The Complete Guide to Fintech SEO in 2024

Concepts and solutions focussed on digital payments, cryptocurrencies, credit solutions, and personal finance management tools are not easily understood or trusted by everyone.

60% of people don’t have confidence in financial institutions because of the fear of the unknown and sector scandals. Hence, unlike other industries, SEO for fintech should prioritize building trust through expertly-written content because the chances for misinformation are high. 

Your fintech marketing strategies should focus on having a UX-friendly site, creating bottom-of-the-funnel content tailored to specific customer pain points, and leveraging industry insights to stand out. 

Let’s discuss the best methods to supercharge your fintech SEO strategy to reach your organic marketing goals. 

 

What is Fintech SEO?

Fintech SEO is the practice of optimizing the websites, content, and online presence of financial technology companies. The goal is to raise their organic rankings and attract clients and investors. 

SEO for financial services focuses on targeting specific keywords and phrases relevant to the financial sector. It also ensures compliance with financial regulations and addresses the unique needs of the fintech audience.

With the help of a powerful fintech SEO plan, you can remove the customer onboarding bottlenecks by enhancing your website’s visibility and optimizing user experience. 

A well-designed fintech search engine optimization strategy is different from general SEO. Here are the major differences between basic and financial products SEO: 

 

General SEO	Fintech SEO
Basic SEO is primarily brand-focused, with impressions and traffic as the primary KPIs.	Fintech SEO is more conversion-oriented and focuses on improving business metrics like MQLs and SQLs.
The core SEO content marketing plan consists of blogs, articles, product descriptions, industry news, and informational content relevant to a broad audience.	The fintech SEO content plan includes detailed financial guides, white papers on industry trends, and product videos. It also consists of case studies about fintech applications, and educational resources on financial products.
A standard search engine optimization plan does not have to deal with region-specific financial regulations.	Fintech SEO frequently needs to account for global financial regulations and market differences. This includes optimizing for local compliance issues and ensuring content aligns with regional financial practices and standards.
Competition levels depend on the sector’s market dynamics and search volume. The competition is quite low for small businesses targeting local areas.	Competition in fintech SEO is pretty high.  The number of startups in insurance, financial, and bank sectors have doubled since 2019.

 

How Can SEO Help Fintech Companies?

Ahrefs analyzed 14 billion pages to find the actual amount of traffic received by websites.

The results?

• More than 96.55% of pages get zero traffic from search engines like Google.
• 1.94% of pages receive 1–10 visits, while 1.08% get 11–100.
• 0.36% of pages acquire 101–1000 visits, while only 0.07% receive 1000+ visits. 

These results tell us that businesses that don’t opt for search engine optimization services have fewer chances of acquiring Google visits. 

Full-scale SEO campaigns for financial companies offer the following advantages:

• Increased visibility: 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results. Local SEO services enhance a fintech company’s SEO presence on search engines by helping it rank on the first page of Google. Therefore, fintech firms can secure top positions in Google SERP by optimizing their websites for relevant financial keywords. 
• High customer acquisition: SEO leads have a 14.6% success rate, compared to just 1.7% for outbound methods like direct mail or print advertising. Hence, conversion-driven SEO strategies drive sales-qualified traffic to fintech websites to grow profits. 
• Trust building: Content marketing is used by 73% of B2B companies and 70% of B2C marketers to improve branding and trust. High-quality and informative articles on financial topics on industry trends and investment tips provide value to readers. They also enhance the company’s reputation as a knowledgeable and trustworthy source. 
• Cost-effectiveness: The cost of SEO services is low in the long run. While initial investment may be needed for optimization, the ongoing costs are generally lower than pay-per-click campaigns. The average cost per lead from SEO is $31, while that from search engine marketing channels like PPC is $110. Hence, SEO marketing is a more sustainable option for fintech companies.
• High-quality content creation: SEO helps you create high-quality and informative content to reach fintech audiences during each buyer journey stage. 72% of marketers use content to build trust. Different content forms, such as financial guides, white papers, infographics, and case studies help your brand engage potential customers. It also positions your fintech company as a knowledgeable resource, building trust and credibility. 
• Adaptation to rapid market changes: Fintech-specific SEO using the finest B2C and B2B SEO practices offers a quick adaptation to fast-evolving financial technologies and trends. Staying ahead with timely content updates and adjustments ensures fintech companies remain relevant and outsmart their competitors.

Best Fintech SEO Strategies for Your Success

Now that you understand the importance of SEO for your fintech brand, let’s explore the most effective fintech SEO tactics to enhance search engine rankings, attract high-quality leads, and establish a credible online footprint. 

Here is how to carry out search engine optimization for fintech websites: 

1. Perform Technical Audit

A detailed technical SEO audit finds errors such as 404 links, slow page load times, and mobile incompatibility, which can hinder search engine crawling and indexing.

Carrying out site performance analysis is time-consuming and requires specialized SEO knowledge and skills. Therefore, it should be done by expert search engine optimization professionals.  For instance, leading technical SEO services for fintech companies are well-versed in conducting UX audits for mortgage, loan, crypto, and banking websites.

Here are the top methods for performing a full-scale technical audit to boost the UX of your website:

Identify and Fix Broken Links

Find and fix 404 (URL not found) internal or external links to prevent users from encountering error pages. Site audit tools like Screaming Frog can manage this process automatically. 

Provide the website address you want to scan and click “Start.” 

Once the crawl completes, go to the “Response Codes” tab and select the “Client Error (4XX)” filter to view broken links. 

You can identify the source of these broken links by selecting a URL and clicking the “Inlinks” tab.

For a comprehensive view, use the “Bulk Export” option under “Response Codes” to download data on broken links and their sources.

Ensure Mobile-Friendliness

Mobile-optimized sites rank higher in search results because Google uses the smartphone agent to crawl and index websites. This is known as mobile-first indexing. 

You can analyze the mobile version of your site on over 20,000 real devices and browsers using Browserstack.

It supports manual and automated testing, including visual and accessibility checks, and integrates with CI/CD tools. 

Optimize Page Speed

In the fast-paced financial sector, users expect quick access to information and transactions. Slow-loading pages can frustrate users, lead to abandoned transactions, and harm the company’s reputation. An ideal website load time is between 0 and 4 seconds.

Page performance improvement tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix offer detailed insights and recommendations for speeding up your site.

You should check your website using any of the above tools and implement the recommendations to speed up your web pages. 

Also, remember to check the Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console to improve your site’s speed, interactivity, and visual stability. 

The Core Web Vitals report assesses site performance using real user data. It categorizes URLs as “Poor,” “Need improvement,” or “Good” based on the worst metric within each group. 

Check Crawlability and Indexability

Ensure Googlebot and other search engine crawlers can effectively crawl and index your site. Examine your robots.txt file and XML sitemaps. 

Google Search Console provides reports on indexing status and crawl errors. You can find these under the Indexing tab.

Review On-Page SEO Elements

Audit your site’s On-Page SEO to ensure they are optimized for relevant keywords and adhere to SEO best practices. Optimized meta tag leads to high CTR and more qualified organic traffic. 

Some of the elements you should optimize are:

• Title tags: Include your primary keywords here and ensure they are unique and descriptive. 
• Meta descriptions: Write a concise description of what your page is about and include a mix of primary and secondary keywords. 
• Headings: Use keyword-rich and user-focused heading tags to structure content. 
• URL structure: Keep page URLs short and use keywords wherever appropriate. Also, separate them using hyphens and not underscores. 
• Internal linking: Link to other important pages within your site contextually to enhance navigation and SEO. 
• Image Alt Text: Describe images to improve accessibility and indexing.

You can use Moz and SEMrush to optimize the above elements, as they offer comprehensive tools for On-Page SEO analysis. 

Assess Security Features

Ensure your website is secure, including implementing HTTPS and checking for vulnerabilities. Tools like Sucuri SiteCheck can help identify security issues and provide recommendations for protection.

Remember, if you don’t use HTTPS on your site, Google Chrome will display a message that the site is not secure.

2. Review Site Structure

The importance of UX design for SEO can’t be ignored. Well-defined categories and subcategories guide users through the site, reducing frustration and improving engagement.

Users seeking financial products or services need quick access to relevant information, and a clear structure helps users find information quickly and efficiently. 

Also, properly structured content helps search engines identify and rank pages for specific financial terms and queries, boosting your visibility for relevant searches. For example, if you run a digital payment service, primary categories in your main navigation menu could include:

• Send Money
• Receive Payments
• Payment Solutions
• Merchant Services
• Account Management

These should reflect the core functionalities of your payment platform.

Similarly, Under “Send Money,” you can create subcategories like:

• Domestic Transfers
• International Transfers
• Recurring Payments

3. Analyze Fintech Competitor’s Sites

You should examine your competitors’ fintech SEO strategies to identify their successful tactics, avoid pitfalls, and adapt their successful strategies to your advantage. There are three main areas to reverse engineer your competitor’s SEO plan:

Keywords

Use SEO tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, WordStream, SE Ranking, and others to uncover all the organic keywords your competitors are targeting. 

Discovering such keywords allows you to identify new opportunities to reach customers at different stages of the fintech buyer funnel. For example, in SE Ranking, you enter your competitor’s website URL, and the tool displays all the keywords on which the company website is ranking. 

Log into SE Ranking and go to “Overview” under “Competitive Research.”

Now, enter your competitor’s URL in the search bar.

Click on keywords to discover the list of organic phrases bringing traffic to the site. You will see the site’s total organic traffic and the total number of keywords on which it is ranking.

You can filter this data based on your specific campaign goals. For example, if you are targeting a specific country, you can find keywords in that location.

You can also filter the keywords to match your exact needs. For instance, if you wish to see keywords related to ‘spend management,’ you can enter the terms in the search bar shown just  above the keywords list. This will show you only the phrases with the term ‘spend management’ in them.

Content Strategies

Similar to keywords, you can also discover your competitor’s content types and topics to understand the content that generates maximum engagement. 

Taking the example above, you can filter the results based on pages and traffic share. This will help you uncover the content bringing the most traffic to the website.

Backlink Profiles

Analyzing backlinks reveals how competitors gain authority and which sources link to them, guiding your link building efforts.

To check backlinks, search with your competitor’s domain in the search bar (as explained in the beginning). You can see four important metrics: 

• Domain Trust
• Page Trust
• Referring Domains
• Backlinks

The “Domain Trust” score tells you the overall reputation of the website. The higher the score, the greater the probability of ranking at the top of organic SERPs. 

The “Page Trust” score measures the reputation of the page, instead of the entire website. 

The total referring domains reveal the list of domains linking to your competitor’s site. And the total number of backlinks tells you the exact number of backlinks linking to any page on your competitor’s site.

4. Conduct Keyword Research and Cluster Them

To begin with, group keywords into thematic clusters to ensure your content is highly relevant to specific search queries, making it easier for users to find what they are looking for.

Clustering keywords helps create a focused content strategy to boost rankings for multiple related search terms.

Let’s take the example of the keyword “fintech SEO agency” in Google:

We will find keywords for the Fintech SEO Agency page. You can utilize tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Ahrefs, or SE Ranking to discover keywords. 

Look for phrases related to fintech SEO services, digital marketing for financial technology, and similar topics. For instance, SE Rankings displays a long list of keywords related to “fintech SEO agency.”

It is important to examine key keyword research metrics such as “search volume,” “difficulty,” “search intent,” and “cost-per-click (CPC).”

You should pick keywords having:

• Moderate to high search volume
• Low to medium difficulty
• Informative and commercial search intent
• High CPC

High cost-per-click often correlates to high conversions. Hence, you should pick keywords with a high CPC for the bottom-of-the-funnel keywords.

Based on the analysis, the primary, seed, or core keywords for the page could be: 

• fintech SEO agency
• fintech SEO services
• SEO for financial technology
• search engine optimization for fintech
• financial services SEO

It is also important to note that semantically relevant phrases should be grouped. For instance, ‘fintech SEO agency’ and ‘fintech SEO services’ are the same.

Now, we will cluster the keywords into logical groups.

Cluster 1: Specific SEO Strategies for Fintech

Keywords:

• On-Page SEO for fintech
• Off-Page SEO for fintech 
• Technical SEO for financial services 
• Local SEO for fintech companies 
• SEO audits for fintech websites 

Cluster 2: Industry-Specific Optimization

Keywords:

• SEO for payment platforms
• SEO for investment firms
• SEO for financial institutions
• SEO for banking apps
• SEO for financial technology startups

Similarly, you can create more clusters depending on your campaign objectives.

5. Follow the Principles of E-E-A-T

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It’s a framework Google uses to evaluate the quality of content and websites, especially for YMYL (Your Money Your Life) topics like fintech.

Here’s how to implement E-E-A-T content optimization on fintech websites:

• Experience: Get articles written by authors who have first-hand experience on the topic. Personal experience matters a lot when it comes to financial technology articles. For example, Investopedia’s finance articles are written by content creators who have more than a decade of experience in finance and are also fact-checked by editors with several decades of experience.

• Expertise: Ensure the content creator has the necessary knowledge and skills. Different topics require different levels of expertise. For instance, SmartAsset has writers and editors who are CEPF qualified, showcasing their expertise in finance.

• Authoritativeness: Ask yourself if your brand or the content creator for the topic is authoritative. For example, the below content on ‘security analysis’ is edited and reviewed by CFA and FRMs having over 18 years of expertise in financial modeling.

• Trustworthiness: Your content creator or brand should be a trusted source for niche-specific topics. For example, ‘The Motley Fool’ is one of the top blogs on stock management that ranks highly for queries related to ‘stock market news.’ You should make a niche for yourself and become an authority on that subject.

6. Use a Variety of Link Building Techniques

95% of pages have no backlinks, and hence, they have lesser chances of being visible online.

With Off-Page fintech SEO, you can acquire high-authority backlinks to raise your domain authority. It also boosts the overall credibility of the site.

Here are some prominent ways to acquire high-end links to your fintech site:

• Craft linkable content assets: Create original studies or surveys relevant to fintech to attract backlinks from industry sites. Original research data is highly valuable to industry professionals and journalists, who will likely reference and link to your findings in their articles, reports, or presentations. For example, this McKinsey report about financial technology growth trends has over 1200 backlinks.

• Get listed on reputed fintech directories: Securing links from reputable directories boosts your SEO and credibility. List your company there with a detailed profile showcasing your strengths. This improves search rankings and enhances your visibility and trustworthiness in the fintech space.
• Guest post on high-authority fintech sites: Write valuable content for established blogs to earn backlinks and increase exposure. Before approaching the top finance guest blogs, review their content guidelines. Prepare well-written and data-driven content with relevant contextual links to your main site.

• Develop interactive tools: Build interactive tools or calculators related to fintech, such as investment calculators, risk assessment tools, or financial planning aids. Interactive content often garners more attention and links from sites that find your tools useful for their audience. For example, this SIP calculator from the Capital Group has 487 backlinks from 79 different referring domains.

• Leverage outreach: Connect with industry influencers, financial bloggers, and relevant online publications to secure high-quality backlinks to your site. By providing valuable content such as in-depth financial analyses, expert opinions, or unique fintech insights, you can establish credibility. With good quality content, you can attract authoritative sites to link back to your content. 
• Utilize digital PR: Issue exciting company news releases and build relationships with fintech media sites. Building relationships with journalists and influencers in the fintech space enhances the likelihood of securing valuable backlinks. You can gain links from news articles, interviews, and feature pieces.

7. Use Micro Markup on the Right Pages

Micro markup or structured data helps search engines understand your website’s content more precisely, leading to better indexing and more relevant search results.

By using relevant micro markups, you can display detailed information about your brand directly in search results, such as reviews, ratings, and product details.

Some of the top schema markups for financial sites are:

• BankorCreditUnion schema markup: This structured data format provides details such as accepted currencies, opening hours, payment methods, and contact information. Below is an example:

• Financial Product schema markup: It represents products offered by financial institutions, including banks and insurance companies. It encompasses various financial products like loans, savings accounts, and insurance policies. Here is an example in action:

• Exchange Rate Specification schema markup: It represents the exchange rate between currencies. This structured value includes properties such as currency, specifying the currency using ISO 4217 codes or other standard identifiers like cryptocurrency tickers. Here is an example embedded in HTML:

8. Use High-quality Content on Your Website

90% of organizations use content marketing to reach their ideal buyer persona. The content should be well-written and unique. It should explain the various financial concepts and tools in an easy-to-understand manner.

Use semantically related keywords throughout the content to make it more relevant for your audience and search engines. 

You should ensure that the content is written or reviewed by subject matter experts. Also, your content should discuss an unexplored angle to discuss a common topic. Something that still can’t be found in top search results. 

After the content is written and checked for factual correctness, originality, and grammatical accuracy, optimize its meta tags for your primary keywords. Include them in the heading, meta title, meta description, and slug. 

You should also not forget to update the content on your site. It shouldn’t lose relevance for search engines. 

A regularly updated blog section on your site is a great way to attract qualified traffic. For example, Stripe has an excellent online payments solution blog that is a comprehensive resource for exploring the company’s diverse offerings and updates.

9. SEO Optimization of Multilingual Website

If you have a multilingual website, having an international SEO strategy becomes even more important. The use of Hreflang tags is essential for guiding search engines to the correct language or regional version of a webpage.

For example, a user searching for investment advice in Germany should see content in German rather than English or Spanish. 

The syntax is:

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”language-region” href=”URL” />

Hreflang tags help Google and other search engines understand which version of the content is most appropriate for a specific user based on their language and location.

Also, the page content should be available in different languages depending on your target countries, regions, and locations. 

Quality translation goes beyond simple language conversion. It should also consider cultural differences and financial terminology specific to each region. Accurate and contextually relevant translations make the content more engaging and useful for local users. 

Moreover, properly translated content ensures that each language version accurately represents the targeted keywords. International website optimization helps in ranking well for search queries in different languages.

10. Build Up Brand Traffic

Branded traffic results in higher conversions.

Traffic from branded phrases and key terms consists of highly qualified leads already interested in your brand. Since these users search specifically for your product or brand, they are more likely to convert than users who come across your site through generic or unrelated searches.

SEO improves your overall business or product visibility and helps bring in traffic from branded search queries. 

With the help of fintech content marketing, you can publish comparison articles comparing your financial product with your competitors’. You can also write blog posts that explore the different features of your financial tools and help potential users understand how your product meets their needs. 

Product feature-specific articles help address user pain points and improve brand credibility and user trust. It also provides valuable insights, and reinforces the advantages of your offering.

The Bottom Line: Fintech Solutions from NetShopping

SEO strategies for fintech companies require high-quality, expert content to combat misinformation and boost brand visibility. At NetShopping, we understand search engine algorithms and take measures to improve our clients’ website structure to improve their business’s online visibility.  

We apply a proper mix of On-Page optimization and Off-Page optimization strategies to drive organic growth through high-authority backlinks, micro markups, and high-quality, well-optimized content.

NetShopping simplifies your marketing with a comprehensive marketing subscription service that combines site architecture optimization, content development, E-E-A-T optimization, link building, complete technical SEO services, and more into one monthly plan. 

Enjoy clear hourly billing and access to a broad team of experts. NetShopping provides consistent quality, scalable solutions and personalized organic marketing strategies.

Book a demo and exploration call today to discover how our marketing subscription model can enhance SEO for fintech agencies.