In this digital age, the financial sector has undergone a significant transformation, with more and more institutions leveraging online channels to attract customers and grow their companies. With so many financial businesses vying for attention though, an effective online presence is critical to staying competitive.
Search marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) are at the core of this strategy, and any firm serious about growing their business will already be familiar with the race to rank for financial keywords. SEO is not just about increasing website traffic though; it’s about attracting the right audience—potential clients who need financial services and are actively searching for them. To achieve this, financial companies need to choose an SEO platform that meets their specific needs. Here are five SEO platform elements that businesses in the financial sphere should pay close attention to.
1. Comprehensive Keyword Research and Analysis Tools
For any SEO strategy to be effective, it needs to start with solid keyword research. Financial services are complex though, with myriad sub-sectors such as banking, investment, insurance, and financial advisory services. Each of these areas has its own set of relevant keywords that potential clients could use to find your company online. Therefore, financial companies need an SEO platform that offers advanced keyword research and analysis tools.
These tools should not only help identify high-volume keywords but also provide insights into long-tail keywords that are often less competitive but more valuable. Some SEO platforms don’t always have adequate information about long-tail keywords that don’t attract thousands of searches. Despite attracting fewer searches than other keywords, these more specific keywords are ignored at your peril.
Long-tail keywords often come from searchers with a specific intent. In the financial sector, these are usually an intention to purchase a product. These are known as ‘bottom of the funnel’ keywords. While a broad keyword with a large search volume such as ‘financial services’ could be the start of a client’s sales journey, a more specific keyword usually suggests a customer that knows what they want, and is actively looking to buy.
For instance, a company that offers several services ranging from invoice factoring to vehicle finance would be better served by targeting long-tail keywords like ‘fleet finance deals for used vans’ instead of broader but vaguer terms such as ‘financial services’. This specificity helps in attracting an audience ready to buy, leading to higher conversion rates.
Moreover, an effective SEO platform should offer features like keyword difficulty scores, competitive keyword analysis, and keyword trend tracking. These functionalities enable financial companies to prioritize the most valuable keywords and stay ahead of the competition by adapting to changing search behaviours.
2. Robust Content Optimization Features
Content is king in the world of SEO, and for financial companies, creating authoritative, trustworthy, and relevant content is crucial. Customers place a lot of trust in financial firms, after all, they could literally be handing over their life savings to them. Because of this, your information should be transparent and display a level of expertise that builds confidence in your company’s ability to perform for clients.
Financial topics are often complex and require a high level of expertise, which means that the content must not only be well-written but also optimized for search engines. Churned-out AI posts will not do here, as the slightest mistake in the advice your post is providing could prove costly.
Look for an SEO platform that provides insights on how your posts fare according to Google’s EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) guidelines. Not only will working to these prompts ensure that readers receive high-quality, informative content, but it will also help your post to rank after Google’s Helpful Content update made the search engine look for these factors.
An ideal platform should offer innovative content optimization features. These include on-page SEO analysis, content scoring, and real-time suggestions for improving SEO elements such as meta tags, headings, and keyword density.
In addition, the platform should support content gap analysis, which helps financial companies identify topics that their competitors are covering but they aren’t. By filling these gaps, companies can write posts that attract more traffic and position them as thought leaders in their areas of expertise.
3. Advanced Technical SEO Capabilities
Technical SEO is at the heart of any successful SEO strategy. It involves optimizing the website’s infrastructure beyond what a web design company typically handles, ensuring that it stays accessible, quick to load, and easy for search engines to index and crawl. For financial companies, this is particularly important as their websites often contain sensitive information and require strong security measures. Furthermore, if a client needs to use the website to handle their finances, a creaking site with slow loading times and broken links will hardly inspire confidence.
As such, an SEO platform with advanced technical SEO capabilities is crucial. Key features to look for include site audit tools that can identify and help fix issues like broken links, duplicate content, and slow loading times. The platform should also support schema markup, which helps search engines understand the content on the site better and improve the site’s visibility in search results through SERP features such as featured snippets.
Security is another critical aspect of technical SEO for financial companies. Any platform should help users to ensure that the website adheres to the latest security standards, including HTTPS, which is now a ranking factor in Google’s algorithm. Additionally, features like mobile optimization are absolutely essential, According to studies, more people use their phones to access the internet than any other device.
4. Local SEO and Review Management Tools
Local SEO is particularly important for financial companies that operate in specific geographic areas, such as regional banks, credit unions, or local insurance agencies. Effective SEO services should include tools that help enhance the company’s presence in local search results, which is essential for attracting clients who are searching for services nearby. In fact, it’s been reported by SEO platforms such as Semrush that a speaker at a Google conference claimed that 46% of all search users are looking for local businesses.
Key features to look for in local SEO tools include local keyword tracking, Google My Business (GMB) integration, and citation management. The platform should help ensure that the company’s NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) information is consistent across all online directories and that the GMB profile is fully optimized and regularly updated.
Review management is another important aspect of local SEO. Financial companies need to maintain a trustworthy online reputation, and reviews can have a significant impact on a potential client’s decision-making process. Some SEO platforms offer tools to monitor and respond to reviews across various platforms, including Google, Yelp, and social media outlets. Actively managing reviews is a great way for companies to build trust and improve their reputation locally.
5. In-Depth Analytics and Reporting
Finally, financial companies need an SEO platform that offers in-depth analytics and reporting capabilities. The financial sector is always changing and evolving, so your website may have to be flexible enough to keep up. On top of this, SEO is not a one-time effort in any sector; it requires continuous monitoring and optimization. Therefore, it’s important to have access to detailed reports that provide insights into the performance of SEO campaigns.
A good SEO platform should offer customizable dashboards that allow companies to track key performance indicators (KPIs) such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, bounce rates, and conversion rates. These metrics provide a clear picture of what’s working and what’s not, enabling businesses to make information-led decisions that improve their website’s performance.
Moreover, the platform should ideally support integration with other analytics tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console, allowing for a more comprehensive view of website performance. The figures presented in these two Google tools are usually more accurate than the best guesses of an SEO service and should be your first stop for traffic numbers.
Automated reporting features can also save you an incredible amount of time when it comes to preparing reports for stakeholders. Detailed updates on your SEO efforts can be generated in seconds to show stakeholders that the website is moving in the right direction.
SEO SaaS is a Must for Financial Firms
For financial companies, choosing the right SEO platform is an important decision that can have a significant impact on their online success. With more and more business coming from online sources, solid SEO strategies are an absolute must. By focusing on these five essential elements: comprehensive keyword research, robust content optimization, advanced technical SEO, local SEO and review management, and in-depth analytics, financial institutions can build a strong base from which to build their SEO strategy. This not only helps in improving Google rankings but also in attracting and retaining the right audience, playing a large part in driving business growth in a highly competitive financial industry.
Why is FinancesOnline free?
Leave a comment!