SEO for Financial Services: Strategies for Standing Out in a Competitive Market

For many, the new year represents a fresh start on savings and investing. For the financial services sector, it's a pivotal growth opportunity to engage prospects—but messaging must be nuanced and aligned with changes in the marketplace. For example, The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is shaking up the market with a new rule to make it easier—and free—for consumers to transfer their data between financial services providers. Meanwhile, innovative startups are redefining the space with tools that enable individuals to manage tasks once the exclusive domain of financial professionals, and established players are expected to double down no promotions to maintain their edge. 

In this hyper-competitive reality, where customer choices are growing, switching barriers are shrinking, and deals are more enticing, success requires more than business as usual. For financial services marketers, understanding and mastering search engine optimization (SEO) is no longer optional—it's a strategic imperative.

Doing SEO right gets your content in front of the potential customers you need to see it. Before we explore how that is done, there are some costly SEO traps you should know about, which financial services marketers, in particular, can easily fall into and that you must avoid.

Financial services SEO traps to avoid

Gaming SEO: bad for business, worse for finance marketing

Finance marketers might be tempted to wedge keywords into sentences where they don’t belong or play other games to try to fool search algorithms. SEO content is written like this scans as disreputable. People don’t entrust their money to disreputable institutions. With online fraudsters always targeting finance customers, people are on high alert for unscrupulous actors. The last thing a finance marketer wants to look like is a spambot.

SEO and the finance compliance trap

It’s never good for a marketer to make a claim that can’t be backed up. In finance marketing, where regulators are always watching, such claims can be unethical and illegal. Writing content that overstates performance or offerings while trying to hop on a trending topic can get you into hot water.

Pleasing finance customers and search engines with SEO

Now that you know what to avoid, these next few SEO principles will help you create content that is attractive to both new customers and search engines.

Standing out with keyword research

Keyword research is a fundamental building block of SEO. Using a platform to find how keywords and word associations are performing gives you a view into topics your target customers are reading about so you can cater your content to their needs. It also gives you an idea of how difficult it will be to make a given piece rank high.

There’s an adage that there are “riches in niches.” When discussing SEO, we might want to add: “niche audiences search for niche content.” If you’re considering marketing to a specific micro-demographic, you can find keywords germane to their lifestyle and financial concerns and gear content towards them. The more niche you go, the more you’ll stick out.

SEO only works if quality is a top priority.

There are countless ways to do content poorly in pursuit of optimizing for algorithms. Still, they all amount to ignoring classic marketing advice: know your audience, know your product and write like an expert.

Yes, SEO may require clever keyword repetition and content organization in a certain way on screen. However, these formal elements should provide a framework for thoughtful, engaging, and accurate content.

Remember SEO’s technical side.

Web design impacts SEO. A poorly constructed website (e.g., without a properly configured secure certificate) tanks your rankings. This is true beyond the desktop/laptop, too, and too many finance marketers overlook optimizing websites for mobile. Web content management teams need to be as aligned with SEO best practices as finance marketers.

Get the local piece of the global SEO puzzle.

Say you’re a marketer for a regional bank chain. You launch a campaign to pull in new signups. Your keyword research shows some terms promising high engagement. Based on them, you write top-notch, thought-provoking, audience-targeted content, finishing with a link to open an account. You get a ton of views. You hit Google’s front page. But nobody clicks through on the offer.

In this case, your content may be read by millions of people nationwide—in areas outside where your bank operates. As you build a financial marketing strategy, consider where your customers are and who they are and pull your keywords accordingly.

Build on success with analytics.

Analytics are getting more sophisticated and providing more granular ways of quantifying success and honing strategy. The organic traffic metric gives you a broad view of content performance. Keyword rankings show how people are discovering your content, giving you clues about keeping them coming back—and building out offerings to meet their financial needs.

SEO-ready for a fiercely competitive future

In a world where financial services customers have more options than ever, earning their business means demonstrating expertise and trustworthiness with high-quality content and ensuring they see it. Whether you’re marketing for a bank, a financial advisor, or another provider, it’s up to you to show customers you’re the service they need. SEO content will get you there; SEO content is quality content, period.

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