{"id":18305,"date":"2023-09-15T13:37:44","date_gmt":"2023-09-15T13:37:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nobraineragency.com\/?p=18305"},"modified":"2024-09-20T08:34:53","modified_gmt":"2024-09-20T08:34:53","slug":"guide-to-seo-financial-services","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nobraineragency.com\/seo\/guide-to-seo-financial-services\/","title":{"rendered":"Guide to SEO for Financial Services"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Developing and implementing an effective SEO strategy in the financial services industry can be a real challenge.\u00a0SEO<\/a>\u00a0for any business can be tough, but the financial services sector brings even more complexity than most and there are some unique areas to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this blog post, we look at several of the biggest challenges that financial service brands face when it comes to SEO, and how to overcome or work around them successfully. We also look at the other elements needed for an effective financial services SEO strategy to help drive increased highly relevant organic traffic to the website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The UK financial services sector is highly regulated and it\u2019s a constantly evolving industry. Trying to please the regulators, while building trust with customers and offering consistent service is not easy. We dig into some of the major issues that marketers face when trying to implement SEO for financial services brands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For some more established or traditional financial services brands, some aspects of digital marketing can be still somewhat new territory and it isn\u2019t always easy to gain the necessary buy-in for SEO from stakeholders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Doing your research and understanding exactly who you need to convince that SEO is going to be a valuable channel is essential. Working out what the barriers are means that you can formulate a strong business case and pitch for SEO that will answer any questions and concerns, while using real data to support your points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Take a look at our blog post on\u00a0getting buy in for SEO<\/a>\u00a0to find out how to construct a solid plan to get the \u2018votes\u2019 you need.<\/p>\n\n\n The search terms that people use to find the information they are looking for is always going to be an important part of SEO, but choosing which keywords to target as part of your SEO strategy isn\u2019t always as simple as it might first seem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Looking at keyword research through the lens of search intent and taking into account not just search volume but how competitive a term is organically will help ensure that you choose keywords to target that will actually make a difference to your financial services business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Achieving first page rankings for a generic search term that stands virtually no chance of converting into a customer is generally not a good use of time or resource, but identifying commercial or transaction-focused terms and targeting them on the right pages of your website can be a total gamechanger in terms of achieving your business objectives through SEO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read more about conducting\u00a0intent-led keyword research<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A common frustration when it comes to implementing an SEO strategy in this sector is that much of the activity is likely to be content-led and all content for financial services brands tends to have to go through a strict compliance process. Whilst the reasons for this are sound; the regulation of financial services in the UK makes it necessary for content to be checked and sometimes amended before being published, it often results in a major bottleneck forming. This can be the case both for the optimisation of existing content as well as the creation of new content to help achieve SEO objectives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our key advice for getting around this includes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a similar way, the implementation of technical tweaks required for SEO will often need a developer to action. In many financial service businesses, this web development support needs to be planned well in advance, sometimes even months in advance, which can significantly delay the benefits and SEO results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our advice for navigating this kind of issue includes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Along with dealing with issues like those already mentioned that can be quite particular to financial services SEO projects, there are many elements that help make sure a strategy in this sector stands the best possible chance of success. We look at these below:<\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019ve already mentioned technical SEO tweaks but determining what needs to be done in this area in the first place means that an in-depth audit will be required of the existing website. Having a good grasp of where things stand currently and historically provides essential context to the strategy you\u2019ll develop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Using\u00a0SEO research and audit tools<\/a>, such as SEMrush and Screaming Frog, can take some of the manual data gathering burden and are a great starting point, but being able to gain actionable insights from audit data and prioritising the resulting actions is where the real value lies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Knowing where your website currently sits in the context of your competitors (and why) is a crucial part of any financial services SEO strategy. Knowing what keywords they are targeting and how well they are ranking for these, how they are gaining backlinks, what content marketing activity they are doing and how their website is structured are all important pieces of information that you can use when developing your own strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You might choose a completely different approach to theirs, because you can see parts of their activity that aren\u2019t working so well, or find opportunities that they haven\u2019t yet utilised. However you decide to proceed, understanding your competitors and their approach to SEO is always useful for your own strategy and measurement of success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Search engines continue to place huge importance on high-quality, useful and expert content that is geared towards the target audience and optimised for search intent. For this reason, content plays a significant role in effective SEO strategies and it\u2019s important to evaluate existing content and performance before starting to create anything new.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As with SEO audits, there are content audit tools that can help with some of the data gathering, but content auditing includes checking quality and various usefulness criteria as well as how a specific page fits into the user journey and the function it performs. This means that a certain level of manual review is needed, combined with on-page factors and performance data to highlight if changes are needed and whether a page needs updating, removing or consolidating.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCommon problems with SEO for financial services<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Getting buy-in for financial services SEO in the first place<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nIneffective keyword research and mapping<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Compliance bottleneck for optimised content<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Slow implementation of technical SEO fixes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Other elements needed for effective financial services SEO<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
A comprehensive SEO audit<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Competitor SEO analysis in the financial services sector<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Content audit and strategy development<\/h3>\n\n\n\n