Time to read: 7 minutes
Not Sure How Your Financial Company Should Be Approaching SEO? We’ve Got the Strategies You’re Looking For.
As you probably already know, search engine optimization is the process of increasing your company’s rating on Google, Bing, and now even AI-generated answers through a variety of specific tactics. For finance companies, given that money and financial advice are seen as sensitive topics to search engines, it’s a bit trickier than just having a website loaded with good content.
But don’t fret. Once you know what you can and cannot do, you can master the art of SEO for your financial brand and start generating revenue.
Three Biggest Challenges Financial Brands Face While Doing SEO
– Complex topics vs. Google’s YMYL standards
– Strict compliance and regulatory requirements
– Struggling with local SEO for multiple branches
To help you combat some of these setbacks, we’re addressing some of these challenges with strategies you may find useful when evaluating your SEO approach.
1 – Defining YMYL Content and Why It Matters for Financial Companies
As defined by Google, YMYL stands for “Your Money Your Life.” This term applies to pages that impact people’s health, financial stability, safety, and happiness. Topics that can be considered YMYL include:
- News
- Government and law
- Finance
- Shopping
- Health
- Safety
- Groups of people
- And more
If you’re encouraging the user to make a decision or take action on a page you’re writing concerning these topics, the page will likely be considered a YMYL page. Google wants users to use their best judgment when reading about these specific topics, so they rank pages featuring such content differently. Finance companies, for instance, must abide by a different set of restrictions to avoid penalties from Google. This is because in Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines, they state that financial advice is a “topic that could damage a person’s ability to support themselves and their families.”
The guidelines that accompany YMYL pages are extremely important to follow, as you want to provide the best information possible for your audience while also trying to rank above your competitors. Google’s implementation of these guidelines stops people from uploading spammy, false information that could negatively affect someone’s life. To help adhere to these policies, take these steps when evaluating your content:
- Ensure your content is created by qualified and accredited humans, not AI
- Conduct rigorous and consistent fact-checking for information accuracy on a timely basis
- Include transparent legal disclaimers, privacy protections, and clear contact information
- Demonstrate authority and prove content is genuine and readable to humans rather than search engines
TLDR on Your Money Your Life Content
| YMYL Topic | Topics on Real-Life Experience | Topics on Advice from Experts Only |
|---|---|---|
| Filing Taxes | A LinkedIn post from a small business owner sharing a platform they used to do taxes. | Guidance and instructions on how to fill out tax forms. |
| 401k Savings | Google review of a retirement saving consultant by a newly married couple. | Advice on asset allocation, tax-advantaged accounts, and risk modeling. |
| Home Mortgages | A TikTok from a first-time buyer and their thoughts on closing on a house. | Guides about different types of mortgage contract terms. |
2 – How Legal Regulations Play a MAJOR Part in SEO for Financial Brands
When it comes to marketing in the finance sector, you must adhere to specific regulations outlined for the industry. In part, this means when advertising specific products, your messaging must be clear and concise and not misleading in any way. This is extremely important to keep in mind as you implement SEO strategies.
When beginning your SEO campaign, it’s necessary to review all legal requirements, such as the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, the Truth in Lending Act, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and more. We recommend having a legal or compliance expert review all marketing materials before they are published.
Your legal team vs. new content: The ongoing battle
We understand that you might not be able to easily publish new content on your website due to restrictions from legal. Thankfully. There are other ways you can work to improve your site’s rankings, such as spending time revamping your old content to ensure that it’s up to date with the latest SEO techniques.
Here are some ways to improve your current content without having to go through a lengthy process:
- Re-examine your inner links – Internally linking prominent pages on your site helps each page gain more exposure in the eyes of search engines while making it easier for users to navigate your website and find exactly what they’re looking for. Pro tip: When assessing your inner links, make sure there is a unique variance of the anchor text to add more value to the links, too.
- Sprinkle in more keywords – Relevant keywords help your pages rank higher, and you’ll also be able to track the kind of traffic that’s coming to your page. This is a core part of an effective SEO strategy, so it’s important to ensure keywords are included on your prominent pages. You may be able to add a few more keywords to a page without having the page re-evaluated if no pertinent information on the page is changing, but you may want to run it by your legal team first.
- Add author information – Adding a section about authors helps you to display expertise and adds a personal touch for readers. Be sure to add ‘Person’ schema to employee bio pages, too, and link out to reputable mentions these authors have gotten online.
- Build existing trust signals – When users are looking to work with a finance company, they want someone they know they can trust with their money. This means that to win users over, you must display how trustworthy your institution is, and this can be accomplished through your awards, certifications, and reviews. Highlighting these key aspects of your company will show users that you’re a legitimate organization with experience in the industry.
3 – Local SEO vs. Juggling Multiple Branch Locations
If your company services customers via several branch locations, you need to treat every individual branch as its own local entity, which presents both strategic opportunities and some logistical challenges. Here is what you’ll want to do if your brand has multiple locations:
Creating Individual Profiles – Create/and or claim and verify separate Google Business Profiles (GBP) for every single location. Be sure to fill out as much as possible. This includes any extra business categories that make sense. Also, ensure you have unique exterior and interior photos and see how you can obtain customer reviews without violating any rules, as they can help improve the branch’s local rating.
Citation and Directory Management – You’ll then likely want to invest in a platform such as Yext that can handle mass creation of directory listings that have each branch’s information. This can also help you ensure NAP (name, address, and phone number) consistency.
Linking to Individual Location Pages – Having individual pages allows you to showcase specific branches’ information, with the contact details (address, hours, and phone number) people need. Similarly to how we mentioned showcasing trust signals, you’ll want to include accreditation of the staff, local awards, and more.
Pro tip: Other local SEO platforms such as Whitespark may be a handy tool to have if you have dozens of locations, especially if they often get suspended or people (or Google) are constantly changing information on your profiles.
Don’t Have Time for SEO? We Can Handle Your Marketing for You
Our digital marketing agency has worked with hundreds of brands over the years, including companies that provide financial services. Explore our marketing services for finance companies below:
- SEO marketing for financial services
- Search ads on Google and Bing
- Website design for finance brands
