'll need to be wary of overusing your keywords as this could end up making your content hard to read and with Google penalising your page as spam.
You should prioritise search intent when writing for particular keywords. Essentially this just means that you need to put yourself in your audiences' shoes to work out what they hope to find when they search specific terms. For instance, are they looking to research and buy a service, or are they just on the hunt for information to clarify certain concepts?
Content should be at the heart of any sustainable SEO strategy. Therefore, you'll need to ensure you publish new, on-trend, well-written, and expertly-researched content that adds value to your target audience.
Well-written content will add value for potential clients and allow you to rank for various keywords according to search intent. It's essential to maintain a human-first approach. By this, we mean you should write for people, not search engines.
Generally, this will involve writing a range of informational and transactional copy.
Producing informational content may not always feel worthwhile. It boosts traffic but often has a less dramatic impact on conversion rates. However, publishing helpful and informative copy will help signal (to people and search engines) that your website is useful. This will further increase your visibility, providing more leads who may recommend your company or return to you when ready to take the next step.
When it comes to money, people want to know that they can trust the information and services you provide. So you'll need to ensure your content meets Google E-A-T guidelines and provides a positive experience for your users.
This means your copy should not just be accurate and written according to keywords and search intent but also be easy to understand and provide readers with valuable information. You should also audit and edit past content to ensure all your content is up-to-date and high-quality.
Technical SEO improvements help search engine bots crawl and index your financial services website. This involves many back-end elements, but two of the most important are having a fast-loading, responsive site.
Responsive and mobile-friendly web design
By the end of 2022, over 59% of global web traffic came from mobile devices. Therefore, a mobile-friendly design is critical because more than half of your potential clients may view your site via mobile.
You should also have a responsive web design that can automatically adjust to fit various screen sizes. A mobile-friendly and responsive website will guarantee that all users, no matter what device they use, can access and view your website fully.
Fast page load speeds
People are impatient. Studies show that bounce rates (people leaving a web page) increase as the load time goes up. So your page should load within just a couple of seconds to keep users happy and prevent them from leaving
Off-page optimisations are just as important as those you make on-page.
Backlinks
High-quality backlinks will improve your Google E-A-T quality rating and SERP ranking. However, backlinks are more challenging to acquire since they link back to your site from other web pages, meaning you cannot place them.
You can gain backlinks by producing helpful and reliable content that others want to link to and by creating content for other publications to which you link back to your site.
Social Media
Social media marketing is a valuable aid in SEO and digital marketing generally. Companies in the financial services sector often neglect this area, but it provides extra opportunities through which you can gain customer attention and share information.
As you've likely realised by now, search engine optimisation isn't a one-and-done practice. It takes time to make the kind of improvements required for optimising financial services websites.
While the results of your efforts won't disappear overnight (unlike with PPC adverts), you will slowly lose your rankings and trust ratings if you fail to keep your site up-to-date with the latest relevant keywords and content. The best SEO practices and financial industry regulations are liable to change. If you do not keep up with these changes, you will eventually lose your authority and trust approval and will no longer rank for search engines or people.
Regular SEO audits of your site will help reveal where you are succeeding and where improvements are still needed.
Search engine optimisation for financial services is a challenging but highly cost-effective and long-term digital marketing method.
While worthwhile, many companies in the finance industry do not have the extra time or personnel to pursue a well-rounded and productive SEO campaign. This is where financial service SEO specialists like Web Choice come in.
Our team will assist from start to finish with planning, implementing, and adjusting your SEO strategy. We also use a range of KPIs (key performance indicators) to test the effectiveness of your campaign.
These KPIs include measuring:
By measuring your performance against these indicators, our team can help you make further improvements to capture more of the right people
Ultimately, modern search engine optimisation practices are circular. Search engines value user experience over and above all else; therefore, content that helps users will rank well in the eyes of search engine bots and vice versa.
Web Choice takes a user-centred financial services SEO approach, prioritising your target audience to increase your company's visibility, traffic, and conversions.
Contact us today to find out more.
Web Choice's high-velocity SEO plan, which costs around £4,000 ($5,000), is the most popular option for financial services companies.
Exact costs may vary, with prices increasing for more intense and complex strategies and lowering for more straightforward plans. Don't hesitate to contact the Web Choice team for more accurate pricing information based on your specific SEO requirements.
Financial services SEO typically takes up to 6 months to produce notable increases in rankings, impressions, and traffic.
However, SEO specialists like Web Choice can encourage a faster ROI (return on investment) with short-term strategies like targeting longtail and local keywords and publishing topic-clustered content.
