SEO for Financial Services: A Full Guide

On-Page SEO - What You Do On Your Website

On-page SEO refers to improving a financial services site’s visibility by improving elements on the website or a specific page on the website. 

This usually includes writing high-quality, optimized content, optimizing images, including internal and external links, and leveraging similar on-page SEO techniques.

• Example: How To Monitor Backlinks In 2024: 7 Best Methods & Tools

This post could be considered high-quality and optimized for search engines:

• The H1 contains our target keyword.
• The intro contains a variation of our keyword. 
• It also includes a link to a high-authority external source.
• It’s easy to read. We keep most paragraphs up to three lines.

These are just some tactics you can use to optimize your content for both search engines and users. 

(Btw, improving UX usually = improved SEO.)

Off-Page SEO - What You Do Off Your Website

As the name suggests, off-page SEO refers to everything you do outside your website to improve its visibility.

This can include link building, PR, and influencer marketing.

• Example: UBS

UBS has 1.4 million backlinks and 31.5K referring domains, which help improve the site’s off-page SEO. Note: backlinks can also indirectly improve on-page SEO, too, by increasing the site’s overall domain authority (DA) or domain ranking (DR).

Technical SEO - What You Do With Your Website

Finally, technical SEO refers to optimizing the technical elements of your website for search engines. 

Typically, this means improving user experience by improving certain technical aspects of your site. 

This can include improving your page load speed, optimizing your site architecture, and implementing responsive design.

Why High-Quality SEO Is Essential For Financial Websites

Most financial services websites need to invest in SEO, much more so than websites in many other niches.

There are 4 main reasons why that’s so:

1. Finance Is A Highly Competitive Niche

The financial services industry is growing at an impressive rate of a 7.5% CAGR, making a market that was already competitive only more fierce.

There’s a staggering number of companies and professionals offering similar services and competing for attention, so reaching the customers first can often be the only differentiator. 

SEO can help with that by positioning your site above your competitors’ and sending valuable traffic to you instead of them: 

2. Financial Websites Are More Difficult To Rank

According to Google, sites that offer financial services are YMYL websites (“Your Money or Your Life”). YMYL websites publish content that can significantly impact users’ well-being, such as their financial situation.

That’s why Google holds such sites to higher standards. For example, they must demonstrate more credibility than sites that publish, say, movie reviews.

Since finance is such as sensitive topic, smaller and less credible websites will have a harder time ranking well and getting organic traffic.

In order to get there, you need to invest more in SEO than websites in many other niches.

3. Quality Matters More Than In Other Niches

Quality, credibility, and accuracy are extremely important in finance — not just because financial topics are more difficult to rank for, but also because earning users’ trust is more challenging. 

That’s why you should avoid publishing poor-quality content (on-page SEO) or building spammy backlinks (off-page SEO) and focus on quality SEO instead.

To start with, focus on producing high-quality content and building niche-relevant backlinks on sites with high DA and DR scores.

4. Law And Regulations Are Stricter

Finally, sites selling financial services need to abide by more robust laws and regulations that sites in most niches. 

This can significantly limit the scope of your marketing activities, making SEO that much more important in reaching your goals. It’s not one of the many marketing tactics you can use — it’s probably one of the few!

Where To Start With Financial Services SEO

Before you implement financial services SEO tactics, make sure you know where you’re going and where you’re starting from.

Check Your Current Performance

To set SEO goals and correctly direct your efforts, you first need to establish your baseline.

This can include checking your current: 

• organic traffic
• organic positions 
• number of backlinks
• quality of backlinks
• bounce rate
• page indexation status 

You can check these metrics with Google Search Console (GSC) and Google Analytics (GA4): 

Keep in mind, though, that these tools only show performance on Google and not other search engines. 

Create A Competitor List

Next, know who and what you’re competing against so you can choose suitable SEO tactics later: 

• Enter your target keywords into Google (such as “financial services professionals” or “financial services nyc”) and see what comes up;
• Use tools like Ahrefs or Semrush to find competitors based on your keywords or backlinks.

Of course, you likely already know some of your competitors. 

Add them to a list you can easily access and add data to. This will be important for the next step.

Research Competitors

Now, analyze which SEO strategies your competitors already use. 

The most important thing to gauge is whether they’re investing in SEO content marketing and link building. 

If yes, you likely want to do the same — and you can get a ton of inspiration from your competitors: 

• Sites that link to them may want to link to you, too;
• Keywords they rank for will likely be relevant to you, so you may want to target them with content;
• If they use visual aids like charts or tables, you may want to add them to your content as well, etc. 

Note: Don’t blindly follow your competitors. They may not know what they’re doing!

Set Goals + KPIs That Make Sense

Finally, goals and KPIs will help you create a meaningful strategy.

For example: 

• If your goal is to decrease your bounce rate, your strategy may be to include more internal links and images in your content. 
• If you want to improve your positions in the SERPs, you may want to regularly update your old content. 

What you do will depend on your goals, while KPIs will help you measure them. 

With that said, there are some tactics you’ll probably want to implement regardless of your specific goals. 

If you generally want more traffic and better rankings, employ the SEO tactics we’ve outlined below.

How To Improve Financial Services SEO - 11 Tactics

You now know why SEO is important and what to do before implementing it. 

It’s now finally the time to get more actionable and see how to improve financial services SEO. 

Here are 11 tactics to try:

1. Establish E-E-A-T On Your Website

E-E-A-T stands for “Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness”, and is incredibly important for SEO for financial services.

As mentioned, YMYL websites need high credibility, and demonstrating E-E-A-T is crucial in building it. 

Here are a few ways to boost it:

1. Add testimonials to your site.

2. Display awards, certifications, or similar trust-building badges on your website.

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3. Reference your clients. For example, consider displaying company logos on your website or adding your clients’ photos. Of course, make sure you have the permission to do that.

4. Add author bios to your website. They should clearly explain the author’s expertise in finance. For example, consider mentioning years of experience and educational background.

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5. Build high-quality backlinks on high-authority sites, like Yahoo Finance. Backlinks count as ‘votes of confidence’ from one website to another, which boosts your credibility.

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6. Share client statistics. Again, ensure you have permission to do so.

2. Find Relevant, Finance-Related Keywords

E-E-A-T will improve your financial services SEO — but you still won’t rank if you don’t have content targeting specific keywords.

• SEO keywords are words or phrases added to online content for the purposes of increasing the search engine visibility of that content. 

Your goal should be to find keywords you want to rank for, i.e., keywords that could lead to clients.

This means they should be relevant to you and your audience. 

For example, financial advisors can target keywords like “what is a financial advisor” or “do i need a financial advisor,” as these could attract traffic that may convert.

Add your keywords to a spreadsheet like this one so that you can track your progress later: 

In this spreadsheet, you can add URLs to the content you publish targeting each keyword. 

Let’s discuss that in more depth. 

3. Create High-Quality Content

To actually rank for your desired keywords, you need to create high-quality content that targets it. 

This can include: 

• Writing high-quality guides and blog posts, such as “# Different Types of Financial Services,” or “A Guide to Corporate Financial Planning,”
• Publishing free digital tools, such as “Financial Literacy Quiz,”
• Publishing videos (in which case, you may also want to look into YouTube SEO),
• Creating valuable infographics, such as “# Steps to Financial Freedom,”
• Conduct and publish original research, such as surveys or analyses.

High-value, optimized content has higher chances of ranking and may organically attract backlinks. 

4. Build Authority Outside Your Website 

We’ve already discussed showcasing authority on your website. 

However, building authority on other websites is just as important. It may be even more beneficial, thanks to exposing you to new audiences and potentially helping you build backlinks.

So, how do you build authority outside your website? Here are a few ways:

• Offer expert advice, opinions, and commentary. For example, consider working with journalists and reporters who need experts sources and quotes for their articles. You can find them on sites like Connectively, SourceBottle, or ProfNet. 
• Appear on podcasts. Podcast listeners are 20x more likely to interact with your business after an episode ends.
• Write guest posts.

5. Actively Build Backlinks

Off-page SEO shouldn’t be left to chance. Sure, your content may naturally attract backlinks — but it can be a painfully slow and unpredictable process.

Think about it: 

• You first need people to discover your content. 
• Then, you need to wow them so much that they voluntarily link to you. 
• But links from social media won’t cut it, since they’re low-quality. You need people to link to you from their websites.
• And if their websites aren’t credible, authoritative, or relevant to you, you still won’t see significant SEO benefits. 

To sum up, relying on natural link building alone isn’t likely to get you anywhere. 

Add to that that finance is a highly competitive niche, and that many of your competitors are already actively building backlinks. 

With that in mind, you should do the same. There are two main approaches you can take: 

1. Buy backlinks
2. Build backlinks via outreach

Buying backlinks is less time-consuming, provides faster results, and is more likely to result in links on high-authority websites – sites such as Forbes or Yahoo Finance. It is, however, usually more expensive. 

Building backlinks via outreach implies reaching out to writers, site owners, or publications who may benefit from linking to your content from their content.

While it can be cheaper, outreach is usually very time-consuming and laborious. It typically involves a ton of manual work — you need to find sites that would be a good fit, find contact information, create and send a pitch, follow-up, etc.

Also, it’s not always true that outreach is cheaper. Some site owners and publications will still charge you for brand mentions and links. Plus, you may need to hire a VA to handle outreach. 

Buying backlinks pros & cons:

Building backlinks via outreach pros & cons:

Consider the pros and cons of each method and go with the one that makes the most sense.

6. Try Improving Local SEO

Local financial SEO is especially important if you want to sell your services locally. As an added benefit, though, local SEO can increase your credibility and, in turn, improve your rankings and traffic. 

To boost your local SEO, consider doing the following: 

1. Create a Google Business profile. 

2. Implement local business schema markup.
3. Work with local publications, like newspapers, to get mentions and backlinks.
4. Host local events to get free digital PR.

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7. Publish Content Regularly

Publishing content regularly shows search engines that you maintain your website and keep it up to date, which can result in better rankings and more traffic. 

There are two case studies that confirm that consistency is important:

• In 2016, Robert Ryan stopped blogging for 251 days and saw major declines in both overall and organic traffic. Overall traffic declined by 32%, while organic traffic dropped by 42%.

• Another website saw similar results after not blogging for a year. Their overall users, organic traffic, and even the quality of leads decreased drastically.

To sum up: yes, you should stick to a consistent publishing frequency. 

8. Update Outdated Content + Provide Only The Best Advice!

Besides regularly publishing new content, you should also regularly update old content —- such as content that was written specifically for a date in the past, like a guide titled “Top Wealth Management Trends in 2023.” 

You should also update content that is outdated in other ways. 

For example, perhaps you’ve developed a better debt management strategy than the one you wrote about 8 months ago. Then make sure to share it with your readers!

Your goal is to be the best source of valuable and credible information.

That may also mean you need to update content that shares information that is no longer relevant or has changed.

9. Improve Your Page Load Times

Fast load times are one of the most crucial aspects of technical SEO. 

You can check your current page load times with free tools like Pingdom. 

If your site takes 3 or more seconds to load, you may want to work on improving the load time by compressing images, removing unnecessary code, or employing other beneficial tactics.

10. Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly

95.8% of users use mobile phones to access the internet — and search engines want them to have a good experience while they’re at it.

That’s why they prioritize sites that are mobile-friendly, i.e., sites that automatically adjust to fit mobile screens.

Google specifically recommends implementing responsive design. 

You can check the mobile-friendliness of your site using Lighthouse (also useful for testing load times).

11. Be Creative 

Don’t forget to be creative. 

While it’s important to keep an eye out on your competitors and existing keywords people search for, you should also always consider what else you can do to boost your SEO. 

The fewer people are using an SEO tactic, the more benefits you stand to gain.

For example, instead of just creating a blog post targeting a specific keyword, consider if you could enrich it with: 

• Downloadable eBooks
• Templates
• Infographics
• Audio versions of the post, etc.

This could boost your rankings, help you stand out, and improve your conversion rates. 

Track And Monitor Your SEO Efforts

The above tactics are meant to help you improve financial services SEO – but you won’t know if they’re actually delivering the desired results if you don’t measure them.

So, make sure to regularly review the goals and the KPIs you’ve set and previously see if you’re getting closer to achieving them.

If yes, good for you! That means that whatever you’re doing is working.

If not, consider how you can adjust your strategy or if you should redirect your focus.

For example, a common scenario is investing in on-page SEO without simultaneously boosting off-page SEO. In that case, the answer may be to downsize content creation and rechannel your efforts into building backlinks.

Work With Experts In Off-Page SEO For Financial Services

Looking for a trusted partner who could help you boost your site’s financial services SEO? Look no further!

Our link building agency has almost a decade-long experience in helping financial sites like Binance improve their rankings and traffic with high-quality links. We can also get you mentions in hard-to-access publications, such as Yahoo Finance and Forbes.

Sounds interesting? Order your backlinks today or contact us to work out the details.