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Finance & Insurance SEO Consultant

Personal Finance, Investment and Insurance keywords are some of the most valuable and competitive, making SEO a tough proposition. I’ve personally helped comparison sites, brokers and institutions compete at the top of Google for these keywords, so know that it’s possible to compete even today.
Tiles-BlackRock

Long term global SEO strategy

Overhauling previous SEO strategy with a key focus on technical recommendations and increasing SEO awareness throughout the business globally.

Tiles-Aviva

Brand domain name migration

Full website and domain name migration from Norwich Union to Aviva.co.uk. Focus on core traffic driving keywords within car and home insurance.

MoneySupermarket in the UK is a prime example of how powerful SEO can be for financial websites. Organic Search was their biggest traffic driver for over ten years, culminating in a billion pound valuation and floating on the London Stock Exchange. This was in no small part thanks to their Top 3 rankings for Credit Cards, Mortgages, Loans and other products, which still make up more than half of their total traffic today.

Financial Comparison websites have the hardest job to rank competitively in Google, without the high authority links and brand mentions that larger institutions garner naturally. They must instead compete on their strengths and an institution’s weaknesses, with the two most significant opportunities being:

Technical SEO – Financial providers tend to use old, slow and complex systems to manage their websites. Simple changes sometimes take months to implement. By utilising a modern and flexible CMS, comparison sites can apply the latest SEO techniques and achieve a perfect PageSpeed score, edging out their competitors.

Content Marketing – Due to the number of regulations and company policies in place at banks and insurers, there’s a significant limitation on what can and can’t be said. Comparison websites can create fun, even controversial, content that drives links and traffic to their sites.

Banks, Insurers and Investment brands can outrank affiliate, news and comparison websites with ease, but often fail to do so. Finance SEO takes agility, creativity and pro-activeness, which only a few brands, such as UK insurer Admiral, have achieved. 

The FTSE 100 listed insurance company ranks top for keywords such as [car insurance]. It uses a free and open source CMS, Drupal, along with a modern CSS framework. By embracing an established open source CMS, Admiral benefits from a “tried and tested” website architecture and comprehensive SEO plugins.

Having already worked with the likes of Aviva, Direct Line, CreditCards.com, Compare & Save and LoveMoney.com, I know what it takes to rank at the top of Google for Finance and Insurance keywords. As well as retainer-based contracts, I also offer several one-off services tailored to the Finance industry.

Link Cleanup and Penalty Recovery

In SEO verticals as competitive as Finance, it is common for websites to have poor quality links or even a Google penalty. 

To prevent these from holding you back, a thorough link audit, cleanup and recovery strategy is needed. I have performed a Penalty Recovery for multiple finance and insurance brands, who now rank competitively in Google. 

It is a long and complicated process of assessing various link factors and spam signals, the using a Disavow file to remove problem links from Google’s radar. Removing too many good links can reduce the authority of your site in Google’s eyes and removing too few can delay any penalty recovery.

Competitor SEO Insights

Want to know how and why your competitors are outranking you? 

Analysing a competitor’s SEO strategy can unearth new ranking opportunities, prospective link targets, and whether the SEO tactics are high risk. 

Competitor Research can also be useful when estimating the value and stability of Organic Search traffic for potential acquisition targets. 

I can tell you how a website is ranking, why they outrank you, how stable their strategy is and estimate the value of their SEO traffic.

Website Migration, Re-platforming & Rebranding Strategy

I have seen a recent surge in institutional banks and insurers re-platforming to modern frameworks. Some are also diversifying into Online for the first time, with new brands or a complete rebrand. 

Change is good, but can also be dangerous. Advanced technologies such as Angular, React, and Vue are becoming popular in the Finance space. Google still struggles to understand websites built on these JavaScript frameworks, and rankings can suffer. 

A new CMS might make SEO implementations easier, but it could also change the URL structure and break valuable links pointing into the website. 

A rebrand might unlock a new target demographic but could lose the customers still searching for the old brand. 

I have worked on projects such as Norwich Union’s rebrand to Aviva and a large financial institution’s CMS migration, with ranking uplifts in both scenarios.

Mobile SEO and PageSpeed Audit

The finance industry is seeing a migration from computer-based banking and insurance, to Mobile. Not only do your customers expect you to have a well-designed Mobile app, but also a responsive, fast and mobile-friendly website. 

Google is adapting to this change in behaviour as well, rewarding sites that are mobile optimised, with higher rankings. Websites that still use “m.” subdomains for Mobile, or have fixed width web pages that don’t scale, are suffering and being left behind. 

I can audit your website and assess just how Mobile-ready you are. Plus how Google sees your mobile pages, and how fast they are (an important ranking factor).

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Contact me for a free and confidential chat