In fact, 80% of global financial businesses state that improving the quality of their digital experiences for customers is a crucial strategy. This is alongside another 80% of banks that are looking to accelerate their technological capabilities, signalling widespread uptake.
The key takeaway? The digital revolution has already begun, and it’s up to businesses to keep up.
One area that financial brands should be looking at in particular is digital communication, and how webinars for the financial services industry could better connect them to customers.
From generating new leads to enhancing brand authority, these remote seminars have simplified global reach.
Want to know more? We’ve got you. In this article, we’ll take a look at why webinars are so relevant within the finance industry and how SEO can help you get the most out of your online events.
What Are Webinars?
Webinars are basically the online version of seminars. A group of people come together using a digital platform (like Zoom, for example) to listen to a speaker – or speakers – discuss a specific topic.
In the world of finance, for example, you might host a B2B webinar on recent corporation tax changes or a B2C webinar discussing the relevance of cryptocurrencies in contemporary finance. Those are just a couple of off-the-bat ideas.
Rather than simply reading from a presentation in an hours-long monologue, financial services industry webinars focus on interactivity. Not only is it possible to see the host’s computer screen and follow their research or presentation, but there are also frequently:
Question and answer sections
Interactive polls
An area to chat with other attendees
This dynamic way of sharing information makes webinars ideal for the finance industry, where clear communication is key.
When discussing complex topics, like legal regulations or tax, the ability to interact ensures the audience keeps up with the conversation, can pose questions, and stay engaged throughout. It also gives the host more feedback on whether all attendees have understood a certain topic, or whether a little more time is needed to explain the subject in further detail.
Webinars are an effective medium for educating clients, showing your thought leadership, and converting leads into paying customers by establishing clear competence in your field.
What Are the Benefits of Webinars for the Financial Services Industry?
Okay, so you know what a webinar is, but why is it important for financial businesses? We’ve dipped our toe into a few of the benefits already, but let’s take a look at what exactly you can gain from financial service industry webinars in closer detail.
Client Engagement and Education
If you’re looking to engage an intrigued audience, webinars are the way to go. You can use a variety of mediums to keep your leads hooked, from pre-prepared videos and presentations to interactive Q&As.
This isn’t just relevant to the topic at hand, either. By fully engaging your audience, you begin to nurture your leads, building relationships based on interactive discussions and a mutual interest in finance (be it from the business or the customer’s perspective). This strengthens trust, gives insights into your brand, and sows the seed that you’re a reliable business to work with.
Converting Leads into Clients
For attendees who have spent some time in your marketing funnel and are on the cusp of converting, webinars provide the perfect final digital touchpoint. You put a face to the business and give your leads a chance to talk with you directly.
You also have the chance to offer additional resources, talk about how you can help individual leads, and impress with your financial knowledge. Through these techniques, you clearly display your business capabilities and prove why you’re the right team for their financial needs.
Cost-Effectiveness and Reach
As an effective way of nurturing and converting leads, webinars are incredibly cost-effective. The fees and logistics associated with hosting a webinar are minute compared to in-person seminars and conferences.
You don’t have to rent a space, kit it out with branded goods, and provide catering for your attendees. Instead, a webinar can be as simple as members of your team on Zoom, with pre-prepared resources made by your business, making it simpler to organise and a whole lot cheaper.
The online nature of webinars also allows you to reach a global audience with ease. There are no issues around location and travel, making your event instantly more successful through the simple power of convenience.
The SEO Benefits of Financial Services Industry Webinars
At Woya Digital, we’re financial services SEO experts. So – of course – we’re going to look at webinars from an SEO perspective, analysing both their benefits for your existing SEO strategy and how SEO can boost your webinar’s reach.
First of all, let’s talk about the SEO benefits of webinars for the financial services industry.
Creation of Valuable Content
Webinars are classed as valuable content, meaning that they bring rich, in-depth information to your target audience.
You can then repurpose the information in your webinar in the form of transcripts, blog posts, and infographics. These are wonderful for showing off your relevance to specific topics and boosting your domain authority (DA), pushing you up the search engine results pages (SERPs) for greater visibility.
Increase Average Visit Time and Increase Engagement Time
By including your webinar on one of your web pages, you can keep them on your site longer whilst they watch your discussion. This should drastically increase your website’s average visit time, showing search engines that your audience finds what they’re looking for on your site.
You could potentially see this increase in engagement rates (fall in bounce rate – the number of users who click off your website without engaging), which is a well-known ranking factor.
Generate Valuable Backlinks
Link building (the strategy of securing links to your website from other websites) is a key aspect of SEO.
By publishing your webinars on your website after they’ve finished – alongside content generated to compliment your event – you create a valuable resource. This makes third parties more likely to link to your site or to share the content on social media, generating high-quality backlinks that pinpoint your financial business as authoritative and reputable.
Utilising Long-Tail Keywords
Long-tail keywords are more specific than short-tail alternatives, honing in on your niche target audience.
For example, a short-tail keyword might be ‘SEO services’. A long-tail keyword could be ‘SEO services for finance businesses’, which would have a lower search volume but be less competitive and far more targeted towards potential customers.
Your webinar content provides the perfect opportunity to utilise long-tail keywords relevant to the topic you’re discussing. This could see your site move up the SERPs, reaching a specific segment of your audience who are highly interested in what you have to offer.
Understand What Makes Your Audience Tick
The wonderful interactivity made possible through financial services industry webinars bridges the gap between you and your target audience. Why is this so important for SEO? Because it helps you learn what your leads are interested in.
By keeping an eye on the conversations going on between guests, the questions asked, and poll results, you gain a deeper understanding of the topics your audience wants to know more about.
Use this to guide future content (including blogs, social media posts, and podcasts) to boost the number of clicks and keep your leads hooked. The more interest your content generates, the higher up the SERPs you’ll go.
Compliance and Security Considerations
In the financial services industry, webinars must meet compliance and security requirements.
This includes data security. By using encrypted communication tools and following GDPR and The Data Protection Act (UK relevant), you can maintain privacy among your attendees. For example, if you’re storing any guest data, it’s important to protect it with firewalls and get rid of the information when it’s no longer relevant to your business.
It’s also smart to implement restricted access controls for your webinar, ensuring only authorised guests can join the discussion. Security measures like password protection and two-factor authentication can also boost safety.
Any financial data shared during webinars for the financial services industry should be compliant with UK laws and financial regulations. Knowingly promoting scams, misleading attendees, or sharing false financial information is a criminal offence under UK law.
Optimising Financial Webinars for SEO
If you’re hosting a financial services webinar, you’ll want to see the maximum number of people attending or visit on-demand. That’s where SEO and digital marketing comes in.
By using the same techniques that push your website up the SERPs, you can also better advertise your webinar and reach a wider, interested audience of potential attendees, which is especially good for on-demand webinars, as-live webinars or even basic reruns.
To help boost your numbers, here are some top SEO tips to help webinars for the financial services industry stand out:
Choosing the Right Topics
Your webinar needs to address a topic that resonates with your audience. You can pinpoint exactly what your leads want to hear about through:
Analysing frequently asked questions
Surveying your audience
Looking at content that’s performed well for you in the past
Keeping updated on industry changes
It’s also crucial that you research keywords as part of your topic creation. Understanding what your target market is actively searching for will guide the focus of your webinars.
On-Page SEO Strategies
Give your marketing material the best chance in the SERPs with on-page SEO. This includes:
Optimising titles, descriptions, and metadata with keywords
Sharing links to your content on social media
Using press releases to gain social proof traction and essential backlinks
These strategies should be used for any content on your website that advertises your webinar, including blog posts and videos.
Post-Webinar SEO Strategies
We’ve already mentioned publishing your webinar once it’s taken place, but this is a point that’s worth repeating. Recorded webinars make wonderful evergreen content that can bring plenty of SEO value to your website, including boosting engagement analytics and providing opportunities for plenty of keywords.
Using specialist software to maximise the potential return with on-demand reruns can be amazingly effective with the least input. As-live webinars are particularly popular and allow you the opportunity to spread your ROI over multiple sessions.
Create additional content to support your financial services webinar SEO before and after it’s taken place. Blog posts, eBooks, and infographics are all wonderful ways to bolster the success of your webinars.
Tracking and Measuring Success
A crucial aspect of a successful SEO strategy is measuring your results. Track the analytics available for your webinar and related content, analysing:
Understanding your data informs your next move, showing you what content caught the attention of your audience and how you can streamline your next webinar to align your business goals with what your potential clients are looking for.
Support With SEO for Financial Services Industry Webinars
Webinars for the financial services industry are an excellent way of bolstering your digital-first strategy, enabling communication with a wide reach. But, a webinar only works if you secure attendees.
Make sure your webinar marketing stands out with the help of our team at Woya. We have years of experience working on both long-term and standalone financial SEO campaigns, and pushing businesses up the search engine results pages.
Stand out among your local competitors and gain a notable, visual online presence, by harnessing the power of local SEO.
Local SEO for financial advisors can drastically boost the quality and quantity of organic traffic to your website and so generate good local leads. With 4 out of 5 Google searchers looking for local information, this is an aspect of your marketing strategy that you should not ignore.
In this guide, we’ll dive deeper into what exactly local SEO is. Whether you’re looking for financial advisor SEO or hoping to attract some new clients for your finance business, give yourself a headstart with our expert advice.
What is Local SEO?
Local search engine optimisation (SEO) is a digital marketing strategy that helps you stand out and rank higher in search engines for online searches in a specific area – usually the town or city your business is based in.
Some of the main core components involved in local SEO include:
Many of these techniques slot neatly into the broader SEO strategy, simultaneously boosting your overall search rankings for non-geographic search queries as well as your local online presence. For example, earning a local citation often comes with an inbound link, which brings far-reaching SEO benefits and boosts your website’s credibility in the eyes of search engines.
Local SEO Services to Boost Financial Advisors Local Search Engine Rankings
At Woya Digital, we always encourage local optimisation for bookkeepers, accountancy, local offices or branches and financial advisors – but, why? Let’s take a look at just some of the reasons we know this is an important digital marketing strategy:
Visibility in Local Search Results
When you Google “digital marketing in Chichester”, do you know whose profile owns one of the top spots? You guessed it – Woya Digital. We’ve worked hard on our local SEO, to ensure we achieve this result.
Hitting those top spots in Google brings a huge amount of visibility from a local audience. When a user searches for financial services in your area, and you’re one of the first results they see, then you’re going to win big on the leads front.
This is because most searchers want a quick solution to their query, and they trust Google to show results that are credible, reputable, and fit their needs. That’s why over 25% of all clicks go to the very first search result, and anything beyond the first page will see leads plummet in comparison.
With local SEO for finance, you put your business exactly where your local audience can find it.
Targeting Local Clients
With local SEO, you’re actively targeting the clients in your area, showing them that there’s a great solution to their financial concerns, and it’s local.
This local targeting will also start to earn you a reputation around your neighbourhood. The more glowing reviews you have, the higher you’ll be placed in the SERPs, and the higher you’re placed the greater your local brand awareness. It’s a lovely cycle of SEO goodness that’s fantastic for boosting your business.
Improving Your Competitive Advantage
We already mentioned that most people click on the first few results when searching. If clients are looking specifically for a local finance business, optimising your online presence to rank higher gives you a competitive advantage.
This is because you have the first chance to grab your audience’s attention. You’re literally raised above your financial competitors, shining the spotlight on your business and giving your local audience a clear reason to choose you.
Benefits of Local SEO for Financial Advisors and Financial Planning Businesses
It’s clear that local SEO for finance is a smart move for businesses looking to reach leads in their local area, but we’ve only touched the surface of the benefits. Let’s dive into some more of the perks of this in-demand strategy.
Higher quality leads: High-quality leads are those that are more likely to convert. These users are searching with intent, actively looking for services that you offer. By targeting local customers, you’re actively bringing high-quality leads to your site.
Enhanced User Engagement: Optimised local listings can push you to the top of the search results, boosting your reputation and earning trust from your audience. This also drives user engagement, encouraging your target audience to click on your site, browse your content, and convert.
Improved Conversion Rates: By putting your business in front of a searching audience looking to engage with a local business, you should see an impressive increase in your conversions. This is largely due to the specifics of the search; you’re optimising for an audience searching for your exact type of business in your exact area, making them far likelier to become paying clients.
Local SEO for those in the financial industry isn’t just about online marketing, either. By highlighting your contact details, getting noticed on Google Maps, and showing your local audience exactly where you’re located, you could see an uptick in foot traffic, too.
Core Components of Financial Services and Financial Advisor SEO
At Woya, we offer local SEO services to pull your business up the search engine rankings and establish your finance company as a strong competitor in your area. How do we do this?
Google Business Profile Optimisation (GBP)
Every business should claim and optimise their Google Business Profile, especially if you’re working in the financial services industry or are a financial advisor. This is an easy way to make your way to the top of the SERPs and has some great, user-friendly features that make it easier for potential customers to find or contact your business.
As part of our local SEO services, we’ll set up and optimise your business GBP.
Local Keywords
Your content needs to match the search queries of your target audience. We’ll research local SEO keywords, looking at the areas people are searching for and how they’re searching for them.
Our wonderful team of copywriters and SEO strategists will then put these keywords to good use so that Google can match your site to the right searches.
Local Citations
Consistent local citations – with mentions of your name, address, and phone number – are important for your business. Not only does it boost SEO by showing search engines that you’re a credible brand with a good reputation, but it also spreads brand awareness online.
Online Reviews
Reviews are a key aspect of your GBP, and can also help you get noticed on third-party review sites, like Trustpilot. Lots of positive reviews show search engines that you’re a trustworthy site for their searchers, give you a competitive edge, and encourage users to convert.
That’s why we always focus on encouraging reviews from your existing clients when working on local SEO for finance businesses.
Localised Content
We tailor your online content to a local audience for a number of reasons, including creating natural opportunities to use localised keywords and solidifying your identity as a local financial authority.
From blogs to guest posts and PR articles, we’ll give your publications a local SEO boost.
Mobile Optimisation
When searching for a local business on the go, clients are going to use their phone – it’s the age we live in! To keep your brand image professional and create a positive customer experience, we’ll optimise your website for mobile use.
Responsive designs (those that work across devices) are also a key factor in SEO, bringing a whole wealth of advantages to your finance-based business.
The Next Steps In Local SEO for Financial Advisors
Whether you’re a bookkeeping company, freelance accountant, or financial advisor, our local SEO generates online visibility to bring customers to you on and off the web.
From attracting high-quality leads looking for local financial services to strengthening your presence in the community, our local SEO strategies have what it takes to get your business noticed.
Did you know that the average load speed of top-ranking Google pages is 1.65 seconds? It can’t be a coincidence that this is around a second slower than average speed across the internet, with those snappy sites constantly scooping up the best spots on the SERPs.
It all boils down to technical SEO, the unsung hero of digital marketing that’s constantly working away behind the scenes. It’s not flashy, it has no frills, but it does do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of your website rank.
To learn more about technical SEO for finance websites, we’ve put together this guide to provide an understandable overview of what the technical SEO element is all about.
What Is Technical SEO?
Technical SEO involves improving the foundations and functionality of your finance website. Through a range of different technical strategies, we make it simpler for search engines to find, understand, and rank your website. In turn, you’ll see your site moving up through the ranks, landing those coveted top spots that get around 55% of all clicks (28.5% of which go to the first result).
A lot of technical SEO focuses on back-end development (the coding side of your site). Some of the core components include:
Technical SEO for finance websites is an essential, heavy-duty part of any SEO strategy that takes a lot of time and knowledge.
Improving Site Performance
Techniques like optimising site speed, improving responsiveness (how a website adjusts to different devices), and creating secure connections all improve the performance of your website.
By implementing technical SEO, websites become snappier and more user-centric. Think of it like polishing your digital presence until it sparkles, which reflects wonderfully on your brand image and improves the way in which your website fulfils its purpose.
Our finance SEO services will also uncover faults in your site. Little errors can impact your site performance, and by fixing them we create a more seamless experience for a site (and business) that’s taken seriously.
Enhancing User Experience (UX)
Those wonderful site performance benefits we’ve just mentioned also have a direct impact on the user experience. By improving performance, we also improve the useability of your platform from the customer’s perspective, making it easier and more enjoyable to navigate
It’s well-known, for example, that over half of users will abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load (and it can be even less when browsing on smaller devices). The fact, therefore, that technical SEO improves load speeds makes it more likely that your visitors will be happy to stick around.
Search Engine Crawling and Indexing
Technical SEO techniques improve the crawlability of your site. This refers to the method search engines use to analyse different web pages, ‘crawling’ them for information in order to index and rank the pages. The better your technical SEO, the easier it is for your web pages to be crawled and understood by Google, and the higher they’re likely to rank.
We implement a number of different clever tactics to make your website easier to crawl. For example, we might do a cleanup of your site structure and create a clear, logical sitemap to submit to Google. We also use internal linking to better map out your website, ensuring that none of your content is missed when the search engines come crawling.
Boosting Search Ranking
As with all of our finance SEO services, the desired result of technical SEO is to help your website rank higher in the SERPs and provide an improved user experience *(UX).
Each method we utilise is known to influence rank, and with our experience of financial SEO services, we can put a tailored spin on your strategy for the best results.
Benefits of Technical SEO for Finance Websites
We’ve taken a look at some of the main reasons we carry out technical finance SEO, but these are just the tip of the iceberg. Let’s hone in on some more of the specific benefits you can expect:
Better mobile experience: We focus on responsive design when carrying out technical SEO. This ensures that your website instantly adapts to different devices, including smartphones and tablets, without losing any functionality. All of your features will be in the correct place and your website will work seamlessly to cater to all of your leads, no matter how they browse.
Better search engine visibility: By improving your technical SEO, we make sure your web pages are clearly visible to search engines. This ensures that all of your keyword-rich blogs and locally optimised content are indexed quickly, adding countless SEO points to your website and boosting visibility.
Enhanced website security: Google wants to present results to its users that they can trust, which is why it favours sites with solid security in place. As part of our finance SEO services, we use SSL certificates, firewalls, HTTPS, and other security measures to keep your users and your data safe.
No duplicate content: Duplicate content is a big no-no. Search engines penalise or at best, ‘ignore’ pages or websites that use duplicate content. This includes content published on other websites and on different pages throughout your website. As part of our technical SEO for finance businesses, we’ll check that your site contains original content only to avoid search engine penalties.
Easier navigation: Technical SEO creates better-functioning websites, including in terms of navigation. By creating logical site structures and navigation breadcrumbs, exploring your site becomes intuitive for users and potential leads can find the information they need to convert with ease.
Reduce bounce rates: By improving site speed and navigation, you should see a reduction in your bounce rate. This is the percentage of users who leave your site without having clicked on another page. A high bounce rate indicates to search engines that your website isn’t fulfilling user needs, which can trigger a decline in your rank. A low bounce rate has the opposite effect, improving your SERP position and boosting conversions.
A Quick Look at Our Technical Finance SEO Services
At Woya Digital, we offer comprehensive finance SEO services for businesses looking to increase their online visibility. Drive high-quality leads to your website and boost conversions with our SEO experts.
To give you a quick overview of what to expect when working with us, here are the steps in our SEO Marketing Success Strategy:
Discovery and strategy – we start every technical SEO project by sitting down for a chat with your business to identify goals. We’ll then create a detailed strategy that aligns your requirements with an evidence-based approach to boost your rank.
Technical SEO analysis and audits – we’ll carry out an audit of your website to highlight the areas that need to be improved, pinpoint opportunities for quick SEO gains, and identify issues to fix.
Implementing technical SEO techniques – after analysing your site, we’ll begin the complex technical SEO strategies to improve the back end of your website. This can include improving your load speeds, removing duplicate content, and creating index-friendly sitemaps.
Analytics and reports: to ensure our technical SEO is doing what it should, we’ll constantly monitor analytics to gain insights into your rank position, bounce rate, lead generation and more. We provide you a monthly SEO report to show you how things are progressing.
An agile process: we put insights and metrics to good use, using data to direct the future of your technical SEO campaign and constantly streamline our processes to bring the best results to your business.
Technical SEO is an ongoing process, so the work doesn’t stop here! We’ll continue improving your website performance and indexing new content constantly.
Taking the Next Steps in Technical SEO
Technical SEO is complex and should be carried out and managed by a SEO experts who know what they are doing.
That’s where we come in. With our experienced team on your side, you don’t have to worry about load speeds, internal links, and sitemaps because we’ve got it all covered. Sit back, relax, and watch your site skyrocket towards the top of the SERPs with our technical SEO for finance businesses.
Ready to move forward? Get in touch with our team at Woya Digital and let’s give your finance business a well-deserved boost.
At its core, search engine optimisation (SEO) strategies are all about making sure your website looks its best in the eyes of Google. From boosting your load speeds to keyword research, these strategies come together to make up your overall SEO strategy, to create a pretty impressive website with a clear focus on customer experience.
But, not every financial services sector SEO tactic takes place on your website. There are some techniques that work hard behind the scenes to push your business up the search rankings, one of which is link building. To make sure you don’t skip this subtle but mighty tactic within your SEO strategy, we’ve put together a no-nonsense guide with everything you need to know.
What Is Link Building?
In the world of SEO, link building is sort of like collecting green flags for your website. Every time an authoritative site adds a link that points to you, a little (metaphorical) green flag pops up next to your name, letting search engines know that you’re a more credible source.
The more credible the website that links to you, the bigger your green flag will be. Secure a link from a government page, online newspaper, or industry leader and you’re winning at financial services SEO. This can increase your domain authority (DA), which in turn boosts your overall SEO. It makes a lot of sense when you think about it. If lots of other quality websites trust your content enough to link their audiences to it, it must be good, right? Google thinks so, anyway.
There are different types of links to be aware of during link building, including:
Backlinks: These are the links that point to your website from a third-party site. For example, if a local, online newspaper publishes a story about your business opening and includes a link to your website, this would be a backlink.
Outbound links: These are links that point from your website to a third-party site, and they’re often used to source statistics or claims. By adding credible outbound links, you highlight the reliability of your content.
Internal links: These are used to link to other pages within your own website. For example, when writing a blog you might link to your financial services pages, giving your readers a quicker way to learn more about the services you’re discussing. Internal links also come with SEO bonuses, helping Google find, index, and organise your site pages.
In the financial services industry, link-building is particularly important. You need to prove that you’re following legal guidance and different financial authorities, like AAT and ACCA. Adding authoritative links to financial resources makes it easier to prove your compliance and boost your SEO simultaneously.
Why Do We Conduct Link Building?
Link building is a crucial part of the work we do when carrying out financial services SEO. To give you a little insight into what you can expect from these strategies, let’s take a look at some key reasons it’s an SEO priority.
Boost Your SERP Ranking
The number and credibility of your backlinks drastically increase your DA, making it clear to search engines like Google that your site is worth ranking. In fact, the top result in Google has an average of 3.8x more backlinks than others in the top 10 positions, showing just how crucial this is for finance SEO.
It can also highlight your relevance for industries and topics, helping search engines match you to target audience search queries.
Drive Referral Traffic
Securing a backlink from a high-traffic website can put your financial business in front of a large audience. If you manage to earn a link from a relevant website – like a financial paper or blog – you’ll be tapping into a pool of your specific target audience, driving high-quality leads to your financial business.
Build Credibility and Trust
Backlinks and outbound links can drastically increase your credibility, both in the eyes of Google and your target audience. In terms of SEO for financial services companies, backlinks tell search engines you’re a trustworthy source. The more trustworthy you are, the higher you’ll rank
Your outbound links also signal credibility to your audience, showing you’ve done your research, backed up your claims, and are fully-fledged industry experts. You’re proving that you know what you’re talking about which, in the financial industry, is a strategy that can’t be underestimated.
Benefits of Link Building in SEO for Finance Businesses
What can your financial business expect to see from link building? Just some of the benefits include:
Increased online visibility: Shine the spotlight on your website and boost your finance SEO success, using links to push your website up the SERPs. By securing a higher spot for relevant search results, you’ll earn valuable online visibility and gain a competitive edge.
Higher-quality organic traffic: Show off your business to a targeted audience with backlinks from relevant sites, tapping into a pool of high-quality leads who are already interested in what you have to offer.
Strengthened brand authority: Earn gold stars from reputable websites and show the financial industry that you’re a key player, using backlinks to boost the authority of your brand. This works both for search engines and your target audience, helping you cover all of your bases for a winning SEO strategy.
Networking opportunities: Build partnerships and create a network of industry players, collaborating on projects to become an industry leader. From guest posts to sponsorships and everything in between, your connections can become valuable assets for your business growth.
Effective Link-Building Strategies for Finance SEO
The trickiest aspect of link building is, of course, securing those all-important links. This is a strategy that relies on third parties and, without a bit of industry know-how, it can be difficult to secure the links you’re looking for.
This is why a lot of financial businesses hand the task over to the experts, like our link-building services team at Woya Digital. To boost your SEO, drive high-quality traffic, and increase your credibility, we focus on:
Guest blogging on reputable financial blogs – We contact relevant businesses and publishing platforms, building up a network of external websites to publish our financial blogs. Each blog will include links straight back to your website.
Creating high-quality financial services content – By publishing new, informative, and credible quality content to your website, we can naturally build backlinks to your site.
Listing your website in industry directories – Directories with a high domain authority are a useful source for building your backlinks. They also help you reach your target market and increase your online visibility, making them highly beneficial for your business growth strategies.
Building relationships with other industry leaders – By networking with other businesses, we’ll put your website on the map. This can lead to partner projects, such as a collaboration whitepaper or guest posts.
Sending out press releases – We’re experts in all things PR. We’ll send out press releases for newsworthy events (link a new service or a business milestone) to relevant publications, generating media coverage that naturally creates backlinks.
Creating comprehensive guides and whitepapers – Larger publications give us a chance to dive deep into financial topics and create informative research papers, incorporating statistics and facts that other financial businesses will love to link to. This naturally builds your backlink portfolio and shows off your industry insights.
We can carry out each and every one of these strategies, using a multi-pronged approach to secure you a whole network of high-quality backlinks and organically drive traffic to your website. It’s time-consuming and complex, but it’s a finance SEO strategy that gets results.
Kickstart Your Link-Building Strategy
Ready to add green flags, yes votes, and a big old thumbs up to your website? Give search engines a clear sign that your business is credible and reputable with link building, driving a whole lot of positive attention your way. It’s a core aspect of a financial services SEO strategy, instantly boosts your DA, and places your website directly in front of the audience you’re trying to reach.
At Woya Digital, we carry out comprehensive link-building strategies for financial businesses. From guest posting and digital PR to listing your site on all the relevant directories, we take care of your links so that you can get on with running your business.
Ready to give your brand an online boost? Get in touch with our financial services SEO team today and let’s talk links.
When looking for a new accountant, did you know that 72% of potential clients start with an online search? For tax services, that figure increases ever so slightly to 76%, and for loans, it skyrockets to an undeniably huge 90% of financial services clients.
The point? Your online presence and visibility matters, especially if you are in the financial services sector.
By making use of a financial services content marketing strategy (the technique of publishing content to engage and inform your audience) you can cultivate a more visible presence in search engines, tapping into that huge market of financial clients. From blogs to videos, content creates an ecosystem of value designed to push your business into the spotlight.
To learn about content marketing and how it fits into the wider world of SEO for financial services, we’ve put together this handy article.
What Is Content Marketing?
Simply put, content marketing is the creation and publication of content for your business. It involves planning and strategy, content creation, and relevant, consistent distribution, with the aim of engaging and converting your target audience organically.
Financial content can be created in a whole range of forms, including:
Rather than a standalone plan, content marketing is one piece of a much wider, more complex SEO strategy. It sits within search engine optimisation (SEO) in the digital marketing space and is used by 90% of professional marketers to connect businesses with their target audience.
Why We Conduct Content Marketing
Content marketing is an important part of the marketing strategy for any financial business.
Just a few of these reasons include:
Building Trust and Credibility: Content marketing shows you know your apples from your pears (or your HMRC from your Companies House). High-quality, regular content will establish you as a thought leader in the finance industry, showing potential clients that you’re knowledgeable, confident, and trustworthy.
Educating the Audience: Content is crucial for educating your audience. This can include informing them of why certain financial services exist and are so important, the implications of not seeking professional financial support and guidance, and how they can make staying on top of their finances easier.
Engaging Potential Clients: There are a lot of financial services businesses out there, so why choose yours? Content will inform and engage new potential clients, taking them from the top of the sales funnel and nurturing them right through to a conversion.
SEO Benefits: When creating a financial SEO strategy, content marketing is key. By using optimisation techniques, your site can be boosted higher up the ranks for relevant results, helping you get noticed by the audience looking for your services.
Benefits of Content Marketing for Financial Services Companies
As a finance professional, photography and video editing might seem a world away from your industry. What has a YouTube video got to do with helping your clients get their accounts sorted? As it turns out, quite a lot.
Increased Online Visibility
Content marketing is a critical part of ensuring your website ranks higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Considering that everyone who’s anyone in finance has a website these days, this is incredibly important.
By consistently publishing valuable content, you can tap into the Google algorithm and make yourself more favourable in the eyes of search engines. The more valuable they perceive your content, the higher you’ll appear for relevant search results.
This drastically enhances your online visibility. We know that users don’t tend to scroll very far down the SERPs, with a huge majority of clicks going to the first few results, so ranking in those pole positions is going to bring a lot more attention to your financial business.
Higher Quality Traffic
Using content marketing in your financial SEO strategy will drive more relevant, higher-quality leads to your site.
These are users who are actively looking for the services you’re offering with the intent to convert (or a far higher likelihood of conversion).
Enhanced User Engagement
Including videos on your website can boost the average time a user spends on it by 88%.
Quality content engages your users. It entertains, informs, and makes learning more about your industry appealing to your target market. It explains what they want to know and dives deeper into interesting topics, bringing value to your users that entices them to stick around.
Improved Conversion Rates
Content marketing enables winning financial SEO strategies to enhance your visibility and engage your audience. Once you’ve got your audience interested, it also drives conversions.
From calls to action (CTAs) to empathising with pain points, there are a multitude of techniques that encourage your audience to convert.
This allows you to take your high-quality leads right from the top of the marketing funnel – at that first point of engagement – through to a conversion using only the power of valuable, informative content.
Strong Client Relationships
Content marketing is a long-term strategy that strengthens your relationships with your audience, as well as building your SEO.
The right content answers audience questions, empathises with their problems, and provides useful solutions. It helps potential clients get to know your business too. From your tone of voice to greater visibility of your friendly team, it humanises your brand for stronger connections.
This is true both for leads and existing customers. Once a user converts, your content will still work to earn their long-term loyalty.
How Content Marketing Supports A Financial SEO Strategy
We use content marketing for both on-page SEO and off-page financial services SEO. It offers a wealth of opportunities to gain some lovely SEO points, including through:
Keyword Targeting: We carry out keyword research to find the terms your target audience is searching for and work them into your content, helping search engines match your blogs, white papers, and videos to the audience they’re intended for.
Content Planning: Research fuels our content planning sessions, helping us pinpoint the financial topics that your audience is interested in. For example, if we see that your audience is searching ‘How do I register for tax as a sole trader’, we know that content answering this question is going to resonate with your target market.
Optimising for SEO: There are a multitude of ways we optimise content to rank higher in the search results, from adding multimedia components to using keywords in alt tags. This has an impact across your website, showing Google just how relevant, credible, and trustworthy you are.
Distributing and Promoting: From Digital PR to social media marketing, content distribution drives more clicks to your site, building trust with search engines, and encouraging them to increase it’s rankings.
Kickstart Your Financial Content Marketing
In the financial industry, content marketing builds credibility around your business. Informative content that’s easy for non-financial experts to understand can help bridge the gap between you and your audience, showing them exactly how you can help them and cultivating trust.
Quality content will drive high-quality traffic to your website, engage the audience, and encourage them to stick around for longer.
At Woya Digital, we offer complete content marketing services for finance sector businesses. With a team of experienced SEO experts, we’ll work with you to build a winning strategy that drives long-term success. Book a free consultation with our team today.
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The best place to start with any project is a little detail.
SEO is a broad topic and (contrary to what some people think) not about the odd bit of keyword stuffing inclusion into written text.
In reality, SEO strategy efforts need to focus both on on-site SEO and off, and need to form part of a continuous improvement cycle that is constant.
One element of SEO is on-page optimisation, and here, our experts at Woya Digital explain what that really means and what activities form part of it.
The SEO On-Page Optimisation Checklist
On-Page SEO is the optimisation of content within a webpage to demonstrate to search engine algorithms what its about, who its for and on which related queries it should feature on search engine results pages (SERPs).
This includes not just the physical written content within a page but also ‘behind-the-scenes’ type features such as coding that can’t be physically seen by the user but is present in the foundations of the website.
While there’s no one area of Search Engine Optimisation that matters more than another (in part because we’ll never know exactly how Google weights each element of a website against its ranking practices), SEO on-page optimisation is a critical part.
The origins of SEO are set in keyword research, and this still forms a critical element for easy signalling to web crawlers what content is about. More recent updates to Google have involved the inclusion of other on-page SEO elements such as load speeds and accessibility as part of a ‘people-first content’ focus to differentiate between sites where their topics are similar.
SEO on-page optimisation factors include User Experience (UX) factors and so is responsible for not just making the domain easily searchable but also for providing an easy-to-use website experience that’s useful and reliable.
On-Page SEO: Quality Content
SEO originated as a process within which search engines would scan sites for the target keywords being inputted by users into their search queries – and this very much still exists, albeit in a somewhat more sophisticated way than 20 years ago.
Today, the approach of stuffing content with keywords (keyword stuffing) is considered outdated and will harm search engine rankings. The key to ranking well from content now lies in the quality of that being produced, be it written or in another form.
Content Relevancy
Content should include some of the expected target keywords and terms that users will be typing into their search engine queries but more importantly, must be relevant.
The page’s content published on a site should match the search intent behind the keywords rather than just featuring them multiple times.
There are four types of keyword intent, and brands need to ensure that they’re producing quality content relevant to any that may apply to them. These include:
Navigational keyword intent – where a user is searching to find something specific, for example the search ‘McDonalds menu’. This is a user looking to find an exact webpage for a specific brand. Marketers must ensure that relevant searches for their brand match up to the correct pages.
Informational keyword intent – where a user is searching to find information on a topic, for example the search ‘What’s Vitamin A?’. This is a user looking to find details around a topic. Marketers must ensure that users are presented with the info they’re looking for and not with heavy sales content or details of anything unrelated.
Commercial keyword intent – where a user is searching to differentiate between options, for example ‘Honda vs Subaru’. This is a user looking to compare two different, but similar, things. Marketers must ensure that their pages match up to provide preferential information on their own products and that details are comparable in scope to their competitors.
Transactional keyword intent – where a user is searching to complete a specific action, for example ‘Buy Star Wars magazine’. This is a user looking to buy something online – the holy grail for those brands with online shops! Marketers must ensure that their pages offer the transaction that the user is looking for quickly and easily.
Content Freshness
Content should be refreshed regularly to ensure it is current. This means that marketers should be adding optimised new content routinely in order to demonstrate the brand’s ongoing relevancy but also to demonstrate current knowledge within its industry.
Regularly adding a new, quality, optimised blog post to your website is one way in which to maintain content freshness, and further reinforce your authority as an exert in your field.
Content Length
The length of webpage content must also be considered. For some searches, users will expect the information they seek to be present ‘above the fold’ on the page and immediately viewable.
Others will want to ‘deep dive’ into information and read on. Content should, therefore, be optimised to the appropriate length based on the keyword or term, topic and competition.
There are a number of optimisations that can be made on-page but also ‘behind-the-scenes’ – in the coding and mark-up of the page itself.
Meta Tags
Meta tagging titles and meta descriptions allows for brands to set exactly what will be displayed in searches.
This gives the opportunity to specify their messaging clearly and concisely in order to best draw attention from those carrying out searches.
URL Structure
Structuring a URL to coherently demonstrate a webpage’s place on a site as well as what information can be found on it allows for search engines to do the same and reinforce their relevance.
Header Tags
Header tags used correctly through written content provides search engines with a hierarchy of the information provided, letting them know how to read it and what to prioritise.
Internal Linking
Linking within a website’s content to other pages on the same site helps users navigate to find more relevant information without leaving to browse elsewhere, increasing the amount of time users spend on a site and lowering their chances of them visiting a competitor.
Internal linking also helps search engines navigate a site more easily.
Anchor Text
Anchor text is the clickable text in a link, be the navigation internal or external to the site.
It is best practice SEO-wise to have the clickable text relevant to the link rather than generic. For example, where a link is directing to a webpage on greenhouses, the anchor text should read something like ‘great greenhouses for new growers’ rather than ‘click here’.
Page Speed
Page speed is a critical component of UX on any site – and user expectations are at an all-time high with an all-time low level of patience.
Webmasters must ensure that pages load within seconds (and preferably quicker) so that users do not get distracted and click off to find the same information elsewhere. Page speed is now a key Google ranking factor and therefore it’s imperative that any large images, videos or other formatting features are optimised for speedy loading.
Mobile Responsiveness
The majority of web traffic is now accessed on a mobile or portable device and so it is no longer acceptable for websites to be created with only traditional computer web browsers in mind.
All websites must be mobile responsive, able to adapt appropriately to the size of the browser upon which it is being accessed without compromising on format or quality. This is an absolutely crucial factor for search engine ranking and Google confirms this.
Canonical Tags
Canonical tags are used to let search engines know which version of a page to display in search results in cases of duplicate content.
This allows for link equity to be consolidated and improves the chances of accurate indexing of a website.
XML Sitemap
An XML (Extensible Markup Language) sitemap allows for search engine web crawlers to find and index all webpages on a site.
Without a sitemap in place, brands may find that their websites are indexed in a way that doesn’t benefit SEO-wise, and so this gives an element of control over how they are presented.
Robots.txt
A robots.txt file is coding within a website that instructs web crawlers on which pages to index and which not to.
If a website has several pages they’d prefer weren’t included amongst search engine results, this file should always be present.
Schema Markup
Further to the above two points, instructing web crawlers on how to display pages amongst search results, schema markup (sometimes known as ‘structured data’) allows search engines to categorise content and pull from it themes to feature on enhanced listings.
There are currently 32 different types of schema and exactly which is appropriate for a brand will vary. An SEO specialist should be approached for guidance on schema markup and to ensure that it’s being used to its maximum potential.
On-Page SEO: User Experience
UX was previously thought of as a separate discipline to SEO, but Google (and other search engines) now consider it a critical factor – ranking those sites that deliver a good experience above those who don’t automatically.
Navigation and Breadcrumbs
Websites can only be useful if users are able to find their way around them, so it’s important that navigation is prioritised to make it as easy to use as possible.
Breadcrumbs are a popular tool used on larger websites that act as navigation aids, presenting visually the current location on a site at a glance.
Prioritising navigation also allows webmasters to ensure that no pages are left without any internal links to them, as this is detrimental to their SEO value.
Page Layout
When working on website navigation, marketers should consider how the layout of a page impacts on the site’s overall UX.
While all information a user is looking for should be available ‘above the fold’ of a page, there may be value in leaving some information elsewhere to encourage longer browse time and further engagement.
If a page isn’t well constructed and formatted, users will simply click off to another site, in turn decreasing its SEO value as search engines believe the site not to be of use because of its high abandonment rate.
Call To Action Placement
Not all users will arrive onto a website and immediately want to make a purchase, fill out a contact form or complete another desired conversion action.
This means that on pages where a conversion isn’t going to happen immediately, a call to action (CTA) can be helpful to encourage and guide them on through to the next step. The placement of these CTAs is key – they must be simple enough to see and use, but not so frequent that they’re ignored.
Calls to action, when utilised properly, can drive further internal traffic and increase user browse time.
Image Optimisation
Images on a page need to be sized as such so that they load quickly and don’t delay the page load speed, but they also need to be optimised for accessibility purposes.
The inclusion of alt tags on images allows for search engines to index the images themselves and for those with screen-readers and other non-visual facilitation tools to access content.
Multimedia Elements
Content isn’t just text, and the use of varying multimedia allows for different audiences to find a brand’s content useful.
Not everyone wants to read a blog or article. Infographics, videos and audio files can all be present on a website and can all be optimised to prioritise loading speeds (for direct SEO impact) and to encourage onward sharing (for indirect SEO impact).
On-Page SEO: Local SEO
Businesses that have a physical setting serving a geographically-set audience can benefit hugely from optimising their website to alter their search engine results to appear tailored to the user based on where they’re located.
NAP Citations
NAP is an abbreviation of Name, Address and Phone Number. In SEO terms, NAP citations are the coding of this information to present it along with a business’ website where it features in search engine results.
This information allows users to make contact with a company without needing to scroll any further, avoiding them clicking through to or making contact with a competitor.
For local searches, Google will rank websites with NAP citations in place above those who haven’t.
Local Keywords
Local relevant keywords are those that contain location-specific words or phrases to indicate that a search engine user is making a geographically-limited query (ie. ‘gardeners Norwich’ or ‘Doncaster cakemakers’).
The use of target keywords on a website helps drive people in the target location to the site – and in turn, as more local web users visit a site, the higher it will rank locally.
Geo-Targeting Content
Tailoring content to include information relevant to users in a certain geographical demographic allows for local SEO ranking and can be hugely impactful for those looking to target particular audiences.
Businesses don’t need to limit geo-targeting to one city or even country, and can replicate the success of it across varying territories (as appropriate), and in different languages.
On-Page SEO: Social Signals
When content on a website is useful, it will be shared by those who found it to be of benefit.
So many users now active on social media, and these channels allow for content to be shared. The easiest way for marketers to facilitate this content sharing is to include social sharing buttons on their webpages for one-click access to a pre-bundled post on the main social media channels.
While Google doesn’t insist on brands having a social media presence to rank them high, the backlinks to a site demonstrates its authenticity and usefulness and so the SEO impact is indirect.
On-Page SEO: Analytics and Monitoring
SEO is an ongoing activity and something that must be constantly worked at for websites to rank as the algorithms behind search engine rankings shift and change.
Of course, where marketers know what works for their website in SEO they can continue this, and where approaches aren’t working, they can make changes to better the performance.
SEO performance on Google can be monitored through Google Analytics software. This interacts with a website through the implementation of a small piece of code within it, and monitors the performance of the domain in search engine results and the behaviour of users on site.
Google Analytics is complemented by Google Search Console integrations for additional insights and metrics but these further insights can be a little more difficult to navigate and so often require an SEO specialist to report on and work through.
On-Page SEO: Forward Focus
On-page SEO is something that marketers and webmasters have full influence over and so can impact both directly and indirectly on their rankings – an area of digital marketing that often feels like it can’t be controlled.
Signalling to a search engine what a site is about and who its for helps the algorithm best judge how and where to rank it amongst the competition. When done right, on-page SEO can be hugely beneficial to ranking position, but when done wrong, websites will stagnate and suffer.
Woya Digital are SEO specialists and work with websites spanning all a wide range of industries to rank high and gain competitive advantage. No matter how simple or complex a website is in structure, there’s lots that can be done. Get in touch with the team today and let us take a bespoke approach to your on-page SEO to help you rank high, rank locally and rank all the time!
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