In a digital world full of endless options for financial institutions, search engines are king when it comes to driving organic traffic and potential depositors and borrowers to your site. As many know, there is a ton of value in SEO and keyword research, but what is your SEO actually worth? Well, that depends.
If you don’t have the right keywords on your site and you’re ranking for keywords unrelated to your business, all your SEO efforts are worth $0.
Although you aren’t paying to rank for these keywords (unless you’ve hired an SEO specialist, of course), there is still monetary value behind the keywords you choose. Premium tools like SEMrush calculate the value of these keywords by referencing data to determine what companies are paying to rank for these keywords through ads.
Oftentimes, financial professionals will use highly technical industry-specific keywords that your customers are not searching for. When choosing keywords, you need to make sure you’re putting yourself in the shoes of the prospective depositor or borrower. For example, ask yourself:
“If I were an average consumer looking for a loan, what types of search queries would I type into Google?”
Using technical knowledge and terms, you might search for “amortized loan.” While you know what “amortized” means, the average consumer doesn’t. Instead, use keywords that are directly related to the specific amortized loans your target may be in the market for, like “auto loans,” “fixed-rate mortgages,” or “personal loans.” To get an idea of the difference in monthly search volume between technical and commonly used terms, check out the data from SEMrush below:
Amortized Loan- 90 monthly searches
Personal Loan- 60,500 monthly searches
Auto Loan- 49,500 monthly searches
Fixed-Rate Mortgage- 3,600 monthly searches
If you’re a bank or credit union that offers personal loans, you could be losing out on up to 99.85 percent of your organic traffic by using the term “amortized loan.” Not a great return on your investment (no matter how you look at it).
At the end of the day, listen to your SEO strategist. They are the ones doing daily keyword research, they are the ones with the tools, and they are the ones who know consumer search intent better than anyone.
