It can be hard for consumers to choose how they pick a service provider that matches their needs. This is especially true for banks and financial institutions.
Often, people may rely on word of mouth to make a decision. In other cases, nearly 50% of them might use Google to find a bank near them that they can use.
Optimizing for proper SEO strategy is crucial for banks to be able to get in front of potential customers and increase their trust online. In our experience, effective SEO tactics can significantly enhance a bank's digital presence, driving things like web traffic, new customers, and customer trust.
Good SEO makes a bank's website easier to find and suggests credibility, which is paramount in the finance industry.
Why Is SEO Important?
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is essential for banks in today's digital world. SEO is the visibility of a bank's presence in search engines, like Google, and helps you stay ahead in marketing and getting new business.
When users search online for a term or service related to your bank, that’s where you’ll show up.
SEO also improves local visibility.
For instance, many customers still prefer visiting a local bank branch. Local SEO makes it easier for people to find nearby branches and services. This means more foot traffic and, eventually, more business for the bank.
Moreover, SEO leads to high-quality, targeted traffic. Leads from SEO are generally more valuable because of their lower cost to acquire and generally higher conversion rate. This means more potential customers who are genuinely interested in banking services.
SEO also boosts the bank's credibility and trust. When a bank appears high in search results, users are more likely to view it as trustworthy.
Another thing not initially considered is, it’s likely that your competition is already on Google or doing SEO and acquiring customers that way. If you aren’t doing SEO for your bank, you most likely are losing potential customers to competitors that are.
What Goes Into SEO For Banks?
When developing an SEO strategy for banks, there are many different features that can be included. Below, we’ve listed some of the most important aspects of this stage.
Keyword Research
In banking SEO, keyword research is essential. Banks must identify keywords and common terms that people use when searching for their services, products, and more.
Think about phrases like "best savings account," "home loan rates," or "local bank branches." Using tools like Google Keyword Planner can help with this.
Many customers still need face-to-face banking at times, so showing up in local search results can bring more people to your physical branches.
Local keywords are the best for small banks or banks with many branches. Terms like “best bank in Portland, OR is a good start. The longer tail keywords have lower search terms but have people actively looking for services to help solve their problem or needing a solution.
Furthermore, focusing on long-tail keywords and local keywords can attract more localized and specific traffic. This helps drive more business instead of just website traffic.
Additionally, researching competitors helps others understand what works for them and find opportunities to stand out. You can use competitors as a starting point for where you should focus a lot of your SEO efforts and branch out from there.
Lastly, features like mobile optimization are key, given that on average over 60% of web traffic now comes from mobile devices.
Website Optimization
A bank’s optimized website is crucial for SEO success.
Ensuring that pages load quickly and are mobile-friendly is a priority (dead links and errors should be fixed right away).
These issues may not seem like a big deal but to search engines and users, some of these things can be an instant turn-off.
If your site is too slow to load or has a bunch of error links, search engines won’t be able to crawl it as well and users won’t be able to visit your site.
We often emphasize the importance of user experience (UX). Clean, easy-to-navigate designs keep visitors on the site longer, reducing bounce rates. Tools like Google PageSpeed Insights can help monitor and improve site performance.
Our point here? Make sure your website is not a step you skip when doing SEO for your bank.
Content Creation & Management
Creating valuable content is one of the secret keys.
Blogs about financial tips, detailed guides on banking services, and regular updates on interest rates can attract qualified visitors. At Drive Research, we focus on crafting articles that answer common questions and provide useful information.
Outdated content should be updated regularly and underperforming content should also be updated or changed so that users can find it online.
It’s best to use SEO tools to analyze content performance like Google Analytics or Google Search Console then make data-driven decisions to improve it where needed.
Blogs and resources should not be your only strategy, but are a great addition to an overall strategy that includes local keywords and conversion-focused keywords.
Link Building
Link building increases a bank's credibility. Getting links from reputable financial sites and local businesses can boost rankings and even bring in new users.
If you’re unsure where to start, collaborate with local news sites and relevant or topical industry blogs for guest posts and articles.
Internal linking is also important and not something to forget. While both backlinks and internal links are different, both are important for similar reasons. Linking to other relevant pages within the bank's website helps search engines understand the site's structure and improves navigation for users.
Link building may not seem like an important part of SEO, but for smaller businesses/websites it’s one of the most important things to spend time and effort on.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO ensures that a site meets the technical requirements of search engines.
This includes having clean code, structured data, a secure HTTPS site, and much more. We regularly audit websites (and you should audit yours too) using tools like Screaming Frog to identify and fix technical issues.
Another critical area is site architecture.
Well-organized site structures make it easier for search engines to crawl and index pages. It’s important to make sure sitemaps are up-to-date and submitted to Google Search Console.
There’s a lot more to technical SEO but these are some great places to start. Once your site grows more and more, you’ll need to think about more things.
In the beginning, get the basics right and once you grow you can worry about more when needed. You can always reach out to an SEO expert or specialist with questions if you have them.
Google Maps
Using Google Maps is a smart strategy for local banks and branches. It helps local customers find branches and ATMs easily, especially when searching.
Adding accurate NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) information and regularly updating it is the start and most important starting point.
You should also get reviews and add photos to your Google My Business profiles.
Positive reviews and engaging images can attract more visitors and build trust in the community. Reviews will boost your rankings the most, especially if your competitors have a ton more.
By strategically implementing these elements, banks can improve their local visibility and drive more local traffic to their branches or locations.
How To Do SEO Strategy For Banks
In our work with banks, we've found that an effective SEO strategy is what makes a successful project or not. It starts with understanding who the customers are and what they are searching for.
Banks need to show up in search results when people look for their services like loans, savings accounts, and online banking.
Complete an Audit First
Audit what you currently have on your website right now. Both a strategy audit of your current keywords, rankings, and traffic is useful along with a technical SEO audit to find out where you might need to improve technically (finding errors and more).
An audit will reveal what you already have and can improve upon before discovering more of what you currently lack. It’s the best way to not step on your own toes when building out your strategy.
Building Your Strategy
You’ll most likely start with keyword research.
This can be with competitors and what they are ranking for, ideas you have from current customers and customer profiles, and more. You may have to get creative in order to find all of the possibilities but those are great places to start.
You’ll want to make sure you focus on high-converting and most likely, local terms. A term like “best savings account to open in Portland, OR” is going to attract a more qualified audience than “portland bank.”
Both are not bad terms, but in our experience, the longer tail keyword (the longer search term) will convert more often because of its specificity. Think about these terms when laying out your strategy.
Implement Your Strategy
This seems obvious but a lot may skip it - you’ll need to actually build out new pages, fix old pages, fix errors, and more in order to see the SEO results you’re wanting.
Constant action and implementation of your strategy is how you win and keep your SEO results. It’s ideal to at least have some form of data tracking setup so you can see your progress and current wins. Google Analytics is a great starting point to use for most sites.
When tracking your data, watch both traffic and conversions to see how the campaign is progressing. With constant changes in search engines, you may have to stay on top of everything and even make changes where necessary.
How Drive Research Can Help
In our work at Drive Research, we specialize in helping banks improve their SEO.
We know that getting to the top of search results can make a huge difference. More visibility online means more customers walking through your doors.
The first step is to audit your current website, strategy, and more. We’ll lay out exactly what it is that you have, what can be improved, and what you’re missing. This is a big step many banks will skip when thinking about SEO, but it’s one of the most important.
After that, we’ll help manage your campaign from start to finish. We’ll be your SEO team 100% of the way, working alongside you to help ensure you get the desired results. Everything from strategy creation to technical fixes, and things like content management are all strategies we help banks develop.
We’ll also track your data so you can see the performance and progression of the results. With data tracking, we’re able to see traffic, conversions, and other important metrics that tell you if you’re getting customers from SEO in detail.
The best part? We also include expert insights and reporting each month on your SEO campaign so you don’t have to guess if it’s working or not.
Contact Our Financial Market Research Company
Boasting years of combined experience, our team will partner with yours to ensure you’re prepared with a solid SEO strategy to propel your financial institution forward.
To learn more about the rest of our market research services, contact us today.
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Austin Parker
Austin has an extensive background in SEO as he's been blogging since 16 years old back when the internet was in its infancy. As fitting, he holds a Bachelor's degree in English with a concentration in creative writing.
Learn more about Austin, here.
