Optimizing Your Financial Website for Search: Navigating SEO Challenges in the Finance Industry In this article, we delve into key trends marketing and SEO leaders should monitor in the coming years. Discover proven tips to boost search rankings, convert searchers into customers, and enhance online visibility while safeguarding your brand. 1. Digital Transformation Drives Evolving Customer Needs Before COVID-19, Adobe’s 2021 Digital Trends report highlighted a surge in digital/mobile traffic in financial services and insurance. The pandemic further accelerated digital adoption, reshaping customer interactions overnight. Fintech and decentralized finance via cryptocurrencies challenged legacy systems, with the pandemic speeding up this change. Adobe’s survey notes legacy system issues holding back customer experience in retail banks, while operational costs for fintechs are lower than traditional banks. Post-COVID-19, KPMG’s Anton Ruddenklau predicts increased collaboration between large banks and fintechs, driving digitized services forward. 2. Expanding SERP Opportunities Google’s evolving search results offer rich opportunities to improve visibility. Featured snippets, MUM technology, and updates in local search results present valuable avenues for financial brands to optimize and expand their presence in search. 3. Upholding Consumer Trust and Information Accuracy in SEO The rise of misinformation during COVID-19 has pressured Google to ensure high-quality answers in search. Finance sites are categorized under YMYL (Your Money or Your Life), requiring rigorous standards and adherence to E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). 4. Finance Goes Mobile-First Retail banking is increasingly omnichannel, focusing on digital convenience. Google’s focus on page experience and Core Web Vitals underscores the importance of user-friendly, fast-loading pages for financial services. Conclusion Staying aligned with Google’s best practices and leveraging market insights is crucial for SEO success. As competition intensifies in finance and banking, especially with the rise of fintech, SEO is instrumental in maintaining a leading edge. For further insights on content marketing for finance, download our Free Ebook.
Optimizing your site and webpages for search is intricate without considering the additional regulatory concerns and other challenges in the financial industry.
Digital governance, consumer privacy and trust, information accuracy, and the swift pace of innovation in the sector are ongoing concerns for financial brands.
Whether you’re in insurance, banking, wealth management, mortgages, fintech, or another aspect of the financial services industry, there are extra considerations to integrate into your SEO strategy (beyond general SEO best practices).
In this article, we’ll explore some of the key trends that leaders in marketing and SEO should monitor in the months and years ahead. You’ll also find effective tips throughout to help boost your efforts to rank higher in search, convert more searchers to customers, and protect your brand while enhancing your online visibility in search.
1. Digital Transformation Is Driving Evolving Customer Needs
Even before the pandemic, Adobe’s 2021 Digital Trends for Financial Services & Insurance report revealed that 54% of the firms surveyed reported unusual growth in digital/mobile visitors in the six months leading up to early 2021.
The onset of COVID-19 significantly altered these dynamics. Customers’ informational needs and the handling of appointments, consultations, transactions, and contracts were revolutionized as much of the world entered lockdown. Fintech and the promise of decentralized finance via cryptocurrencies had already begun disrupting antiquated, paper-based legacy systems, and the pandemic accelerated this change by years.
Adobe’s survey also found that 61% of retail banks identified legacy systems as a top challenge holding back their marketing and customer experience organizations (followed by workflow issues for 44% and a lack of digital skills/capabilities for 42%).
Operational costs for fintech brands may be up to 70% lower than traditional banks, thanks to their lean operating models and structures. Even so, Anton Ruddenklau of KPMG notes that before COVID-19, banks were already increasing their investments in fintechs and startups. As we move into recovery, this trend is expected to accelerate.
Fintech is not an automatic winner in the search space because of its digitized services and benefits. Today, customers in the financial services sector expect self-serve options at every stage, from discovery and comparison through consultation, transaction, and service. Brands that can best meet these expectations and informational needs are well-positioned to succeed in search. How you communicate these offerings in organic and local search is crucial.
Financial brands must not only create the best experiences but also demonstrate to search engines that they are the optimal answer to relevant queries.
Tips And Takeaways
Leverage Proper Schema Markup For All Webpages: The most commonly used Schema types in banking are Articles, Image Objects, and FAQ. Though not specific to banking, they help search engines like Google better understand your content.
Make Sure You Know Who Your Competitors Are: It may not be who you think. Beyond direct competitors, you may also be competing against industry publications and media, regulatory bodies, local businesses, YouTube channels, podcasts, and more for voice share in SERPs.
Conduct Surveys And Analyze Your SEO Data For Customer Insights: Consumer-centric media and ecommerce experiences have heightened expectations for content personalization. Consumers expect technologies they interact with to programmatically learn their preferences.
2. Your Opportunities To Appear In The SERPs Are Growing
As Google aims to better understand searcher intent and provide more precise answers to complex queries, differentiation in search engine results pages (SERPs) is greater than ever. Google’s new Multitask Unified Model, or MUM, enhances its ability to understand content across different languages, formats, and types.
New results types are being tested, like an enhanced Autocomplete box that varies the results based on perceived search intent. Optimizing for Featured Snippets is a best practice offering valuable opportunities to expand your search presence. Structuring content strategically—as lists, tables, etc.—can position your webpage as a featured snippet candidate.
Research shows that financial services queries often have varied universal listing elements on SERPs. Higher-funnel queries like [best investment apps] retrieve Quick answers boxes and People Also Ask dropdowns, for example. Recognizing which SERP features are available by keyword and search intent is crucial. Including original, high-quality video and imagery in your webpage content provides more opportunities for rich results.
In local search results, many financial services sectors received new attributes during the pandemic. Availability of Google Business Profile attributes depends on your listing’s primary category. Attributes for banks, insurance agencies, and mortgage brokers can include online appointments, ATMs, drive-thru services, etc. Broader attributes allow you to share health, safety, and accessibility information.
Tips And Takeaways
Explore SERPs For Your Most Valuable Keywords: Identify opportunities to outrank competitors in unique SERP features or become the first-mover for richer results.
When Creating And Optimizing Content, Focus On Topical Relevance And Context: Use context over keyword density. Our research shows context is more important than keyword repetition for banking.
Consider New Content Length Carefully: While word count isn’t a ranking factor, our research indicates the average word count for pages in the top positions across the top 1000 banking terms is 1,240. Analyze your own SERPs and provide the most comprehensive quality content for each target keyword.
3. Consumer Trust And Information Accuracy Are Increasingly Important In SEO
The shift to online due to COVID-19 led to a surge in misinformation, cyber-attacks, scams, and fraud. Bad actors capitalized on increased online searches related to loans, grants, and other financial help. In response, Google has been algorithmically weeding out potentially harmful results.
Finance sites fall under Google’s Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) category, held to a higher standard. Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T) are crucial for YMYL sites as Google strives to show the highest quality answers. Google advises those in YMYL to self-assess content, asking if the content is trustworthy for matters of money or life.
Tips And Takeaways
Get To Know Google’s Search Quality Raters Guidelines: While not ranking factors, these guidelines offer advice on creating great content.
Incorporate Regular Content Audits And Updates Into Your SEO Strategy: Remove outdated information promptly from Google Posts, blogs, and other areas. It’s not only an SEO best practice but often a regulatory requirement for many in the financial services sector.
Don’t Ignore Your Presence In Social Media: Platforms like Facebook often feature prominently in organic rankings for top banking terms.
4. Finance Becomes Mobile-First
Visiting ATMs, meeting financial advisors, and visiting branches for loans are becoming less common as self-serve options emerge. Digital natives, who prefer conducting banking digitally, made up 32% of PwC’s 2021 Digital Banking Consumer Survey.
Retail banking is now an omnichannel experience, with mobile phones playing a central role. As McKinsey experts state, to enhance digital customer experience, banks must base solutions on an understanding of convenience, now measured by the ease of omnichannel experiences.
Google recognizes the importance of convenience, simplicity, and speed with its Page Experience update and Core Web Vitals metrics. Finance consumers desire intuitive apps, seamless experiences, personalized service, and quick decisions. Pages with informational content must load swiftly as consumers may move on to the next search result otherwise.
Tips And Takeaways
Mobile Security Is Mission-critical: With digital adoption comes an expectation for privacy and financial data protection.
Optimize For Voice Search: With increased mobile use and voice-enabled assistants, optimizing for these queries is vital.
Measure And Optimize For Core Web Vitals: While not directly impacting rankings, meeting Core Web Vitals requirements provides a “boost” in search rankings.
Conclusion
Adhering to Google’s best practices and keeping pace with algorithmic changes are crucial for SEO in the Financial Services sector. Utilizing market insights to stay ahead of trends and quickly updating site content for search compliance is also vital.
Competition is always fierce in the finance and banking sectors, but SEO can help financial brands maintain a strong position.
