Search Engine Optimization for Banks & Credit Unions
Improve Website Visibility, Credibility, & Attract Qualified Audiences
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a necessary component of any digital marketing strategy in order for community banks and financial institutions to continue to grow their customer base and expand their services. Investing in SEO methodologies and best practices will improve your bank or financial institution’s website relevance, accessibility, and visibility in search engine page results. BankBound can help your bank maximize search engine optimization efforts, grow traffic to your website, and expand your bank’s brand recognition and customer base. Learn how BankBound can help you grow your brand and business with Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
What Is SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing organic traffic A.K.A. “non-paid’ traffic, to your website by improving and expanding your presence in search engine results. SEO is the process of making your website more appealing to a search engine and more relevant to targeted search queries by implementing On-Site SEO, Off-Site SEO, and Technical SEO best practices. Search engines like Google and Bing use hundreds of variables to grade the relevance of your website pages to determine when, how high, and how often you’ll show up in search results.
Organic SEO
Organic SEO results are driven by website copy, content, and HTML and will provide permanent and stable results when executed effectively. With SEO, we want to ensure search engines can access and understand everything about your website, and that they are able to find the appropriate pages on your bank’s website that are the most relevant to a user’s search queries.
Local SEO
For local SEO efforts, we’re focused on earning top positions in the “local pack” section of search engine results. This is where Google and Bing show relevant business listings nearby based on a user’s search terms. Earning a spot in the “local pack” helps reach local users in the area and encourages them to engage with your business further by leaving a review, visiting a location, or reaching out by phone.
There are lots of factors that influence which businesses are promoted in the local pack, but a large emphasis is placed on the consistency of your bank’s name, address, and phone number for each location across various local listing sites, social media, and other data providers.
Why Does My Website Need SEO?
You want people to be able to find your website, don’t you?! You need to make it effortless for users and potential customers to find your website online. The easier your website is to find, the more traffic and leads you’ll see come through your website and through your branch lobbies.
Recent studies have found that organic listings in the top 5 results within Google search account for upwards of 60% of all clicks. So as your SEO efforts are improved this will begin to establish more credibility between your website and Google. The more credibility your site has, the higher it will rank in search engine results. You’ll gain more visibility for your website the higher your site appears on the results page.
How often do you make it to page 2 or 3 of a Google search? It’s probably a pretty rare occurrence, right? 75% of users don’t make it past the first page of the search engine results! SEO will help ensure that your website shows up in this prime real estate. SEO efforts will help:
- Improve Visibility in Search Engines
- Improve Brand Awareness & Recognition
- Improve Brand Credibility
- Increase Free Organic Traffic
- Attract Qualified Audiences
What Role Does My Website Play In SEO?
In order to improve your organic rankings in the search engine results pages, your website must be designed and maintained according to SEO best practices. Google examines your website for over 200 ranking factors in order to determine your position in the search results in relation to a user’s search query. If your bank’s website isn’t developed with SEO in mind, then you will likely be outranked by competitors. An optimally-designed bank website will help guide website visitors through the next steps of the sales funnel once they arrive on a landing page, increasing the likelihood that they become a new lead, and ultimately a new customer.
Do I Need Both SEO and PPC Ads?
Our answer to this question is always, yes. SEO and PPC (Pay-Per-Click) are most effective when run together.
SEO brings in large swarths of traffic at all levels of the buyer journey; PPC is especially effective for precision targeting of specific website visitors based on data detailing user behavior. Visitors who may have found your website organically via search engines but exited without taking any converting actions can be encouraged to come back to the site with targeted PPC ads. With the buyer journey more and more fragmented, it’s vital to incorporate multiple channels into your digital marketing mix to ensure an optimal approach that reaches the right people, in the right place, with applicable messaging.
What’s Included With BankBound’s SEO Services?
At BankBound, our strategies always include the foundational best practices of search engine optimization along with an emphasis on high-quality content. With these best practices as our foundation, the specific deliverables for your bank will be tailored to the needs of your website and internet presence.
Included Components of BankBound’s SEO Services:
- On-Site SEO, Off-Site SEO, Technical SEO
- Local SEO – Google My Business, Bing Places, Yelp
- Site Crawl and Audit Analysis
- Sitemap Creation and Organization
- SEO Keyword Research and Optimization
- Website CMS Management
- Link Building – internal and external
- Content Creation – product pages, location pages, blog posts
- And Much More!
Benefits of SEO for Banks and Financial Institutions
An effective SEO strategy will allow your branch locations to show up in “local” results, and your website pages to show up in “organic” results. SEO can boost the online visibility of your bank brand while bringing in valuable visitors to your website who are searching for banking solutions and services or need a specific product you offer.
SEO helps make your website the most relevant and credible it can be in order to bring in the most qualified users to your site. From increasing deposits to growing commercial & residential mortgage leads, there are numerous benefits you’ll gain by incorporating SEO into your digital marketing strategy:
- Increase Rankings in Search Engine Results
- Generate More Qualified Leads (Future New Customers!)
- Achieve Better-Quality Conversion Rates
- Ability to Analyze Measurable Data of User Behavior
- Gives You a Leg Up Over Local Competitors
- Extremely Cost-Effective
What If I Already Have an SEO Strategy?
BankBound can provide a complimentary analysis of your existing SEO strategy to receive actionable insights for improving your on-site and off-site SEO. Just ask us!
Unlike other internet marketing companies, our agency works exclusively with community banks and financial institutions. Since banking is our one and only core focus, this allows us to truly become an extension of your team and understand the business needs of your financial institution better than other agencies.
What Costs Are Involved?
You will need to invest in continual optimization and new content for your website to achieve optimal results from SEO methods.
When you decide to partner with BankBound for SEO, you’ll make a one-time investment up front for initial setup and optimization of your website and related properties like Google My Business, Bing, and Facebook. Thereafter, your investment in SEO will be a set monthly cost.
Partner With BankBound For Your SEO Strategy
Whether you already have an SEO strategy in place or are looking to create one from the ground up, BankBound exists to grow your community bank or credit union. Reach out to a Digital Marketing Strategist to learn more about our SEO Services and other bank marketing services offered.
