SEO for Financial Services: How to Get in Front of Your Target Audience

SEO is a great way to increase web traffic and reach your target audience. But are you getting the most out of your SEO strategy??

Turns out, not everyone is. When asked about the challenges of marketing financial products and services, 52% of respondents said reaching the right audience was one of their biggest.?

Today I want to talk about some important but often overlooked tips for improving SEO.?

As a quick refresher, SEO, or search engine optimization, aims to land your company’s website and content higher in organic search results. SEO optimizes for Google’s algorithm, since Google has 82% of the search engine market share worldwide. Google uses the E-E-A-T methodology – expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness – to rank content.?

So now that we’re on the same page about SEO, let’s get into why it's important.?

The Significance of Organic SEO

You’ve probably heard some variation of the phrase “content is king”. And, yeah, that’s true, but here’s the thing: even if you have great content, it can’t do anything productive if no one reads it.?

There’s a lot of competition online, with over 600 million active blogs. And it’s estimated that over 99% of searchers only look at the first page of Google results. SEO is going to help you rank on that first page so that more of your audience finds your content.?

Now, you might be thinking, can’t I just use ads to get people to my content? And sure, that’s an option. But organic SEO has about 20 times more traffic opportunities than pay-per-click ads.?

SEO is especially relevant for B2B companies such as financial services firms: the 2022 B2B Buyer’s Survey from DemandGen found that 67% of B2B buyers start the buying process with a broad web search.?

Why is SEO Important for Financial Services Organizations??

Organic search is a key avenue for consumers to find your company. Research found that 64% of calls and 41% of web traffic to financial services providers comes from organic search. That’s because for many consumers of financial services, online search is the first step in their buyer’s journey.?

For highly specialized topics, such as financial services, Google places a greater emphasis on reliability in its algorithm so that highly reliable sites show at the top of search rankings. If you’re not communicating your reliability to Google well, you’re not going to rank, and your audience will have a harder time finding you.?

SEO can also create stability in hard times. Financial services organizations can be heavily impacted by the ups and downs of the economy. Ranking high in Google search is beneficial because even in down times, the audience who is looking for services will find you first – and you aren’t paying for that traffic.

AI and SEO

Before I dive into SEO tips, I want to touch on AI (artificial intelligence). AI is a hot topic pretty much everywhere, so you might be wondering, can I use AI to create SEO content? The short answer is that AI can assist, but it shouldn’t be creating and outputting the SEO strategy (or content) by itself.?

Google focuses on content quality, so if you are using AI, any work done by the AI needs to be checked by a human to look for misinformation and bias. The wording and tone of your content should also fit your company’s voice and brand, which an AI may struggle to capture.?

Additionally, AI won’t be able to layer in recent news or exclusive quotes from subject matter experts within your organization that can help your content rank higher for expertise and experience. Those are clear opportunities for you to take AI-generated content and add unique value that only a human can.

With AI-generated content snippets now taking their place in SERPs (search engine results pages), the need for authentic and “human” content is more important than ever. If you’re going to use AI, use it responsibly. Here’s how we’re handling AI ethics at Conveyor.????

SEO Tips for Reaching Your Target Audience?

You’ve probably seen your share of tips on how to use on-page, off-page, and technical SEO. Those are important, but I want to share some critical strategies that go beyond the basics to help you reach your audience with the quality content they’re looking for.?

Use SEO to Build Trust

According to a Gallup poll, only 35% of Americans view the banking industry as very or somewhat positive. Regardless of how great your company is, you may face some skepticism or hesitancy from buyers. Earning trust is a great way to convert prospects into clients. 58% of consumers ranked the level of trust they had for a financial service provider as the most important factor for deciding where to open an account.?

SEO helps build trust. Most users find organic search results more trustworthy than ads. This makes sense if you think about how Google ranks content. If Google finds your content trustworthy enough to rank it high in search results, then your audience will likely find your brand trustworthy, too. And when your audience demonstrates high trust, Google understands that and ranks you higher, which is a good cycle to be in.?

Maximize Local SEO

Local SEO improves search engine visibility for local businesses, particularly those with physical locations. Ranking high in local SEO can help your business show up higher in results in Google Maps, Apple Maps, business review sites, and more. The Google algorithm for local and organic search is slightly different, with local search relying heavily on the physical distance of the business to its audience.

So is local SEO really helpful? It can be. 46% of Google searches are looking for local information. That’s a lot of people.?

Local SEO may not be critical to every financial service provider. But for those trying to reach specific audiences in a certain geographic area, local SEO is important.?

What kind of things create a strong local SEO strategy? Some tips include:

• Optimizing for Google My Business
• Tagging local locations on social media posts
• Making sure your business name, address, and phone number are consistent across sites
• Adding location pages to your website
• Creating content that has a local focus????????

For a deeper dive, check out this local SEO checklist.?

PR and SEO?

Backlinks, which is when other sites link back to your site, tell Google that your content is relevant and of high quality. As more high-authority sites link back to your content, you jump higher in search engine rankings. This is where PR (public relations) can come in.?

Your PR team (or person) can help secure backlinks with reputable, high-authority websites to help your content rank higher in search results.?

Here’s a great example: IBM published “Cost of a Data Breach Report”, which surveyed 550 companies that had cybersecurity attacks to find insights on the impact of these attacks. The results were interesting, and the content was picked up by many major news sites. This report alone generated backlinks from 9200 domains. This helped further establish IBM as a leader in security and helped the report rank highly in searches.?

And PR can help with SEO beyond securing backlinks. A strong PR team can get positive media coverage to build credibility, reach a wider audience for better brand awareness, help craft content for different segments of your audience, and improve local SEO by generating local press coverage and online mentions for your area.?

SEO is a great method to build brand awareness and drive customers to your website. These strategies can help you not only find your target audience but also to provide them with the content they actually want. In a competitive and highly specialized industry, you need to show customers that you are a trustworthy and effective organization. A good SEO strategy can go a long way.