Updated on April 15th, 2024 at 09:33 pm
Created a financial services product or a SAAS (software as a service) or financial advisor product? Then you’ll likely want to know how you can drive traffic to the website to help promote your brand.
Similar to building an audience as a financial advisor, there are multiple methods you can use to help bring visitors, clicks and loyal customers to your website and help get your brand noticed in the fintech space.
Here are the best ways to increase traffic to your financial services website;
Create Website Content
One of the most over recommended, yet under specified recommendations in digital content is “create content for your website”. So we’re here to help you define a specific content strategy based on the value different types of content adds to your website visitors.
In essence, web content can attract website visitors that are interested in finding out more about topics relevant to your website, your brand or your services. Just because your website gets traffic doesn’t mean you’ll be able to convert these visitors into subscribers, clients or paying customers.
Create Useful Content
Most importantly all the content you produce for those looking on search engines must be useful.
Useful content can come in any style, shape or tone. But to be truly useful, content should bring you returns as well as providing value for the users reading it.
This recommendation is not suggesting that blogs aren’t valuable, but seeks to help explain how there’s a deeper level of value to uncover beyond, just writing blog content.
Evergreen content
Evergreen content is the type of content that rarely or seldom changes. The type of content that requires little management or ongoing maintenance but perhaps could be improved from time to time as the process changes or services vary.
For example, how to apply for a credit card is a good example of this type of content, it’ll always be searched for, there are several ways you can apply for a card and despite some evolution overtime in the methods or tools that you can use to apply, the general data transfer between applicant and provider remains the same.
For example, online applications have become a popular and efficient way to get a credit card, yet in person in branch applications are equally valid. Applying via an app on your phone for a credit card from a provider you already have an active account with may be the fastest way.
The primary intent of evergreen content is consistent returns overtime which only requires minimal, evolutionary changes to keep it up to date, rather than revolutionary updates.
Think of topics that have related evergreen questions associated with them that you can create content around and help your web visitors back to your related products or services that can help them achieve the goal.
Blog content
More generic blog content is also valuable. Although can often suffer from a lack of clear strategic direction and therefore organic search value.
Choosing how to theme your blog and which topics to cover can be tricky unless you have clear understanding of what users are looking for.
You will want to make sure your blog focuses around topics related to your business, the products and services it offers and complements your brand overall.
To get started with blogging; identify the most popular topics users search for and engage with, identify how to cover these topics, provoke questions and provide information in a way that allows you to express your “expert” opinion.
Unlike the evergreen content, where there may be a defined answer, set of rules or specific process, your blog content should be a place where you and your team are able to express their opinions, share ideas, share knowledge and help your users by giving your own real insights into how upcoming changes, rules or products can be beneficial to certain customers.
Blog content isn’t shot in the dark, let’s just write abut this topic and see how it goes content. It should provide real user value, your own expert insights and ideas but of course, stop short of offering user advice or financial guidance.
To help ensure content you are writing for your blog will create user value think of the following before publishing.
Who is the audience for the piece? – You may have. defined niche audience for your website already, you may have multiple audiences, try to envision when putting your content plans (content briefs) together who the piece is for, who will read it and who will benefit from it.
What level is the content at? – awareness, product research phase, purchase phase
What will your ideal user input into search engines to get there? – think about what a user might enter into Google to get to the content piece, research what actual users input and create content around those search queries. Even if volumes are very low or there’s no apparent search at all it doesn’t mean it won’t come, but as you create content try to envision what a user would search for to arrive on your piece. Even if your piece is a follow up, i.e. linked to piece, from a page that already gets traffic, this can still be incredibly valuable.
News & Current Affairs Content Detailing the Latest Industry Changes in Financial Services
News and current affairs is tough in any niche, but especially so in finance. Whereas some niches may have an as yet undefined authoritative news source, finance almost certainly does.
Plus you’ll likely be competing with the main stream media for attention if the story is considered relevant to a large enough number of people.
The challenges of ranking news content does not mean you should not approach it but, to make sure you get returns, clicks, leads and sales from the content you produce try following these tips.
Hone in on a niche or specific topic – even if your site covers multiple topics, work on a single niche or topical area, especially if you are low on staff. This will help you gain authority in the niche faster, cover all of the important news and build an audience.
Create a press calendar – identify external factors that impact your niche and create a calendar which details when these announcements take place. For example, companies regularly announce profits, run earnings calls and announce and launch new products, if you operate a website in the investing niche, getting ahead and planning news content in advance of these announcements can help your get your opinions published first. Faster opinions, for news content especially. can help you build a following.
Content About Your Product, Service, Brand or Unique Value Proposition
Probably the easiest way to generate content for any website is to build content around your product offering and services.
Although, the success of this content in terms of gaining traffic will rely somewhat on your active user base and to some extent the brand awareness your organisation has.
For example, if you operate an investing app that helps customers to invest in shares on global stock markets, you could create content detailing how your service works.
As your user base grows, you’ll find this content gets searched for and visited more frequently and in greater volumes.
When creating a brand, don’t forget the content that covers how your service works, how to download and install your app, how to add money to your account, what is the best value subscription for me, how does your app pricing work, can i get your app on android and IOS?, how is my account secured?
There’s near infinite opportunity and if your company offers unique features or benefits it will difficult for your competitors to replicate your content strategy.
I wouldn’t recommend running this strategy as your only content style but if you pair it with news, blog or evergreen strategies you should create authority and demand for your brand.
Here are even more strategy ideas, tips and advice for SEO for financial services.
Create Financial Services Calculators, Tools and Infographics
Similar to creating content. Tools and calculators can generate huge traffic volumes for your financial services website, especially if they help to solve user problems, provide clear comparison or answers or are unique.
Ensure any calculators you create are relevant to your product or niche and crucially relevant to the unique value proposition of your brand; i.e. if you provide mortgages create a calculator that helps users quickly understand how much they’ll pay for each of your mortgage products, if you aggregate mortgages a calculator that helps users compare the fees of equivalent mortgage products would be more relevant and more useful.
Remember, while calculators and tools can generate large numbers of visitors to a website, they can sometimes be difficult to convert directly into leads and sales.
Make sure you think about follow on content that is related to your calculators and tools that can help convert these visitors into customers.
Get Found Locally
Away from content production, there’s opportunity to gain visibility in search engines by detailing the products and services you offer on your website, mapping your physical location to your digital presence and targeting relevant local search queries.
Getting found locally by relevant, engaged and valuable customers should be a priority, especially if you offer in person appointments, is incredibly valuable and vital.
Use free tools like setting up a Google Business profile to help your business get recognised in location based searches and through Google products like Google maps.
Google business profile’s can also display contact details for your business, opening times, allow you to link directly to your bookings page so customers can easily make appointments.
Marking up the products and services you offer with service schema can also help Google’s local ranking algorithm understand what services you offer and surface your service pages when people in your area search for related services and products.
Use Financial Schema Markup
If you’re selling financial products or help connect your customers with financial services then using financial product schema on your website pages where you display their details is another good way to help search engines “understand” your webpages and the purpose of them.
Correctly marking up your pages can help surface your webpages for related product based searches as well as brand or service related searches.
Users searching for a particular product generally reflect a much higher intent, so can increase financial leads and sales too. to find and get products so factoring this element in to your strategy makes commercial sense.
Here is how to check schema markup is working on your website.
Build Links to Your Website
Links are one of the best ways to gain traffic to your website because, not only do many links refer active and engaged users to your website, but they can also help you rank higher in organic search results in search engines.
Try to gain links from relevant websites that host content related to the products and services you offer.
If you’re short of time, even promoting visual aids, infographics and product summaries by adding them to Pinterest then linking to the page on your site where these are hosted is a great shortcut. Just make sure your visual content is original an unique to your website.
Want to gain links quickly? Get help with link building for SEO.
Optimise Your Website
Do you have a lot of older or out of date content already live on your financial services website? You could make this old content into a traffic generating hub with some content updates and refinements to bring it up to date.
The best way to do this is to identify what the pages are currently ranking for or what they previously ranked for and update the on page content inline with this.
To identify previously ranking search queries, use a free tool like Google search console to assess each page.
Google Web Stories
Think of Google Web Stories as similar to Instagram stories but for your website, rather than hosted on a social media app.
These are short snippets of visual and text based content that you edit to match your brand but target like a web page to display in traditional search engine results.
They’re optimised for mobile devices and can help your website gain insane levels of traffic because they’re very often featured in Google discover, a system in which Google tries to put relevant, useful and interesting content in front of the types of audience that most wants to see it, via the Google app.
Here are some examples of Google web stories, related to SEO we’ve put together.
Outside of SEO
Away from SEO, there are plenty of methods you can employ to help boost traffic to your financial services website. These include social media marketing, advertising and brand building.
Here are our favourite ways to increase web traffic without relying on search engine optimisation to do so.
Social Media Marketing
Social media presence is probably the fastest way to start generating traffic to your website. If you’re creating content, marketing new products or just starting your business make sure you set up social media accounts for the organisation.
Our recommendations would be;
- X (twitter)
- TikTok
- Next Door
- Threads
When you create new content, schedule it to go live across your social media platforms to help build a following and start getting engaged users onto your website.
If you’d prefer, you can pay for increased reach on social media platforms, by setting up a budget for ads to run over a specific period of time.
Social ads can be useful if you’re launching a new product or service and you can refine down the targeting area to target local people if you are offering your services nearby.
Paid Ads in Search Engines
Paid search ads, or PPC is buying your way to the top of search engines. If you know your site is valuable, can convert leads, sell products and already makes money, you could accelerate this by creating a budget to run PPC campaigns to drive more traffic to your site.
Much like social ads, paid as are useful if you are launching a product, have specific target of traffic or revenue for a time period.
They can be expensive, but paid search is likely the highest quality traffic you’ll pay for.
Build a Brand
The most long winded and non-specific way to gain traffic is to build a brand.
One of the most reliable and consistent traffic sources of website traffic is through branded search queries.
The specifics of building a recognisable brand are nuanced and can be complex and expensive, however you’ll need to factor in;
- budgets for advertising (both online and offline)
- sponsorship
- brand positioning
- brand story
- brand tone and visuals
- slogans
- look and feel
- strategy
- referral systems
Branding is probably the slowest, longest and most costly method, but is probably the best way to guarantee traffic too.
Building a financial services brand can be especially tough because it is an industry with a lot of competition, establish key players and, depending on the type of financial business you’re creating, often perceived as stale.
Published on: 05/08/2023