SEO Finance: Optimization Strategy for Banks & Businesses

SEO can work at any type of business or business level, including finance. SEO finance is a term used to discuss search engine optimization for financial businesses. Its presence can bring in leads through organic search.

However, the implementation of SEO finance will definitely be a little different from other businesses. This is due to the nature of the finance business, which tends to be exclusive. Therefore, you have to make sure the SEO implementation is in accordance with your business niche.

In this SEO guide, cmlabs will explain in detail what you need to know about the optimization steps.

What is SEO Finance?

SEO finance is a term used for optimization strategies in financial companies to improve website performance organically.

SEO can assist companies involved in finance in building brands and marketing their services to consumers by promoting them on search engines such as Google.

There are many benefits of implementing SEO in financial businesses. One of which is that your company will be more easily found by consumers on search engines.

In addition, you can also build customer relationships and trust with an optimized website. You can also increase the number of conversions or leads on your website.

KPIs on SEO Finance

Similar to other marketing strategies, SEO also aims to increase business growth. If you want to apply SEO to financial companies, then you must know what the benchmarks are for the success of SEO finance.

There are several KPIs that you can use to measure the success of your SEO strategy, which are:

Ranking

Search engines work by browsing various content on the internet, analyzing and storing it in their database, then displaying it to searchers based on the order or ranking.

Website ranking is determined according to various factors such as domain authority, user experience, content quality, and much more. If the website can maximize the ranking factor, then it will get a high ranking in the SERP.

The higher the ranking is, the more organic traffic you will get. Therefore, ranking is one of the KPIs in SEO finance that you must pay attention to.

Organic Traffic

Organic traffic measures how many website visitors come through search results. It is very important because the biggest source of website traffic is from search results. Not only that, but this type of traffic can also be obtained for free for a long period of time.

If your business is in the financial sector, then focus on increasing organic traffic. This is because the process of acquiring consumers for financial products requires a lot of time and money.

With a focus on increasing organic traffic, consumer acquisition costs in financial companies will be much more efficient, and the results will be felt in the long term. The greater the volume of traffic, the domain will also have more authority than competitors. This will help the website rank higher in the SERPs and make it more trustworthy in the eyes of the user. 

Engagement

Another way to measure website performance is to use KPI engagement or user interaction on the website. The reason is that a good website is a website that gets a lot of interaction from its users.

Interaction can be in the form of user duration on the website, the number of pages opened, the number of people who clicked on the CTA, the number of comments on articles, or the number of audiences who share web content on social media.

The more interactions you get, the better the user experience of the website. Not only that, consumer confidence will also increase, so this must be considered by financial company websites.

By using the engagement rate metric, you can find out the level of user interaction on your website. You can see this metric in Google Analytics.

Conversion

Conversion is another KPI in SEO finance that is no less important. This KPI measures the number of website visitors who make a purchase or other specific action.

Usually, the form of conversion on a financial company's website is leads or consumer prospect data. Conversions are obtained when potential customers fill out the personal contact and data forms on the landing page.

If you run a financial business, then you must be able to increase the conversion rate on your website. Because a high number of visitors on a website will be in vain if they are not directed to convert.

New Customers

In addition to conversion, another KPI that will affect sales is new customers. The SEO strategy that you run must be able to bring in new customers for your financial company.

Moreover, nowadays, many people are aware of the importance of finance. By implementing SEO finance, you can get opportunities to attract more consumers.

How to Optimize SEO Finance

Currently, there are many financial companies that use SEO strategies to increase their visibility on search engines and get consumers. As a result, SEO competition on financial topics is becoming more stringent.

Moreover, financial topics are included in the YMYL category because they are prone to false information that can harm the audience. Thus, Google tightens the rules in choosing websites that will be displayed to the audience.

It is important to learn about how to optimize SEO finance so that your website can beat the competitors on search results pages. 

Do SEO Audit

To start the optimization step, you can do an SEO audit first. An SEO audit is carried out to find out the condition of your website. For example, what problems exist on the website and what opportunities can improve SEO performance.

You can use the audit results to make SEO plans. What aspects of SEO can you audit?

• Existing old content
• Website navigation and architecture
• Page experience
• Website speed
• Core web vitals
• Desktop and mobile views
• Backlinks
• Metadata

Keyword Research for Finance Business

After performing an SEO audit, you can proceed to the next website optimization stage, namely keyword research. This stage is carried out to find target keywords that are relevant to the audience and have the potential to bring in traffic.

When doing keyword research, there are some important points that you should pay attention to, namely:

1. Search volume: Number of keyword searches per month. The greater the number of search volumes, the higher the chances of traffic that will be obtained.
2. Keyword difficulty: The level of keyword competition. The higher the score, the harder it is to get a high ranking.
3. Jenis Keyword: Choose the type of keyword based on the content you want to create.
4. Search intent: The intent or purpose of the search. Define keywords with search intent that match the purpose of your content.

Some examples of keywords on financial topics are 'investment tips for beginners', 'money market mutual fund recommendations', and 'how to manage finances for college students'.

Produce Relevant Content 

The process of creating content with YMYL topics such as finance will be more difficult than with other topics. This is because Google requires website managers to present content that meets E-A-T aspects (expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness).

To create EAT-able content, you can follow some of the tips below:

• Create quality content that is relevant to the audience and able to answer their needs.
• Make sure that the sources used to create the content are factual and trustworthy.
• Regularly updating the content so that the information presented can follow the latest facts.
• Make sure that the content is written or reviewed by people who have an educational background or work in finance.
• Show credentials to prove that your website can be trusted. Examples include the author's biography, office address, and contact number.

Mobile-First Website

Today, many people use smartphones to search for information on Google, including financial-related information. Moreover, finance is one of the most sought-after topics.

To respond to the behavior of internet users, Google has updated their algorithm so that websites with poor mobile appearance have fewer chances to appear on the SERPs.

Therefore, you must create a mobile-friendly website display so that the website can more easily appear on the Google search page. Test the mobile appearance of your website using the Mobile Friendly Test tool from cmlabs.

Use Schema Markup

One of the SEO finance strategies that can increase website visibility on search results pages is the use of schema markup. Website pages that have a schema markup will be easier for search engines to understand, so the chances of that page appearing in the SERP will be higher.

In addition, schema markup can also make the appearance of the website on the search results page more attractive with rich snippets. Your website can get a wider space with the snippets, so that its visibility will increase.

To create schema markup, you can use the JSON-LD Generator tool from cmlabs for free.

Improve Website Security

The next SEO finance optimization step is to increase website security. Security is a very important thing on financial company websites. If your company's website is exposed to cyber attacks, then consumer confidence will drop.

Examples of some threats that can occur on your website include deletion or alteration of website content, data theft, and so on. Websites that are not safe will also not be shown in the SERP by Google.

Therefore, ensure the security of the website by implementing cyber security practices. One of the easiest things you can do is to use HTTPS on your website. Make sure your website is secure and already using HTTPS with the SSL Checker tool from cmlabs.

Do Competitor Research

If you want to win the competition in the SERPs on the topic of finance, then you have to know your competitors. You need to know that SEO competitors are not always the same as business competitors.

Sometimes, you will find competitors with much different businesses than yours but targeting the same audience and topics in the SERPs. Generally, they are known as semantic competitors who target similar keywords. Therefore, make sure that you have determined your competitors correctly.

Do competitor research so you can provide better content to your audience. By recognizing your competitors, you are one step ahead of them.

Boost Social Media Presence

SEO cannot function in isolation; you must also implement other digital marketing strategies, such as social media marketing. By optimizing social media, you can build an audience and drive them to visit your website.

This method will greatly impact SEO performance because the website can get traffic from sources other than organic search.

That's a complete explanation of how to apply SEO to financial companies. Hopefully, with this explanation, you can apply it to your company website and achieve the desired results.

Do you need help implementing an SEO finance strategy? No need to worry, for you can use SEO services to get consultation and assistance from a team of professionals in their field.