Find out the latest trends, search features, and other optimizations that drive financial services ‘ success in fiercely competitive Google outcomes.
Optimizing your website and web pages to be search-friendly isn’t tricky enough without the added regulatory hurdles and other challenges inherent to the financial sector.
Privacy and security of the consumer and trust, accuracy of the information and the speed of technological advancement in the industry are just a few of the ongoing worries for financial brands.
In the field of banking, insurance mortgages, wealth management fintech, or any other aspect of the financial service industry, there are other issues that you need to consider in your strategy for SEO (on top of general SEO best practices).
This article will look at some of the significant trends that the leaders of marketing and SEO must be aware of throughout the years and months ahead.
You’ll also discover proven strategies throughout the book to boost the effectiveness in your attempts to be more prominent in the search results, make more customers of searchers and secure your brand’s reputation while increasing search visibility.
- Digital Transformation Is Driving Evolving Customer Needs
Before the outbreak of that pandemic was threatening, Adobe’s 2021 digital trends: Financial Services & Insurance in Focus report revealed that 54 percent of the financial services and insurance companies surveyed noticed an unusual increase in mobile and digital visitors over the period before the early 2021 survey.
Then COVID-19 made a huge difference.
Informational requirements of customers and the manner in which appointments, consultations, contracts, and transactions were dealt with changed quickly throughout the world. It was put under lockdown.
Fintech and the potential of decentralized finance through cryptocurrency had already shaken the foundations of outdated traditional systems based on paper. The pandemic has accelerated the rate of innovation over the years.
Adobe’s survey also discovered that 61 percent of banks with retail branches stated that legacy systems were the main obstacle holding their customer experience and marketing companies behind (followed by problems with workflows for 44%, and a lack of digital-related skills or capabilities for 42 percent).
The operational costs of fintech companies can be as much as 70% less than traditional banks due to their lean operating model and structures.
Fintech is not a distinct win in the search space due to its digitized services and benefits, certainly not by a long shot.
We’ve surpassed any transaction or inquiry conducted in person or via the phone.
Customers of financial services today are looking for self-service options throughout their journey from identifying and comparing options via consultation transactions, consultation, and even service.
Brands that can meet these demands and their customers’ ever-growing requirements for information are the best suited to succeed in the search field.
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How you communicate these offerings through local and organic search is crucial.
Financial brands need not just to provide the most enjoyable experiences, but they must also prove to search engines that they’re the most appropriate answer to questions.
Tips And Takeaways
Leverage Proper Schema Markup For All Webpages
The most widely utilized Schema varieties in banks can be Articles, Images, Image Objects and FAQs.
While they’re not specifically for banking, they aid search engines such as Google to comprehend your content.
Make Sure You Know Who Your Competitors Are
It could not be what you consider it to be.
Apart from direct competition within your industry, there is competition with media and industry publications, regulatory bodies, informational sources, local companies, podcasts, YouTube channels, and many more to get a share of voice in SERPs.
Conduct Surveys And Analyze Your Seo Data For Customer Insights
E Commerce and consumer-centric media have elevated the bar on what consumers want from personalized content.
They are now hoping their technology will programmatically discover their preferences and adapt the experience to suit them.
2. Your Opportunities To Appear In The SERPs Are Growing
As Google is working to comprehend searcher intent and give better solutions to increasingly complicated queries, we’re witnessing more distinction on search results pages (SERPs).
Google’s brand-new Multitask-Unified Model, also known as MUM technology, is already being used.
MUM allows Google to better comprehend content written in various formats, languages and types of content.
We’re now experiencing new search results types being evaluated, including this improved Autocomplete box that provides an additional dimension to the results based on how Google thinks about the user’s intent.
Optimizing your site for featured snippets is a recommended method that could provide an opportunity to grow your search engine visibility.
Marking and structuring the content in specific ways, such as bulleted, numbered tables, for instance, can aid Google in recognizing when your website could be an excellent possibility for a featured short snippet.
Research conducted by BrightEdge (disclosure of my company) indicates that SERPs for financial service queries are likely to include a range of universal listing elements based on the query.
We’ve noticed that higher-funnel “I-Want-To-Know” queries like [best investment apps] or how to invest can bring up Quick Answer boxes and People Also Ask dropdowns, for example.
Knowing what SERP features are accessible by search term and purpose is vital to this method.
Incorporating original, high-quality videos and images in your web content will give you more chances to be featured in high-quality results.
In local results of searches (the Map Pack), We also noticed the addition of brand new attributes to various segments of the financial services sector that were added during the spread of the pandemic.
The Google Business Profile attributes available for your listing depend on the primary category it falls under.
Insurance agencies, banks and mortgage brokers, for instance, can utilize attributes to make online appointments as well as appointment links, ATMs and drive-thru services, and much more.
The more widely available attributes allow you to provide health and safety-related information on COVID-19 guidelines, security measures, accessibility information, and much more.
Read The Comprehensive Guide for Google Local SEO’s Local SEO attributes to know more.
Tips And Takeaways
Explore SERPs For Your Most Valuable Keywords
Find opportunities to rank higher than your competitors with unique SERP features or be the first-mover in areas where the potential for better results could be present.
When Creating And Optimizing Content, Focus On Topical Relevance And Context
Instead of ensuring that you are using the keyword several times on the same page.
Of the top 1,000 banking terms, our analysis has revealed that the pages that rank first employs the top keywords only one time, on average.
Context is more crucial than keyword density when it comes to banking.
Consider New Content-Length Carefully
Although we know that word count isn’t an indicator of ranking, our study has shown that the median word count for pages in the top three positions in the top 1000 terms in banking is 1,240 words.
Although this isn’t an unchanging principle, we’ve seen more extensive content earning higher rankings in this field.
Make sure you analyze your own SERPs and strive to create the most complete and high-quality information for each targeted keyword.
3. Consumer Trust And Information Accuracy Are Increasingly Important In SEO
COVID-19 brought the massive shift from offline and, unfortunately, an assault of cyber-attacks, misinformation, scams, and fraud.
Criminals jumped at the chance to capitalize on the increase in online searches and search results for grants, payday loans or jobs and more as the financial worries of consumers increased.
In its quest to offer the most relevant answer to every question, Google has had its hands full of algorithmically eliminating results that are likely to negatively affect searchers.
Websites with finance fall under the category Google refers to as Your Money or Your Life (YMYL), where websites are required to meet a higher standard.
A concept dubbed E-A-T Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness – is a significant factor in ranking YMYL’s site since Google seeks to present the most relevant answers to queries in its search results.
Google suggests that users in the YMYL group self-assess your content by asking, “Would you feel comfortable trusting this content for issues relating to your money or your life?”
Tips And Takeaways
Get To Know Google’s Search Quality Raters Guidelines
Although it is not a ranking factor, Google encourages content producers to use this source “for advice on great content.”
Incorporate Regular Content Audits And Updates Into Your SEO Strategy
Make sure that any obsolete information is removed promptly and removed from Google Posts, the blog or other websites.
This isn’t only an SEO best practice but also a legal requirement for many companies in the financial services industry and many other industries.
Don’t Ignore Your Presence In Social Media.
If we look at the highest percentage of the top 1000 terms in banking, Facebook is in the top five for organic success for numerous bank names and non-brand-related terms.
Ensuring that your profiles are correct and using relevant terms could help you gain visibility on search engines beyond your site’s listings.
4. Finance Becomes Mobile-First
Using ATMs to withdraw cash transactions, meeting with a financial adviser or visiting the branch nearest you for loan needs aren’t necessarily obsolete. Still, they certainly provide a way to make self-service more accessible.
Digital natives – or those who prefer conducting their banking online and don’t need branches or offices. The group comprised 32 percent of the PwC 2021 Digital Banking Consumer Survey.
Most of the time, people are doing these things via their phones.
Banking at the retail level has become an experience that is omnichannel for many.
And as McKinsey experts stated in their article Redefining The US consumer bank to ensure the future standard.
“To improve the digital experience for customers, banks must design their strategies based on a thorough understanding of the factors that drive customer views of their convenience. This was the case with branches at every corner for an extended period.
While physical presence is essential, it is vital to have the convenience also has to do with the speed, ease and ease of a multichannel experience.”
Google is aware of user-friendliness, ease of use and speed. So much that its Update to the Page Experience along with its Core Web Vitals metrics helped in achieving these goals even more significantly in its algorithm for ranking search results.
Financial consumers seek simple apps, seamless experiences across channels with personalized services and offers, and near-instantaneous decisions.
The transactions like loan applications or mortgage pre-approvals that were once meetings in person and a lot of paperwork are now back within minutes.
The websites they reside on and other content that provides information load quickly – or users must be likely to move on to the following outcome.
Tips And Takeaways
- Mobile Security Is Mission-critical
- With the advent of digital technology comes increased consumer expectations of security and privacy are protected.
- Optimize For Voice Search
Optimizing your website for these queries is essential with a greater dependence on mobile devices and the increasing use of voice-enabled home assistants like Google Home and Alexa.
A whopping 71% of people prefer using voice for search queries, in contrast to typing, according to PwC.
Voice-optimized content can differ in various ways, such as structure, intent to be focused, the length of the content formats, formatting, and markup.
Measure And Optimize For Core Web Vitals
Your rankings won’t suffer if this isn’t an area of concern. Yet, it could be a significant step towards moving forward if Google gives those who have met the CWV specifications a “boost” in search rankings and in the competitive financial space.
Conclusion
Utilizing Google’s best practices and keeping up with algorithmic updates is vital to SEO within the Financial Services sector.
Additionally, it is also equally important for marketers to make sure they use market research to stay ahead of trends in the consumer and category and automate the process of fixing web content to ensure it is compliant with search.
There is always a lot of competition in the banking and finance sectors, and with the growth of Fintech, SEO can help financial brands remain on top.
