SEO for Financial Services: 10 Key Tactics

Before we dive into the how, let’s take a look at the why. Investing in SEO has been shown to deliver multiple benefits to financial institutions. First and foremost, a strong SEO presence will help your financial institution appear higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant financial search terms. This means more organic traffic directed to your website, and more potential customers that you know to be actively searching for the services you have on offer.

With this increased visibility comes a boost to your brand awareness. Financial services are private affairs, and customers want to be able to trust their financial service provider. Ranking higher in SERPs positions your bank or credit union as a reliable and trustworthy source of financial information and services, fostering trust and brand loyalty.

SEO for financial institutions lets banks, credit unions, and other financial service providers target specific keywords related to financial services. By optimizing your website and landing page content for relevant financial terms, you can attract qualified leads with a predetermined interest in your products and services.

Finally, it’s vital to understand that SEO for financial services offers financial institutions a rare cost-effective method of lead generation. Content that ranks well will continually attract organic traffic without the ongoing – or even rising – marketing costs associated with traditional advertising methods.

An effective SEO strategy for financial institutions will consist of many moving parts that synergize to deliver qualified, organic traffic. Before diving into these tactics, it’s important to run an SEO audit to identify any current SEO efforts, areas of strength, and opportunities for improvement. Once you’ve run your audit, it’s time to start planning your SEO efforts to maximize effectiveness and efficiency.

You’re about to see 10 SEO tactics that are designed to help financial institutions stand out in search results. From content strategies, technical elements, and methods of building trust and authority, you can begin implementing these 10 strategies immediately if you want to see your financial institution climb up SERPs and become a leader in the digital banking era.

1. Create high-quality financial/informational content across all channels

Financial institutions are uniquely positioned to establish themselves as thought leaders in the industry by creating informative, valuable content. Everyone needs financial advice, and by publishing quality blog posts, and guides that address common financial concerns and queries, banks and credit unions can become a source of reliable and useful information.

Leverage whitepapers, ebooks, and webinars to showcase your expertise by providing more in-depth content pieces on a selection of relevant financial topics. You can also add useful tools to your website, such as financial calculators and glossaries of relevant financial terms, as well as a FAQ section.

Remember, content is king, and freshness is the crown. Be sure to update content regularly, optimizing for any deficiencies or opportunities you identify, and maintain a steady flow of new content to keep your website a relevant source of valuable information for potential customers.

2. Focus on YMYL and E-E-A-T

Two acronyms that financial institutions must become familiar with if they want to run successful SEO strategies are Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) and Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). 

What E-E-A-T boils down to is that you want to create and share content that demonstrates your financial institution’s experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. You can build your E-E-A-T by acquiring backlinks from reputable financial organizations and publications. Creating and maintaining a clear “About Us” section on your website will also contribute to your E–E-A-T as you can highlight your team members’ qualifications and relevant experience. Additionally, the transparency displayed demonstrates a commitment to reliable financial guidance, elevating your trustworthiness.

Google’s YMYL criteria is of particular interest to banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions looking to maximize their SEO impact. Topics that fall into the YMYL category are those that have the potential to impact the readers’ health, financial stability, well-being, or safety. Along with finance, current affairs and medicine are two fields that fall under this umbrella. 

For pages to qualify as YMYL, they must display the highest levels of E-E-A-T. As long as you keep E-E-A-T in mind when creating content for your website and landing pages, your financial institution’s content will fall into this category, generating a fantastic boost to your SEO efforts.

3. Prioritise local SEO

Financial institutions with brick-and-mortar locations must put a lot of effort into local SEO. Local SEO is concerned with search performance according to a geographic location. Banks and credit unions must optimize websites and local listings, such as Google My Business, for popular local search terms. Consistency is key, especially when speaking about NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number). This information must be common across all platforms to ensure you can be contacted and found easily by local consumers.

In turn, these local consumers are a fantastic source of social proof of your company’s capabilities. Encourage positive reviews on your Google My Business account and other review platforms to build trust with your local community and generate a positive impact on your local search ranking.

4. Revise your page structure and keyword clustering

The key to SEO for financial institutions is a well-structured website, complete with targeted landing pages. Take advantage of internal linking to help website visitors move smoothly through the various financial products and services available on the website. Prioritize keywords that have high search volumes and lower levels of competition, implement keyword clustering to group related keywords, and optimize all meta tags and content for search engines.

5. Be sure that you have the right schema markup

Schema markup, if you’re unfamiliar, gives additional context relating to your website to search engines. Financial service providers can implement a schema markup designed for financial services. This extra layer of information does wonders for SEO efforts by helping search engines understand the content at a deeper level.

6. Reputation Management 

Whether we all like it or not, our reputations precede us, and the same can be said for financial institutions. Taking charge of your online reputation is a key step in a successful SEO strategy for companies offering financial services. Monitor any reviews about your business on review and social media platforms alike. Addressing negative feedback in a professional manner will show that you are dedicated to customer satisfaction.

Similarly, encourage your satisfied customers to leave reviews, and acknowledge such comments to show that you are paying attention to all customers’ opinions, and not just to ones that may badmouth you to other members of the public. You can solicit reviews from customers in many ways, such as using QR codes, social media, employees, and emails. As mentioned above, reviews act as fantastic social proof and build trust with current and potential customers.

7. Get your technical SEO right

In 2024, any business’ website must be fast and optimized for mobile if they want users to stay for longer than 2-3 seconds. Banks and credit unions must provide websites that have fast loading speeds and are centered on the user experience. We live in a mobile-first world, and customers who browse the web on the go must also be considered.

Nobody trusts an insecure or unsafe website belonging to a bank, credit union, or other financial provider. To ensure the efficacy of your SEO efforts, you simply cannot forget about security. You can enhance your website security and build trust among users by implementing a secure connection (HTTPS). Without this vital step, your other SEO efforts will go to waste.

8. Mobile optimization/Banking App

As we know, it’s a mobile-first world. Financial providers must prioritize catering to mobile users. This is done by creating responsive website designs that can adapt to all devices flawlessly and quickly. Most banks have made this change, but there is a way to take this one step further and get ahead of competitors.

Your financial institution can develop a user-friendly, secure, fast mobile banking app. The app must be convenient for users, allowing them to seamlessly access important account information, check deposits, and perform transactions. The ability to do such things from the palm of their hand is the kind of benefit that will have users coming back to your business.

9. Off-page SEO 

Another SEO-related term you may have heard is off-page SEO. This focuses on strategies that tell search engines your website is trustworthy and authoritative thanks to actions you’ve taken such as guest posting, press releases, and local business listings. For financial institutions, there are two additional, important methods of maximizing your off-page SEO efforts.

Community involvement

Building a strong reputation within your community goes a long way when trying to establish your financial institution’s trustworthiness. Link-building is key to this, and when you incorporate local charities and events into your link-building strategy, you are helping to make your community a better place while generating great awareness for your business.

By sponsoring local events, engaging in volunteer programs, and offering free financial literacy workshops, you can drive massive interest in your credit union while sending hyper-local signals to search engines. The links built through these efforts will send signals to search engines about your attachment to the community you are working in while putting your name in front of potential future customers.

On top of the evident SEO benefits from such endeavors, similar initiatives will not only strengthen your ties to the local community but will also generate opportunities for potential media coverage and backlinks from local news outlets and websites, all of which will contribute to increased SEO success.

Scholarships

A powerful SEO tactic for banks and credit unions is to invest in the future of the local community by establishing scholarships for young people looking to break into finance and related fields. Funding these scholarships will show that your financial institution is dedicated to social responsibility, is interested in the education of the next generation, and is keen to share the knowledge and expertise housed within its four walls.

A comprehensive off-page SEO approach is needed to solidify your overarching SEO efforts. Combining community involvement, scholarships, and other link-building tactics will help your financial institution build trust and awareness, and establish itself as a key pillar in the local community for years to come.

10. Correct keyword research and on-site implementation

Keyword research is the foundation of a successful SEO strategy for financial service providers. Use the full suite of online tools to conduct in-depth research into the most relevant keywords and key terms relating to your industry, products, and services. Target a mix of high-intent keywords and long-tail keywords, ideally including some terms that are the most popular, and some that are the least competitive. 

When done strategically, keyword implementation takes content to new heights, driving the creators up SERPs and delivering more qualified leads. For financial institutions, such words and terms might be “interest rates”, “low interest loans”, and “first-time home buyers mortgage rates”, but by no means should you stick to these. Conduct regular research to ensure your keywords and key terms are always prominent and popular.

Do not forget to use Google’s search recommendations for insight into the most common search terms web visitors use to find your site, and enable Site search Tracking to track your users’ search queries on your site.

As we’ve now seen, SEO is a long-term and ongoing process. It requires continuous monitoring and adaptation, and reporting to ensure you stay on track and hit your goals. Tracking in detail will allow you to optimize your campaign effectiveness and make informed, data-driven decisions. 

Monitor your organic traffic and be aware that an increase in this area suggests your SEO efforts are working. Similarly, if your conversions tick upward, you can assume that your website is performing well at turning organic traffic into leads and customers. Always keep tabs on keyword rankings in SERPs. If you are seeing a steady improvement in keyword ranking positions, your SEO strategy is delivering. One final figure to track is the number of quality backlinks directing users to your website. Once again, the higher the number, the stronger your SEO efforts are proving to be.

As made abundantly clear, a robust SEO strategy is a must for financial institutions in today’s age of digital banking. If you take care to properly implement the steps laid out above, after conducting a thorough audit of your current and previous SEO efforts, you will set yourself up for SEO success. Having said that, many of these ideas are easier said than done. 

Turn to inSegment, a Boston premier advertising agency to help get your SEO efforts up and running. Our expertise in digital marketing for the financial sector is unrivaled, and the results we deliver to clients are the best proof of that.

Contact inSegment today to improve your SEO and get your financial institution to the top of SERPs.