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Google is Not Your Bestie: How to Get the Most Out of Your Digital Advertising

Posted on by Dan Natale

Remember: Google is first and foremost an advertising business. Advertising accounts for the majority of Google’s revenue, which amounted to a total of 305.63 billion U.S. dollars in 2023

Google is not your bestie.

They are a useful platform to drive qualified web traffic. Love them for that. However:

  • Google Ads reps are primarily salespeople, (bad ones at that) not impartial advisors
  • The Optimization Score often favors Google’s revenue over advertiser ROI
  • Broader ≠ Better: Suggestions to broaden keyword match types often resulted in higher impression volumes but lower conversion rates and less efficient cost-per-acquisition (CPA).
  • Google’s primary goal is increasing ad spend, not improving your business outcomes
  • Following Google’s advice can lead to inflated costs without proportional returns

Relying solely on Google’s guidance can significantly impact your marketing budget and performance. Instead, consider adopting a more strategic approach to Google Ads management.

Here’s how you can protect your ROI while still leveraging the platform:

  • Treat Google’s recommendations as starting points for testing, not definitive solutions
  • Develop KPIs aligned with your specific business goals, not just Google’s metrics
  • Invest in third-party tools or custom analytics for unbiased performance insights
  • Build a diverse digital marketing mix to reduce overreliance on Google Ads

Recap:

  1. Understand the true role of Google Ads representatives
  2. Be skeptical of the Optimization Score and its recommendations
  3. Remember that Google’s primary goal is increasing its ad revenue
  4. Balance Google’s advice with business-specific strategies and data-driven decision-making

Remember: In digital advertising, healthy skepticism is your best friend. Don’t let the platform’s revenue goals overshadow your marketing objectives.

Navigating Google’s Latest Helpful Content Update: A Guide to Aligning Your Content Strategy

Posted on by Dan Natale

Google recently released a major update to its search algorithm called the Helpful Content Update. This latest iteration aims to further promote useful, expertise-driven content while demoting low-value, thin pages in results.

As a core part of Google’s mission to connect users with authoritative information, this update continues efforts to clean up results by highlighting in-depth, satisfying content for searchers.

For content creators and businesses impacted by the fluctuations from this ongoing algorithm shift, strategic adjustments to content approaches are required. Here is a comprehensive guide to the key dimensions of the latest Helpful Content Update and how to adapt.

About the Helpful Content Update

Google first introduced the Helpful Content Update system in 2021. It generates signals used by Google’s automated ranking systems to promote content that satisfies user intent with expertise-driven information.

Previous updates focused on reducing thin, low-effort content. The September 2023 update continues this push with some key changes:

Expertise and Depth: In-depth, authoritative content created or vetted by subject matter experts is favored.

User Experience: Sites with smooth, satisfying user experiences tend to perform better. Disruptive elements like intrusive ads or pop-ups can be penalized.

Treatment of AI Content: Earlier guidance suggested AI-generated content would be demoted, but Google has softened its stance in updated documentation.

Handling Third-Party Content: Unrelated third-party content hosted on subdomains or elsewhere on a site can negatively impact site-wide quality signals, so Google recommends blocking it from being indexed.

Guidance on Recovering: Sites negatively impacted are advised to remove or improve low-quality pages identified through self-assessments

Impact and Key Takeaways

This update rewards in-depth expertise. Platforms like Reddit and Quora with user generated content insights are seeing gains. Sites with affiliate content and some popular blogs are seeing major declines.

For businesses relying on search visibility, here are key ways to align your content strategy:

  • Double down on high-quality content in your wheelhouse showing deep expertise. Bring on subject matter experts to vet and contribute.
  • Monitor your site’s analytics closely for impacts and clues about what content is falling short. Be ready to quickly optimize or remove poor-performing pages.
  • Emphasize user experience across your site by improving site speed, navigation, page design, etc. Remove disruptive ads or pop-ups.
  • Consider scaling back low-quality affiliate content or guest posts. Produce more original, authoritative content around the needs of your audience.
  • Stay agile – keep testing new formats, ideas, and platforms to provide the useful content users seek.

Strategic Roadmap for Content Creators

The emphasis should be on developing expert-driven content that provides authentic value to users. Optimize for satisfaction and depth rather than quantity.

With quality, optimization and evolution, you can ride the algorithm’s currents toward greater visibility. Adaptability is key to thriving through Google’s ongoing updates.

By focusing on expertise, usefulness and user experience, content creators can align their strategies with Google’s push toward ever-more helpful search results. #seo #sem

If you’re looking to improve online visibility and credibility, visit localhost:10008/ to learn more about our financial services digital marketing offerings. We’d love to partner on an integrated strategy tailored to your brand’s specific goals.

The Ultimate Guide to Conversion Tracking with Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

Posted on by Dan Natale

With the advent of Google Analytics 4 (GA4), the landscape of digital analytics has evolved, offering a more integrated, insightful, and user-centric approach to understanding your audience’s behavior. 

One of the most critical aspects of this new platform is its approach to conversion tracking. Conversions, or the significant interactions that users complete on your site or app, are the lifeblood of your online presence. They represent the moments when users take actions that bring value to your business, such as making a purchase, downloading a resource, or signing up for a newsletter. This comprehensive guide will walk you through the process of setting up and tracking conversions in GA4, ensuring you’re leveraging the full potential of this powerful tool.

Understanding the Basics: Predefined and Manual Conversions

In GA4, certain events are automatically tagged as conversions. These include: 

  • ‘open’
  • ‘app_store_subscription_convert’ 
  • ‘app_store_subscription_renew’ 
  • ‘In_app_purchase’
  •  ‘purchase’ 

These events are inherently valuable to most businesses, and GA4 recognizes them as such, marking them as conversions by default.

However, every business is unique, and what counts as a conversion can vary. GA4 allows you to manually mark other events as conversions to align with your specific business objectives. 

To do this, navigate to the ‘Events’ section under ‘Configure’. Here, you’ll see a list of all tracked events. You can mark an event as a conversion by toggling the ‘Mark as conversion’ switch. If you want to mark a new event as a conversion, go to ‘Conversions’ under ‘Configure,’ click ‘New conversion event’, and enter the exact event name.

Creating Custom Conversions: Tailoring GA4 to Your Needs

GA4 offers the flexibility to create custom conversions based on specific parameters of an event. This feature allows you to track conversions that are unique to your business model. 

For instance, if you want to track views of certain pages and treat them as conversions, you can use the ‘Create event’ feature. Navigate to ‘Events’ under ‘Configure,’ click ‘Create event,’ and set up a new rule. Once you’ve created the event, you can mark it as a conversion in the ‘Conversions’ section.

Tracking Specific Pages as Conversions: A Deeper Dive

Sometimes, you might want to track a specific page as a conversion, such as a thank you page after a form submission. To do this, you need to track that individual page as a unique event first. There are two ways to accomplish this:

  1. Create a new event inside Google Analytics based on an existing event: This method triggers a new event when a page view is reported for your thank you page. This setup is done entirely within Google Analytics, making it a straightforward solution if you’re already familiar with the platform.
  2. Configure a new tag in Google Tag Manager: This method sends an event every time someone views the thank you page. For example, you could send an event called ‘generate lead’ when someone completes a form on your website. This approach offers more flexibility and can be used to track a wide range of user interactions.

Viewing Conversion Data: Gleaning Insights from Your Reports

Once you’ve set up your conversions, GA4 offers a variety of reports to help you analyze your data. In the ‘Acquisition’ and ‘Traffic Acquisition’ reports, you can see your conversions segmented by traffic source. This can help you understand which channels are driving the most valuable actions. The ‘Advertising’ section provides conversion paths, showing the sequence of traffic sources that led to a conversion. This can offer valuable insights into your customer journey. You can also use the ‘Explorations’ section to create custom reports with conversion data, allowing you to delve deeper into your data and uncover unique insights.

Limitations and Differences from Universal Analytics: What You Need to Know

GA4 allows a maximum of 30 unique conversion names per property. Unlike Universal Analytics, which tracks the same conversion once per session, GA4 counts a conversion every time it occurs, regardless of the session. This means that if a user completes the same conversion multiple times in a single session, GA4 will count each occurrence as a separate conversion. This approach offers a more granular view of user behavior, but it’s important to keep this difference in mind when comparing data between GA4 and Universal Analytics.

Turning GA4 Conversion Tracking into Better Marketing Decisions

Conversion tracking in GA4 is a powerful tool that can provide valuable insights into your audience’s behavior and the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. By understanding and leveraging these features, you can optimize your website or app for better performance, drive more value for your business, and ultimately, achieve your business goals. Remember to give GA4 some time to refresh and start tracking the additional event after you’ve set it up. Also, note that changes to conversion settings do not apply retroactively and will only affect data moving forward. With this guide, you’re now equipped to navigate the world of GA4 conversion tracking.

Happy tracking!

A Guide to Transitioning from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4

Posted on by Dan Natale

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the latest iteration of Google’s web analytics platform, designed to provide businesses with more powerful insights and reporting capabilities. While Universal Analytics (UA) has been the standard for many years, GA4 is poised to become the new benchmark. 

In this guide, we’ll look at the key differences between GA4 and UA, and explore the implications of the evolution from UA to GA4 for businesses.

Data Model: Event-Based vs. Session-Based

One of the most significant differences between GA4 and UA is their data models. GA4 uses an event-based data model, allowing for more accurate tracking of user interactions and greater flexibility in measuring user behavior. In contrast, UA employs a session-based data model, which focuses on tracking user visits to a website.

GA4’s event-based approach enables businesses to capture more detailed information about user interactions, making it easier to understand customer behavior and optimize the user experience.

Cross-Platform Tracking

GA4 offers cross-platform tracking, unifying data from websites, apps, and other digital platforms. This feature provides a more comprehensive view into user behavior and enables businesses to better understand how users interact with their brand across various touchpoints.

UA, however, requires separate tracking setups for websites and apps, making it more challenging to gain a truly holistic picture of user behavior.

Enhanced Measurement

GA4’s Enhanced Measurement feature automatically captures a range of user interactions, including scrolling, file downloads, and video engagement, without the need for additional configuration. Businesses can leverage this feature to obtain more granular insights into user behavior with minimal effort.

By contrast, UA requires manual configuration for tracking multiple user interactions, which can be both time-consuming and less accurate.

Audience Building and Targeting

GA4’s improved audience-building and targeting capabilities enable businesses to create more precise segments for marketing campaigns. These enhancements allow for better personalization and more effective targeting, ultimately leading to higher conversion rates and better ROI.

While UA also supports audience segmentation, its capabilities are limited compared to GA4’s advanced options.

Analysis Hub and Reporting

GA4 introduces the Analysis Hub, a powerful set of reporting and analysis tools that provide deeper insights and more advanced analytics capabilities. This new feature allows businesses to better understand user behavior, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions.

UA offers a variety of reports and analysis tools, but they are less advanced and less customizable than those in GA4.

Privacy Compliance

GA4 is designed with data privacy in mind, making it easier for businesses to maintain compliance, protect user privacy, and adhere to regulations like GDPR and CCPA. 

The new iteration includes powerful data deletion and IP anonymization features, while UA’s privacy compliance features are limited in comparison.

Preparing for the Transition to Google Analytics 4: A Comprehensive Guide

UA has served as a reliable web analytics tool for many years, but GA4 offers a host of improvements and new capabilities that make it a worthy successor. The transition to GA4 may require some adjustments, but the benefits – from enhanced measurement and reporting to better privacy compliance – make it a valuable investment for businesses looking to optimize their digital presence and gain deeper insights into user behavior.

To help you prepare for this transition, we’ve created a comprehensive guide outlining the steps you should take to ensure a seamless migration.

Familiarize yourself with GA4’s capabilities and advantages

We detailed GA4’s enhancements above, but in summary, GA4 offers: 

  • An event-driven data model that provides more accurate tracking of user interactions
  • Enhanced audience-building and targeting capabilities
  • Advanced analysis tools, such as BigQuery integration
  • Cross-platform tracking to unify data from websites and apps
  • Better data privacy compliance options

Understanding these new features will help you maximize their benefits for your business.

Set up a parallel GA4 property

Before fully transitioning, create a parallel GA4 property alongside your existing UA property. This allows you to track data in both systems and gives you a chance to evaluate GA4’s performance in comparison with UA. This step also ensures that you won’t lose historical data during the transition.

Configure data collection

GA4 has an automatic data collection feature, but you may need to configure additional tracking options manually. Check your existing UA tracking setup to make sure all required events, conversions, and goals are properly configured in GA4. You might also want to consider using GA4’s Enhanced Measurement feature to capture more granular data automatically.

Review your custom dimensions and metrics

GA4 replaces UA’s custom dimensions and metrics with new data structures called parameters. To ensure data continuity and consistency, you should first review your existing custom dimensions and metrics in UA, then map them to the corresponding parameters in GA4. 

Create and manage audiences

Thanks to GA4’s improved audience-building and targeting features, you can create more precise segments for your marketing campaigns. Familiarize yourself with these new capabilities to start creating audiences in GA4.

Set up custom alerts and reporting

GA4 introduces a new set of reporting tools, including Analysis Hub, to provide advanced analytics capabilities and help you identify the trends that drive better decisions. Set up custom alerts and reports in GA4 to monitor important metrics and events. 

Plan your data migration

When you’re comfortable with GA4 and ready to make the switch, it’s time to develop a data migration plan. This should include:

  • Identifying and documenting any gaps or discrepancies between UA and GA4
  • Deciding whether to import historical data from UA to GA4 or maintain separate archives
  • Creating a timeline for the migration, including any necessary training for team members
  • Ensuring data continuity by setting up proper tracking and reporting structures in GA4

Potential UA to GA4 Migration Challenges 

Despite the many advantages of GA4, we’d be remiss not to acknowledge that the platform also comes with some challenges and limitations that users may face during the transition from UA. Below are the most common transition obstacles we’ve seen, as well as some tips for overcoming them:  

Difficulty adjusting for seasoned UA users

For those familiar with UA, the significant differences between the two platforms may complicate the transition to GA4. Seasoned UA users might struggle:

  • Adjusting to a new event-based data model
  • Adapting to changes in data organization tiers
  • Learning to use new reporting tools and features
  • Handling more complex e-commerce tracking

Tip: Take advantage of available resources, such as Google’s documentation and training materials, to learn about GA4’s new features and functionalities. This will help ease the transition and ensure that you’re making the most of the new platform.

Historical data challenges

GA4 starts collecting data upon setup, which means that historical data from UA doesn’t appear in GA4’s view, making comparing year-to-year data difficult.

Tip: Continue to use UA alongside GA4 to access historical data and make comparisons. Adjust GA4’s data retention setting from the default two months to a recommended 14 months upon implementation.

GA4 beta features

Many GA4 features are still in beta, which means that users may encounter bugs and limitations.

Tip: Stay updated on GA4’s development and improvements by following industry news and Google’s announcements. Report any bugs or issues you do encounter to help the platform evolve and improve.

Data privacy and compliance

GA4 is designed to improve data privacy, but the new compliance features and settings can be difficult to navigate.

Tip: Familiarize yourself with GA4’s privacy features, such as data deletion and IP anonymization, and consult with legal experts to ensure your implementation meets the necessary requirements.

Implementation and setup

Setting up GA4 and configuring it to capture the necessary data may be more complex than setting up UA, particularly when it comes to tracking events and conversions.

Tip: Take the time to carefully plan and execute your GA4 implementation, ensuring that all required tracking events and conversions are configured correctly. Consult Google’s documentation and seek help from experts if necessary.

The transition to GA4 may seem daunting at first, but by following the steps outlined in this guide and dedicating time to understanding the new platform, you’ll be well prepared to maximize its potential, gain valuable insights and optimize your online presence.

Keyword Research 101: A 7-Step Guide

Posted on by Dan Natale

Keyword research is the process of identifying and analyzing the keywords and phrases that potential customers are using to find products or services like yours. Before you can begin using SEO (search engine optimization) as a marketing tool to drive traffic to your website, you need to understand the keywords you’re optimizing for. 

Follow these seven steps to get started with keyword research:

  1. Define your target audience and goals. Identify the demographics, pain points, and interests of your target audience, as well as the specific goals you want to achieve with your marketing campaign.
  2. Create a list of seed keywords. Start by creating a list of keywords and phrases that are relevant to your business and target audience. You can use tools like Google’s Keyword Planner, SEMrush, and Ahrefs to generate ideas.
  3. Analyze search volume and competition. Use keyword research tools to determine the search volume (how many searches per month for a specific keyword) and competition (how difficult it will be to rank for a specific keyword) for each keyword on your list. Look for keywords with a high search volume and low competition.
  4. Refine your list. Eliminate irrelevant keywords and group similar keywords together.
  5. Create long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are longer, more specific phrases that are less common but often more targeted. These keywords often convert better as they are more specific and less competitive; for example, “how does direct indexing work” instead of “direct indexing.”
  6. Use your keywords. Once you have your list of keywords, you can use them in your website content, blog posts, page titles and meta tags to improve your search engine rankings and drive more traffic to your website. (Importantly, make sure you’re using your keywords in a way that reads naturally, and be careful not to overuse them. Google will penalize your website for keyword stuffing.) 
  7. Continuously monitor your keywords. Regularly check the search volume, competition and other metrics of the keywords you are targeting, and optimize accordingly.

Stop Wasting Money and Follow These 5 Tips for Building Landing Pages That Convert

Posted on by Dan Natale

One of the most common mistakes we see marketing teams make is treating landing pages – the standalone web pages built specifically for digital marketing campaigns, where visitors “land” after clicking on an advertisement – as afterthoughts or easy lifts instead of with the thought, care and attention they deserve. 

Landing pages aren’t lesser than your main website pages. In many cases, they’ll be more responsible for engagement and conversions, especially if you’re putting significant spend behind ad campaigns at high volumes. 

Whether your landing page is hosting a content download, a video, or a get in touch call-to-action (CTA), the copy, design and user experience should be intentionally executed to both reflect the corresponding ad campaign and make taking action extremely compelling for the reader. 

Otherwise, you’re quite literally throwing money away on ads that won’t convert. Even the most powerful, deeply personalized and outside-the-box advertisement won’t save a lackluster landing page. Think of your ads like the promise and your landing page like the payoff.

1. Create Multiple Variations

Just like your ad campaigns target different personas as well as different stages in the buyer’s journey, so should your landing pages. There’s no such thing as a catch-all landing page – or at least, there shouldn’t be. 

Anyone landing on your page should feel like it was built just for them, and the only way to do that is to create multiple landing pages, with messaging specific to:

  • Persona: If you serve both accountants and wealth managers, for example, you know that their needs and goals are different and your landing pages should be tailored to these nuances.
  • Stage of the buyer’s journey: Content that resonates with a prospect in the consideration stage will be markedly different from what a prospect in the awareness phase is ready to consume (see our breakdown here for content that aligns with each stage).
  • Your ad campaigns: Especially if you’re bidding on keywords, make sure those search terms show up prominently above the fold on your landing page.

2. Prioritize a Mobile-First Design

Recent research indicates that over 70% of web traffic comes from mobile devices – and that 61% of users will never return to a website that isn’t mobile friendly. 

So while you can’t ignore the desktop experience, it’s important to focus on optimizing your landing page for mobile performance to capture the majority of potential visitors: 

  • Aim for < 3 second load time
  • Make sure your forms are short and easy to fill out 
  • Include strategic design elements like videos and carousels, which enable you to include more valuable information without lengthening the page scroll
  • Test the landing page yourself to ensure there are no confusing line breaks or warped formatting issues

3. Go Hard on Social Proof

Prospects want to know that people like them and businesses like theirs have been successful using your product or service. Reviews, testimonials, logos and star ratings lend credibility to your business while creating an aspirational element that enables your prospects to envision themselves as the heroes of their own stories.

It’s unlikely users are going to read every word on your page or scroll all the way to the bottom, so pull your social proof closer to the top of the page.

Another key here is to tailor the social proof you choose to the persona for whom the landing page is being built. Going back to our earlier example, accountants don’t care how well you serve wealth managers; they want to know that other accountants, who face the same challenges they do, love your solution.

4. Maximize the Impact of Copy and Design

Your landing page has to grab and keep a reader’s attention long enough to drive a conversion, or at least make enough of an impression that a prospect returns to your website at a later time. 

So make them want to stay on your page and learn more about you with:

  • Beautiful, high-resolution product images
  • Outside-the-box creative (avoid using the same stock photos you see on every advertisement and eBook cover)
  • Messaging that makes it clear you understand their pain points, challenges and goals
  • Benefits and features; your audience wants to know both what you can do for them, and how your solution works

5. Give Away Something Useful

Make your landing page as customer-centric as possible by thinking outside the ‘get a demo’ or ‘let’s talk’ box – offers that help you sell more than they help your prospects buy – and giving away a free resource that provides actual value, such as:

  • An eBook tailored to their challenges based on what you’ve learned from client conversations
  • A detailed checklist that helps them do their job more effectively
  • A practical user guide with tips they can put into action right away
  • A free consultation with one of your subject matter experts

Ready for more? Check out our free landing page template, which you can use as a guide for conceptualizing and building your next landing page.

SEO For Fintech: Top 5 Things To Do Today

Posted on by Dan Natale

Here is your fintech marketer’s guide to improving your organic search presence, whether you’re in retail banking, wealthtech, credit, or another fintech-related segment. Many of the tactics outlined will work for any B2B business, but for fintech, there are a few other things to consider:

First, always remember to EAT.  

As part of Google’s quality guidelines, specific industries are considered “your money or your life” industries because they impact a searcher’s day-to-day life. These include health, legal, news, and, you guessed it, finance. Given that many if not most fintech providers offer a consumer product or platform or have a client who has an end client that is a consumer, they often fall under YMYL scrutiny.

That’s where EAT comes into play. EAT stands for “expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.” Google places a more significant burden on the authority of your website and the trustworthiness of your content. 

Regardless of whether you have a well-established brand or are a startup, you should:

  • Make sure your website and landing pages have valid SSL certificates
  • Ensure you have an About and Contact Us section on your site. Make sure you list actual employees and don’t use stock photos of them.
  • Add an author’s name, picture, and even a bio if you have it.
  • Use writers with expertise within the financial services space. 
  • List the physical address where you do business.
  • Back up and substantiate all claims in your content by citing sources and studies.

Many marketers and agencies often mean well but are sometimes misguided in their approaches to improving EAT. They will cut corners and try to fast-track success here. Make sure you do not do any of the following:

  • Generate content automatically or use an AI-powered content generator
  • Create sales-y content that is entirely self-promotional without providing value to a user
  • Promote blog posts and content with vague or undefined authorship

Second, do your keyword research

Whether you are an in-house marketer or manage a partner agency, it is best to have a complete understanding of the primary keywords that drive search engine traffic to your site. If you have the budget, invest in an SEO platform like SEMrush or Ahrefs. Google Keyword Planner is a free alternative but will not provide you the granular and competitor data the paid platforms will. 

As you leverage these tools, keep a few things in mind:

Find informational keywords

Informational keywords are used to capture top-of-the-funnel prospects starting their research. They might search for things like “marketing template for financial advisors,” “Insurance rates for people over 40,” or “banking app that offers crypto.” You want to target searchers who are not searching for your specific product. Why? Because very few people at this stage know what they want.

Don’t forget about related keywords.

Don’t sleep on keywords that may seem unrelated to your product or service but position you as a thought leader with your audience. If you sell consumer loan software, you might optimize for personal finance-related keywords. If you sell software to asset managers, you might want to optimize for keywords related to portfolio management or specific sector-associated strategies.

Look for search volume

Search volume is going to vary wildly significantly within the fintech and financial services space. A consumer-focused product or platform will have a considerably higher volume than an institutional or B2B product, so you must deeply understand your area or sub-niche within financial services. A quick trick that can help is to check out the keyword’s estimated CPC (cost per click). Advertisers are bidding on the keyword because it converts if it is very high despite a low search volume.

Business appropriate

A big mistake both agencies and in-house marketers make is not targeting the correct B2B or B2C keywords. Retail investors and retail banking drive tons of search volume, and too often, keywords like “interest rates on a savings account” or “personal finance software” are targeted for a B2B firm. However, suppose you offer a platform for financial advisors or software for an institution that you do not want to target keywords like “wealth manager reviews,” “best interest rates on a savings account,” “personal finance software,” etc. In that case, this distinction between a consumer search and a business search is critical and will save everyone a lot of time and effort.

Third, write great pillar content.

Pillar content is your long-form content that answers questions that potential prospect may be searching. Pillar content should be high-value, long-form, and ultimately provide value and position your financial services brand as an authority.

You might provide readers with a guide to automating their finances or How to Drive More Leads as a Financial Advisor. You’ll want to write this in such a way that:

  • Prospects stay engaged for long periods on the page.
  • Other sites will link to this piece of content since it is authoritative.
  • Consistently drives traffic to your website over many months and years.

Remember, Google places a lot of value on fresh content. For financial services and fintech, in particular, you will have to be careful that your tech-related content does not become dated and that you aren’t writing about time-sensitive topics like interest rates and earnings season. If you can take a hands-on approach, you can continually update your pillar content with new information. Just remember, if you are referencing a year or a time-specific item, then you will need to update it accordingly. You might even see a boost each time you update it.

 Don’t forget to do some On Page 101 optimization when you are ready to post, and to include your target keywords in your content. A word of caution here: Google is pretty good at understanding when a website is stuffing keywords into a piece of content. You’ll want to make sure it is written for a user and not an algorithm. Still, it is essential to include your target keywords in:

  • Your page’s title tag
  • In an H1 and H2
  • 5-7x throughout the content
  • Once in your meta description
  • At least 1x in your post intro and conclusion

Fourth, Get Backlinks

Despite numerous algo updates and changes to ranking factors over the years, high-quality backlinks remain key to your fintech SEO success. A backlink, most simply, is a link from one website to another (in this case, yours).

When considering your backlinking strategy and tactics, it is worthwhile to consider investing in a reputable agency or dedicated headcount on your team. In today’s search landscape, the following tactics will require a more thoughtful approach:

Broken Link Building

Broken link building is an approach where you find a broken link using one of your SEO platforms, recreate the content, and then find those linking to it and ask them to link to your new content. This approach is an excellent tactic for fintech and financial services since every organization has a calculator or tool of some kind on its site. You’ll have to do a bit of manual outreach, but it can be worthwhile.

Build Your Linkable Resources

Instead of waiting for someone else’s to break, you could create your own calculator /tool/platform. These can go a lot of different ways. You can invest in the development of some whizz-bang tool or stick to something simple with an Excel-based backend.

Guest Posting

If you know, you know. Guest posting is a great way to drive links and build relationships with influences and sites within your fintech niche. However, it is a grind and will require a lot of content writing, editing, and outreach. 

Podcast Appearances

If you can swing it, send your senior leadership out on the podcast circuit. While some are better than others, this is a great way to drive backlinks and get your exec teams’ names out there. There is a bit of a time commitment, and sometimes these aren’t always free, but even if you must appear on Kevin’s ETFs and Things, it will be well worth it.

Conduct and publish original research

Bloggers, journalists, and industry trade publications love to write about, cite, link to and otherwise use data and research. Even if it is biased to your firm, survey your clients. Find out what 47% of them think about X. Then publish it as a blog post. This is great for driving backlinks, but also for understanding things like attitudes about investing, industry trends, and client and consumer behavior.

Fifth, don’t forget your friends in Compliance.

Every fintech marketer, either in-house or agency, knows the joys of having Compliance reviewing content. However, it is critical to keep Compliance involved in your approach to SEO and generating content. 

If your content is boring, no one will click on or link to it. Many firms are guilty of these. The abundance of caution often comes at the expense of traffic and readability. If your content makes claims that can’t be substantiated or run afoul of regulatory authorities, then you’ll be in trouble with both Google and the SEC. To avoid these headaches, you should be: 

  • Having Compliance review all pillar content, blog posts, and site copy.
  • Listing all of your disclosure copy and fine print where applicable. 
  • Linking to your privacy policy page in your website’s footer.
  • Keeping your terms and conditions updated if you offer software or a SaaS product. 

All About Execution 

Many marketing executives debate if building an in-house team or hiring an agency is the way to go. In-house works great if you source and hire an experienced team lead or resources with both in-house and agency experience. You will also have to remain committed to this investment and make SEO/organic search a key driver of your traffic.

 You may want to go the agency route if you do not have a large team or if your subset of fintech is exceptionally competitive. Ideally, you’ll want to find a firm that specializes in fintech and financial services.

And, Finally 

Building out your organic search presence takes time, effort, and resources, but ultimately will pay dividends for years to come. If you are just starting out or have a growing fintech brand or fintech marketing agency , your SEO strategy should be a cornerstone of your growth plan.

Channel and Campaign Performance Report Template

Posted on by Grow Intentionly

Click the link below to download your template now.

Make a copy of this template to start using the built-in equations, which will help you better understand which channels and campaigns are driving actual results for your business, and which are bleeding your budget.

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