I’ve done SEO in many different financial verticals over the years, including credit, lending, software, credit cards, accounting, bookkeeping, CFO advisory, investments, and cryptocurrency.
My SEO success has driven millions of dollars of revenue for my clients and employers. I know what works and what doesn’t. That’s why SEO software company, Ahrefs, recently consulted me for their new article on this very subject.
It’s kind of funny looking at the other articles on this topic on Google, because it’s clear most of these writers have never done financial services SEO before.
I promise you’ll get value in this article beyond anything else you can find on Google.
SEO for financial services isn’t for the faint of heart, but it can be extremely lucrative.
SEO for Financial Services Chapters:
- Keyword Research: Should You Do SEO?
- Local SEO
- Your Money or Your Life and EEAT
- Getting Technical SEO Right
- Content Considerations
- Compliance
- Backbreaking Backlinks
- Mastering AI
1. Keyword Research: Should You Do SEO?
Let’s start with some honesty. Many financial SEO service niches are insanely difficult. Your SEO strategy needs to take this into account.
Billion-dollar companies like NerdWallet and Red Ventures have teams of people and multi-million dollar budgets for one purpose: to rank #1 for the hardest finance keywords on the planet.
If you’re a small financial company, you’ll want to know if you can outrank these SEO juggernauts. Preferably, before you pour your hard-earned dollars into an SEO campaign.
Even more importantly, you need to know if your potential customers are even searching for your services on Google.
For example, I met with a financial service provider in the debt adjudication space. They were referred to me by a client and wanted to know if I could work the same magic for them.
Unfortunately, nobody was Googling their keywords.
I’ve talked to several startups that were doing interesting things in payments and insurance, and guess what? What they were doing was so new and different, people didn’t even know to search for it.
Zero search volume.
Conversely, if you’re in a more established niche, rest assured that there is plenty of search volume.
Accounting is a great example:
There is no shortage of people searching for accountants in any given town in the US.
Take San Diego, for example:
| Keyword | Search Volume |
| cpa san diego | 1,300 |
| accounting firms san diego | 590 |
| tax accountant san diego | 390 |
| san diego accountant | 590 |
There are 2,870 searches per month just for these particular phrases. Once you add up all of the longtail keyword variations, there are probably around 5,000-6,000 people per month searching for accountants.
After you’ve established adequate search volume, you need to see if the keyword difficulty is too high.
One way of doing this is to see if the companies listed in the map results have lots of good reviews:
In this case, the third listing only has four reviews. That’s great news! It shouldn’t be too hard to get into this “map pack.”
Of course, there are many more sophisticated methods for measuring keyword difficulty that I use. This includes domain authority comparison, SERP keyword usage analysis, and SEO tool estimates:
You’ll notice that my first reference to keyword difficulty was a local result.
This is on purpose.
If you are in a niche that differentiates searches by location, the difficulty will be much lower. You don’t have to compete with national brands.
Many niches in the financial services industry bring up search results tailored to their location.
Here are a few examples:
- Accounting
- Bookkeeping
- Credit repair services
- Mortgage brokers
- Banks
- Private lenders
- Insurance agents
- Wealth management
- Financial advisor
- Financial planner & financial planning
If you’re not sure where you fall, just do a Google search for what you do. If it triggers a map, you’re in a local niche.
Another interesting fact about local searches is that search engines tailor the ads and traditional search results by location:
These results are below the map pack. Note how “bookkeeping services” doesn’t have a geographic modifier.
This small bookkeeping company is outranking Bench Accounting, a huge national company with a much bigger domain authority. (DR 77 vs. DR 39)
If your keyword does NOT trigger localized search results, you have to compete against everybody else in the US.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that the keyword will be too hard:
In this case, a search for “fractional CFO services” triggers a search engine results page with small companies coming up in positions 3 and 4. This is for a keyword with great search volume: 3,400 per month.
What you don’t want to see is this:
Google “credit cards” and you’ll see only top-tier companies ranking with a domain authority of ~90. Want to outrank them? Good luck with that if you’re not a major financial institution.
2. Local SEO
Most financial services have some type of geographic keywords.
If you have a financial firm with physical offices, the next step is easy.
Create a Google Business Profile. (Formerly called “Google My Business”) That’s what appears in the map results.
Google Business Profile optimization is a subject apart from this article, but it’s different from traditional SEO.
In short, the process looks like this:
- Complete and optimize your Google Business Profile
- Get lots of good customer reviews
- Acquire relevant business directory listings, called citations
- These should plaster your name, address, and phone number (NAP) across the internet
- Use local schema markup (SEO code)
- Structure your website to target local keywords
- Get normal backlinks to your website
Most small SEO agencies perform local SEO services. The trick is to find one that’s actually good at it.
(Hint: not many are.)
If your SEO agency doesn’t do every single one of the things from my bulleted list, then they’re not top-notch.
(Another hint: if you’re reading this, you just found your finance SEO agency.)
If you’re a national financial services company, you can still create pages targeting local geographies. This is normally a city, but it could also be a state.
I worked with my client, Credit Suite, to create state pages for their lending products:
These pages have driven quite a few leads for them, even though they are primarily a remote US company with limited physical offices.
3. Your Money or Your Life and EEAT
Google gives the financial sector a “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) designation. This means they have higher standards for the websites they rank than for other, less important niches.
Other YMYL topics include medical, legal, and mental health.
Websites and people in these industries need to demonstrate Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust (EEAT).
What does that mean exactly?
Google has extensive documentation about that. For example, the 181-page Quality Raters Guidelines document details exactly what Google considers quality:
So, what do you actually need to do here?
SEO guru, Cyrus Shephard, did a case study analysis of recent Google algorithm fluctuations to find out exactly what they’re rewarding.
A lot of SEO people think that EEAT means creating a good author profile for your articles.
Yes, that is a good starting point. But it’s only 1% of the things that you need to do.
As noted in the infographic above, website design, spammy ads, and appropriate disclosures all play into it. (Which I hope any reputable finance company would pay attention to!)
Other best practices I would recommend:
- Show real people on your website, particularly your About page
- Have a real company name, physical address, and phone number listed on the website
- Have other clear ways you can be contacted, including a contact form and email address
- Showcase a clear cookie policy, privacy policy, and up-to-date copyright date in your footer
- Look like a real company with reasonable transparency
Most SEO professionals don’t know that many EEAT signals Google uses are actually what other websites and people say about you:
- Collect positive reviews. On your Google Business Profile, TrustPilot, or elsewhere.
- Avoid complaints on the BBB, Reddit, Glassdoor, and review websites
- Bad press can also even influence your website
Check this out:
Click on the three dots next to your website search listing to see Google’s “About the Source” listing:
These screenshots show that Google compiles data from your Google reviews, Google Business Profile, business directories, social media, review sites, and other sources it deems trustworthy to figure out what it thinks of you.
The algorithm buckets your website into a tier based on the quality of the signals it sees.
If it sees “scam” and “rip off” next to your brand name too many times, your SEO campaign will never go anywhere until you fix your reputation problem.
Guess what? Google’s AI Overviews rely heavily on this type of information as well.
I’ll show you later in the article how we hack this system in favor of our clients.
4. Getting Technical SEO Right
Technical SEO for financial services isn’t as hard as ecommerce or enterprise SEO, but there’s still a lot to do here.
Every page on your website needs to have its focus keyword in the URL, h1, and title tag:
Your website needs a properly configured sitemap.xml and robots.txt. Site navigation and internal linking should ensure that the Googlebot can crawl and index every page on your website. And your site shouldn’t be riddled with 500 and 404 errors.
This is a basic and effective SEO strategy.
Things get more interesting with schema markup. To non-engineers, I call this “SEO code.” It spells things out for search engines.
Financial service SEO has a few unique schema markup types. This is how the schema looks on this particular page:
We are telling Google: this is a “FinancialService” called “Zeni Startup Payroll Services”. Its description describes it, and we tell it which URL it’s found on.
In other words, you spell things out for the search engines so that they know exactly what your company and services are.
Useful financial service schema markup types include:
Here are common financial product schemas:
5. Content Considerations
The trick to writing great financial SEO content is blending financial industry expertise with writing skills.
You need to write a ton of content in any SEO campaign. Every keyword you target needs its own page or article.
So if you’re targeting hundreds of keywords, you’ll literally need hundreds of articles.
Niche writers are your friend.
We do a lot of work in the business credit and financing industry. (As well as fintech SEO.) So each of my writers knows a lot about this space. They each went through a business credit certification course.
They talk the talk. This makes the content highly relevant and much more likely to convert potential clients who find you on Google.
As discussed in the EEAT section, the content needs to meet certain quality thresholds. I like tailoring my writers’ content biographies to the client, so that only their relevant expertise shines through:
One of my ace writers, Dylan Buckley, has extensive content marketing experience in many industries. But we don’t talk about that here. We just showcase his financial and credit expertise.
It’s common to have a “reviewed by” or “edited by” attribution as well in financial content:
As you can see above, this is how NerdWallet does it.
6. Compliance
Compliance is my biggest annoyance with this field of work. I begrudgingly admit that compliance plays a big role in financial services SEO.
This varies by niche. Consumer-facing industries must comply with extensive regulations, so they have the most stringent requirements. B2B financial services don’t usually face this level of scrutiny.
If your lawyers have to review every article with a fine-toothed comb, your content is going to suck. Because (speaking from experience) they will shut down any sign of life or spirit of creativity. So it’s best not to involve them to that extent.
In my experience, it’s best when your compliance or legal team advises. They can communicate what’s out of bounds: what should and shouldn’t be said in marketing content. What constitutes financial advice and what doesn’t.
But leave the actual content review to in-house marketing team members.
The trick to getting compliance right is finding the middle ground. You obviously don’t want to be making promises so bold that you look like a get-rich-quick scheme. Or write content riddled with factual errors.
On the other hand, you can’t let compliance processes slow down the process so much that you can’t get anything done.
My team of ace writers live in this middle ground. They know how to make content sing and convert customers without breaking rules. We have several layers of editorial process to ensure it, so clients rarely need to make changes.
7. Backbreaking Backlinks
There’s a common theme among digital marketers and website owners in the finance industry: they all like money.
Accordingly, acquiring backlinks from finance websites can get expensive.
When asked for a backlink, many finance bloggers want a bribe. And the bribes requested in finance are much higher than in other niches.
That being said, if you’re creative about getting backlinks, you can work your way around this. But I call it “backbreaking” work because it’s quite difficult.
My team of backlink acquisition specialists are experts in this. We deliver high quality backlinks from real, US-based websites consistently for my clients, every month.
There are a variety of methods for doing this, but my favorite right now is to create linkable tools and resources.
Many financial keywords have “calculator” or “spreadsheet” in them. People are always searching for calculators, spreadsheets, templates, checklists, etc. And most marketing teams are too lazy to create their own.
So we create the ones that searchers are looking for. And give them away for free.
Here’s a free month-end close spreadsheet we created for a bookkeeping client:
A startup company valuation calculator we created for another:
Sometimes, just a simple research project can attract backlinks. Like this “statistics” page that has attracted backlinks from high authority sites like hackernoon.com (DR 88) and unionleader.com (DR 78):
8. Mastering AI
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably noticed that AI Overviews are taking over search engines.
Like this:
AI Overviews are sucking up all the impressions and clicks:
In fact, most searches on Google do not end with a click to a website:
It begs the question: How do I get into the AI Overview?
I have a process for this, although we should start with the most obvious.
Google relies heavily on the first few positions to populate AI Overviews.
So, doing traditional SEO is still your best chance to get in there.
You also have to write content in a way that answers questions directly. Post questions in headers, then answer them.
How do you structure your content for an AI Overview?
You structure your content for an AI Overview by asking questions and answering them directly after they are asked. The question should be in an h2 or h3 header.
Schema markup helps so that Google understands what your webpage, company, and products are.
But beyond that, you need to get your financial website mentioned all over the internet:
For years, Google has been switching from a “search engine” to an “answer engine.”
Oftentimes, it will simply tell you who the major brands are. Then, the searcher has to do another search to find that company.
Where does Google source its recommendations from?
Fortunately, they are somewhat transparent about that.
It reads the “best” articles for your category. It reads Reddit, Quora, and forums, and it looks inside YouTube videos.
The good news is that these are all highly influential sources of data.
The bad news is that most search engine optimization agencies don’t touch influencer or affiliate marketing.
If you’re solely focused on ranking your own website in the search results, your reach is limited.
But if you’re open to getting your website mentioned on other websites, the sky is the limit.
I recently did a client cross-promotion project, where my same-niche clients promoted each other on high-traffic, highly relevant articles.
The results were astounding. For one client, referral traffic from only one website became a top sales-generating source within only two months:
As you can see, referral traffic converts at a 16% conversion rate – 4x the rate from all other marketing channels!
Woah.
The great news is that this also helps with appearing in ChatGPT and other LLM queries.
And yes, ChatGPT and other LLMs are a thing, although not nearly as much as the media would have you believe:
That’s why our approach at Garit Boothe Digital isn’t limited to traditional SEO.
We also do Local SEO, AI Overview SEO, and LLM SEO. (Getting ranked in ChatGPT and the others.)
And generate results like this:
My team of finance writers and finance outreach professionals is ready to take on your ambitious goals. We speak your language and are ready to rank you #1 for your best buyer keywords.
It’s financial services SEO by finance nerds for finance nerds.
If your current digital marketing and SEO efforts aren’t generating the financial returns you’d like, reach out to start the discussion.
We also call ourselves the fintech SEO agency.
