There is a lot of money to be made in the financial services sector.
Unfortunately, this means many online businesses want their piece of the proverbial pie.
As a finance website owner, you need a bullish SEO strategy to see your stock rise in the SERPs
This is easier said than done, of course.
Since you’ll be going up against financial services companies with deeper pockets and more years of experience under their belts.
We have the knowledge that can take a financial services website (or any website, for that matter) to the very top of the search engines for its target keywords.
This knowledge allowed us to take a site from 51,000 visitors to 98,000 visitors in just 7 months.
How did we do this?
There is no secret ingredient.
We will look more into how we grew a finance site a little later.
But first, let’s take a closer look at the website.
A Closer Look at the Site
This is a service-based website that offers help with producing financial documents in the US.
It allows customers to keep track of their finances, secure bank loans, obtain credit cards and use them as proof of income and a strong work reference.
The site was generating 51,000+ daily organic visitors and ranking for 10,000+ keywords (15% of which were ranking in the top three positions of SERPs, according to Ahrefs) in August of 2021.
The site also had 1,500 referring domains at this time.
The site owner came to us for our SEO services, which we started implementing on the site between September and October of the same year.
The main aim of the campaign was to:
- Find out the missing content and links using the Ranking Blueprint.
- Put this into practice to improve the authority of the site.
- Climb the ranks for high-volume keywords.
It sounds so easy!
Maybe that’s because it is.
But there were a few obstacles we had to overcome…
The Challenges We Faced
The finance niche is one of the most competitive but lucrative spaces online.
The SERPS are dominated by huge brands that spend a fortune on marketing.
To compete with the big guns is never an easy task!
But we get around this by:
- Targeting specific keywords for quick wins.
- Ensuring content is fully optimised for SEO.
- Building the right type of links.
Let’s get into how…
Searcharoo’s Tried-and-Trusted Process
We developed a holistic SEO strategy covering everything that could help Google search rank the website higher on its search engine.
Below are the steps we took to develop the finance SEO strategy that took the website to the top of SERPs:
Use the Ranking Blueprint
Competitor analysis is absolutely critical for your success!
What if there was an easier way…
We use our Ranking Blueprint to determine the exact process we must implement to help the finance website raise its search engine rankings. The Blueprint shows you exactly:
- Which keywords you should be targeting.
- The word count you should be aiming for.
- Which pages need more backlinks to rank.
- The types of links to build.
And much more! Sounds interesting right? You can book in for a Ranking Blueprint consultation here.
Improve Existing Content
After running our Ranking Blueprint, a big chunk of our financial SEO strategy goes into re-optimising existing content.
We extract search phrases from which your site pages are getting impressions. All using live data from Google Search Console.
The fact that these pages are already showing on organic search results means that half of the job is done.
The other is to fine-tune the content by optimising each page for terms they’re already ranking for.
To do this, we cluster the keywords that a page is ranking for and use Surfer SEO and Marketmuse to find relevant NLP keywords to mention in the content.
The goal of re-optimising the content is to discuss topics from the NLP keyword list that are relevant to the content.
Doing so provides more value to readers about the subject and increases the page’s topical relevance for its target keywords.
Both should result in higher traffic and user retention!
Create New Pages Targeting New Keywords
Next, we conducted keyword research to find search terms for which your competitors are ranking, but your site isn’t.
Doing so allows you to surpass your target competitors.
We find keywords using Ahrefs’ Content Gap feature and filter the results to show keywords with the lowest competition and most monthly search volumes.
Then comes the SEO-optimised content.
We create high-level content using Surfer SEO and Marketmuse. What better way to maximise rankability!
Improve Internal Linking Structure
After optimising your site content, we ensure that all related pages are interlinked.
This forms topical clusters on your website. To effectively form clusters, you need a pillar post that serves as the main page for the subtopic.
It is then supplemented by supporting articles that link to the pillar post and vice versa. It should look something like this: 
Our initial research determines which pillar posts and supporting articles your site includes.
If you are missing these pages, don’t worry.
We can take care of this for you!
Searcharoo manually interlinks the most relevant pages to each other, forming your clusters.
Creating clusters that expertly cover subtopics in your niche lets Google know that your site is an authority on the topic.
The search engine can rank your site pages higher for keywords relevant to your niche.
Build Natural, Authoritative Backlinks
After covering its on-page SEO, we conclude our financial services SEO by building backlinks to the website.
Links are tricky because you only want to create backlinks from high-quality websites that pass authority to your site.
This maximises their effectiveness.
Building links too quickly can appear unnatural to Google though, which could result in the search engine penalising your website.
There is a sweet spot to link velocity.
Link building is our bread and butter, so we drip-feed links to make this look as natural as possible.
We acquire both editorial backlinks and guest posts as part of our campaigns.
The contextual links point to the financial services company site on authoritative and topically relevant domains.
To boost the effectiveness of the links, we can also build tier 2 backlinks to the primary links of the website.
We also use social signals to beef up the engagement rate of the financial services firm’s site.
Generating likes and comments to your site pages on various social platforms make your site more authentic.
The social activity acts as proof that backlinks are deserved.
The Results
The results speak for themselves…
The organic traffic increased in November 2021 to almost 78,000 visitors. We were still in our second month of working on the site and our SEO efforts immediately produced results.
Based on the graph, it continued to increase its organic traffic, peaking at more than 98,000 visitors in April of 2022.
A whopping 92.1569% increase over the period we took over the website.
Much of the positive results can also be attributed to the growth in referring domains.
From 1,500 referring domains in August of 2021, they grew to almost 3,000 by the time we concluded our campaign.
Our efforts helped the website increase its DR rating to above 55 and an Ahrefs Rank around 200K.
Hire Us to Help Raise Your Stock in the Financial Industry
If you’re a financial advisor looking to generate more leads and clients for your business from organic search, we at Searcharoo are happy to provide you with the necessary tools to achieve these.
Our SEO agency has perfected the process of improving websites through our Ranking Blueprint.
It details everything we need to know to help you leapfrog other financial advisors and finance companies.
Over time, all you need to worry about is the increased traffic coming to your website and the inquiries about your services!
If you’re interested in learning more about our SEO for financial services, take a free strategy call will us so you can find out how we can help you.
