When discussing fintech SEO, marketers often focus on traffic… any type of traffic. 

But its ultimate purpose is drawing in potential customers and turning them into customers – so this will be the focus of our guide.

We will start by covering the basics of fintech SEO and then talk about how – step-by-step – you can increase your fintech site’s traffic and conversions.

What is Fintech SEO?

Fintech SEO is a set of practices that optimize your website for search engines (most notably Google) to maximize the visibility of your fintech site for the queries commonly made by your audience.

Let’s say you are a marketer at a company that sells AR automation solutions. If you Google a keyword like “ar automation software”, you’ll see that the search engine results pages (SERPs) are dominated by competitors like Centime, Versapay, and Bill. They’ve secured the top spots in SERPs, meaning they get the most clicks – all thanks to a successful SEO strategy.

Source: Google screenshot

If you run Centime’s website through an SEO tool like Ahrefs, you can see why it ranks so high.

Source: Ahrefs screenshot

The website has a DR (Domain Rating) of 52, which means it has a strong backlink profile. To compete with Centime in SERPs, you would – at the very least – need a better backlink profile or better content, if not both.

But if you are competing with Centime (or more likely, other fintechs with higher DRs), there is reason to be encouraged:

If you look at the graph, you’ll see that the traffic in July 2022 was pretty much non-existent (around 70 to be more precise). In just over two years (as of this writing), the site saw astronomical growth.

While it can take a year or longer to see strong returns from SEO, the wait can be well-worth it in the long run. This is because SEO can continue generating returns well in excess of your monthly spend for years – and potentially decades – to come.

Why fintech companies should invest in SEO

There is probably a lot of “competition” for marketing dollars at your company, but fintechs should invest in SEO because it can have a much higher ROI than paid ads. Here are some reasons why SEO can have a massive ROI:

• Customer trust: high-quality SEO content is an excellent way to build credibility and position yourself as a trustworthy source of information.
• Market education: your product might have features that an average customer struggles to grasp. Ranking well-written educational content high in the SERPs allows you to show them how your solution adds value for their use-cases. In addition, you are more likely to retain existing customers if they know how to get the most out of your solution. 
• Competitive advantage: a solid SEO strategy increases the likelihood that your prospects find you before running into a competitor’s content. 

5 steps to ranking your fintech site high in SERPs

Here is a step-by-step to ranking your fintech for keywords that matter:

1. Analyze the competition

Search rankings are determined relatively, so it all comes down to being better than other websites in your niche. To do this, you need to know what you’re up against. 

In other words, you’ll want to start with competitor research.

For example, you want to rank for a keyword like “payment processor for small business.” The first step you should take is the same as a potential prospect’s – Google the keyword.

When you do, you’ll see which websites you need to beat. Keep in mind they might not be direct business competitors but also:

• Informative blogs
• Government sites
• Review platforms

While they might not monetize the same way as you, they have the same visitors you want to attract. In our example, Helcim’s landing page ranks in the top three, so we’ll run it through Ahrefs to analyze it.

Source: Ahrefs screenshot

As you can see, the page brings 10k visitors a month organically and 500+ through paid search (which we won’t focus on here because it’s an entirely different game). It also has:

• A domain rating of 73 (which typically means it has a strong backlink profile)
• 27 backlinks
• 1.4k ranked keywords

You should get the same info for all of the top ranking pages to see what your page needs to rank among them – or above them. You can do this with free and/or paid SEO tools.

2. Find high buyer-intent keywords

Keywords are the backbone of SEO, so you should give this step the time and effort it deserves. Luckily, finding the right keywords to target isn’t as daunting as it may seem if you’re new to SEO. There are several ways to do it, so let’s go over the most effective ones.

a) Review competitor keywords

Knowing which keywords industry leaders are ranking for is an excellent starting point for your own keyword strategy.

Let’s say you offer payroll software for startups and want to rank for the corresponding keyword. If we analyze the SERPs, we can see competitors like Gusto and Wegofin on page one.

Source: Google screenshot

Say you want to know which keywords Gusto is targeting. You can use a tool like Ahrefs again, but if your budget is tight, you can go with a free option like Google Keyword Planner. Here’s how to use it:

1. Choose Discover new keywords
2. Go to Start with a website
3. Paste the link to a competitor’s page and click Get results

Source: Google Keyword Planner screenshot

You can choose between analyzing the entire website or just the provided page. We chose the latter because we want to know which additional keywords can help us rank high for “payroll software for startups” specifically. And here are the results:

Source: Google Keyword Planner screenshot

Google Keyword Planner found over 1,500 potential keywords. But this doesn’t mean you should target all of them. We’ll ignore these categories of keywords:

1. Keywords with high competition (unless your website is already authoritative enough to go head-to-head with first-page results)
2. Keywords with low business potential (queries that aren’t likely to contribute to conversions)
3. Branded keywords (those that include “gusto” in the search term)*

*Technically, you could target branded keywords if you opt for an SEO strategy called brandjacking, but that’s a topic for another time.

An example of a keyword we do want to target is “payroll software for small business.” Here’s why:

• It’s not overly competitive
• It brings in some traffic
• It indicates that the user is looking to buy the software

Source: Google Keyword Planner screenshot

b) Start with seed keywords

Google Keyword Planner (and other keyword tools) lets you start with a keyword instead of a website. These are known as seed keywords – general industry-related search terms that can uncover more specific searches.

The problem is that this tactic might not always be as effective for fintech companies as competitor research. Why?

You’ll see the answer if you do a Google Keyword Planner search for our example keyword. The tool only gave 39 recommendations compared to over 1,500 we got when examining Gusto’s website.

Source: Google Keyword Planner screenshot

This is because by default, most keyword research tools ignore a category of keywords that can make a world of difference for fintech sites: “zero search volume” keywords.

c) Target zero search volume keywords

As the name implies, zero search volume keywords are those that appear not to have search volume. But if you have reason to believe there are actually a small, but meaningful number of monthly searches and it’s a high buyer-intent keyword, it may be worth targeting. 

A good example in Gusto’s case would be “best payroll for one employee.” Google Keyword Planner shows 0-10 monthly searches, so competitors might dismiss the idea of creating a page that targets this keyword. 

But the cost of creating this page isn’t that high and if (when) someone does search for this keyword, Gusto ranks at the top of page 1 and likely converts a significant percentage of searchers into customers.

Source: Google

So that’s our third tip for keyword research – focus on zero search volume queries. Even if that keyword brings you just a few customers in the next year, the page will more than pay for itself if your lifetime customer value is on the higher end.

3. Create high-quality content

You need helpful (i.e. high-quality) content to rank high on Google (see Google’s helpful content update). Here are some tips for creating high-quality content:

1. Leverage internal expertise: involve your company’s subject matter experts in the content creation process. Their insights can add significant value and credibility to your blog posts.
2. Use data and research: back up your claims with reputable data sources and recent research findings. Again, this adds value and credibility to your content..
3. Create in-depth guides: comprehensive guides on complex financial topics & how to use your products are key to customer acquisition.
4. Incorporate real-world examples: use case studies or hypothetical scenarios to illustrate complex financial concepts.
5. Make sure your content stays relevant: fintech is a fast-moving field. Regularly update your content to reflect the latest trends, regulations, and market conditions.
6. Address common questions and misconceptions: create content that directly answers the questions your target audience is asking.

4. Build backlinks

The Google algorithm heavily weighs backlinks, which are essentially digital endorsements from other websites. Attracting links from authoritative sources is an excellent way to show that your website is reliable and credible.

You can build backlinks passively by simply creating quality, link-worthy content. But this can take a while…

In the meantime, you should take a more active approach and pursue high-quality backlinks. 

Look for opportunities to contribute to articles written by journalists and freelance content marketing writers in your niche. They will cite you as a source, and often include a link to your site or a specific page.

You may be wondering:

How do I find these opportunities?

Here’s a creative tactic used by Mark Rofe:

He leverages a hashtag on X that journalists use when looking for expert contributors – #journorequest.

If you search for the hashtag, you’ll see there are plenty of requests in a variety of niches. To avoid endless scrolling, Mark uses IFTTT (If This Then That) to receive email notifications every time the hashtag is mentioned alongside his target keywords.

You can do the same by setting up an automation that notifies you whenever someone uses the hashtag with general keywords such as fintech or niche-specific keywords. This way, you might stumble upon requests like this one:

Source: X screenshot

If you don’t want to chase after journalists and authoritative sources, it’s possible to get them to “come to you” through a strategy known as “reverse outreach.” Here’s how it works:

1. Choose keywords a journalist might search for (e.g., “ethereum transactions per day”).
2. Create a data-driven content piece around the keyword (statistics, predictions, etc.).
3. Optimize the piece for other related keywords.

The key here is to create a piece that centers on facts and can be used as a reference. This way, your content is more likely to  attract links from credible sources.

When it comes to backlinks, authority is key. Getting backlinks from spammy or low-value websites will not improve your rankings, so focus on quality over quantity.

5. Nail down Technical SEO

Technical SEO is all about tweaking your website’s backend elements and architecture to ensure search engines can discover, crawl, index, understand, and effectively load your pages.. It involves many factors, such as:

• Sitemaps
• Page speed
• Schema markup
• Canonical tags
• Redirects
• Internal links
• Website security

To avoid getting too technical, we’ll focus on a few of the most impactful things you can do to improve your technical SEO. Here are some actionable tips to follow:

• Use HTTPS: The secure HTTPS protocol is essential to not only site security but also to SEO – Google has been using it as a ranking signal for over a decade now.
• Submit your sitemap: Most popular website platforms such as WordPress, HubSpot, and Shopify automatically generate a sitemap with all of your URLs. You can submit this to Google using Google Search Console so Google knows where to find your pages.
• Avoid heavy multimedia: Images and videos improve a page’s engagement and visual appeal but may slow it down. A page’s bounce rate increases by 32% if the load time goes from one to three seconds.
• Ensure mobile-friendliness: Google switched to mobile-first indexing in 2020, so your site’s mobile version is more important than the desktop version when it comes to search rankings. Make sure your website is responsive and works on smartphones and tablets.. 

If you’re not sure where to start with technical SEO, you can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to audit your site or specific pages. You’ll get a detailed overview of the page’s performance, as well as comprehensive diagnostics with suggestions on what to improve.

Source: PageSpeed Insights screenshot

You can also use Google Search Console indexing reports to identify and troubleshoot technical SEO issues.

Case Study: How Gravity Payments saw a massive boost in conversion rates

Let’s look at the power of SEO in practice. SERP Builders’ collaboration with Gravity Payments is a good example of what’s possible.

When they first signed on, their website was doing well in terms of traffic numbers – but a very low percentage of that traffic was converting. Despite getting nearly 2.5 million views in 2021, only a small portion of the visitors were small business owners, which is Gravity’s target audience.

After analyzing Gravity’s website, we quickly understood why this was happening: the site didn’t have much content geared towards helping small business owners.

Knowing this, our goal was simple – to create content that was both SEO-friendly and helpful to small business owners.

We also took a few additional steps, such as:

• Fixing technical SEO issues
• Overhauling the site’s internal linking structure
• Updating meta titles and other on-page SEO elements

Fast forward to Q4 2023, and the website saw a 225% increase in traffic driven by non-branded keywords.

While these numbers might not seem mind-boggling, the quality of this traffic is what makes a world of difference. Gravity’s website conversions increased by 14%, yielding quick returns on their SEO investments. The company’s website is now a solid digital asset, and Gravity’s SEO investments are likely to pay “dividends” far into the future.

Measuring SEO success beyond traffic

As you can see in the Gravity example, traffic alone doesn’t equate to revenue.You need to track metrics that indicate real business impact. This requires a shift in mindset from traditional SEO metrics to more business-oriented key performance indicators (KPIs).

Here’s what you should track:

• Lead quality score: not all leads are created equal. Develop a scoring system based on how likely the lead is to convert & expected customer lifetime value.
• Conversion rate from organic search: track how many organic visitors take desired actions, such as signing up for a demo or opening an account.
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC) from SEO: calculate how much you’re spending on SEO efforts relative to the number of customers acquired through this channel.
• Customer lifetime value of customers acquired through Search: determine if customers acquired through Search tend to be more or less valuable in the long run.
• Return on investment (ROI) from SEO: compare the costs of your SEO efforts to the revenue generated from organic search visitors.
• Market share: track how your brand’s visibility in search results compares to your competitors for key industry terms.

Attribution can be tricky in fintech, where the customer journey is often long and complex. Multi-touch attribution models can help you understand how SEO contributes to your customer acquisition. Consider using tools like Google Analytics 4, which offers advanced attribution modeling.

You should also track the performance of individual content pieces. Which blog posts are driving the most conversions? What topics seem to resonate most with your audience? Use these insights to refine your content strategy over time.

Final thoughts

Effective fintech SEO is all about attracting the right audience, building trust, and ultimately converting visitors into loyal customers. By focusing on customer needs, targeting the right keywords, and creating expert content, you can generate sustainable growth through SEO investments.

Remember that SEO is a long-term game, especially in fintech niches where building trust can be tougher than in other industries. It takes time to build authority, create a library of valuable content, and earn the trust of both users and search engines. Stay patient, keep refining your strategy based on SEO analytics, and the results will come.

And if you don’t have the time to do it yourself, SERP Builders can help you rank for the keywords that matter to your company. Learn more about our SEO services, or reach out for a tailored strategy that fits your site’s needs.