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7 Content Marketing Tips For Financial Services Brands

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7 Content Marketing Tips For Financial Services Brands

Multiple challenges surface when creating content for a finance company.

Dealing with legalities tops the list, but there’s more. Much more.

In working with multiple companies in the financial sector and ghostwriting for top investors/financial CEOs in the pages of Forbes and other business magazines, I’ve had my share of difficulties.

Below, I share challenges marketers face when creating content for financial services brands – with a sharp focus on written content – and solutions to those challenges.

But first, let’s discuss what should guide your focus when creating content within the financial industry: Google’s YMYL and E-A-T concepts.

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Understanding Google’s YMYL/E-A-T Content Guidelines For Finance

In the wake of the censorship uproar, Google took precedent to create special algorithmic considerations for information it deemed important relating to fields, such as financial advice, current events, politics, legal advice, etc.

The rationale was easy – bad financial advice leads to potentially devastating financial consequences for innocent people.

The last thing Google wants for its brand is to present bad financial information that negatively impacts your money and life.

That’s why Google refers to important content, like financial advice, as Your Money, Your Life (YMYL) content.

Google provides an explanation of how they evaluate and rank YMYL content from their report titled How Google Fights Disinformation:

“Where our algorithms detect that a user’s query relates to a ‘YMYL’ topic, we will give more weight in our ranking systems to factors like our understanding of the authoritativeness, expertise, or trustworthiness of the pages we present in response.”

With that statement said, I want you to keep in mind three relevant keywords: expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.

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These characteristics would later comprise Google’s infamous E-A-T, part of Google’s algorithm and baked into Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines.

Let’s explain from a content creator’s perspective:

  • Expertise: Is the specific author or publication an expert on the topic?
  • Authoritativeness:  How authoritative are the website and author? This depends on more traditional factors like backlinks, social signals, page traffic, etc.
  • Trustworthiness: How trustworthy is the source? For example, does the source have much traffic, and has it ever received any complaints?

Unfortunately, Google’s algorithm isn’t smart enough yet to understand how viable financial advice is, so they have to consider signals such as author expertise and authority in ranking content.

It’s why the first four results for the search [how to do my taxes] are all brands and top-level domains we recognize or trust:

Screenshot from search for [how to do my taxes], Google, February 2022

However, this presents a significant challenge for smaller brands and businesses looking to tap into the finance sector through organic search.

In addition, there are legal and other financial concerns that arrive with financial content creation.

And it doesn’t stop there.

Implementing the strategy arrives with additional challenges that are typically more annoying than the creative thinking stage.

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This is due to multiple legalities and bureaucracy behind the doors of most financial service brands.

Following are some content marketing tips for financial services brands that I’ve learned along the way.

Financial Services Content: Common Challenges & Solutions

1. Competing In Organic Search

Due to the strict measures of Google’s EAT and YMYL guidelines, a financial blog or website will never be able to compete with a Turbotax or Nerdwallet.

The most obvious solution is to generate thought leadership for their brand.

Of course, this presents a proverbial catch-22.

To build authority, you need exposure, but Google makes that very difficult for broad topics that provide the most exposure.

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Here are some solutions to up our content game and present unique ideas.

Solutions

  • Become a thought leader by writing guest posts for reputable blogs, writing a book or ebook related to your industry, or establishing a brand over social media.
  • Target long-tail keywords for unique topics with lower search volume that is more targeted to your audience.
  • Offer guest post opportunities for experts to write on your website and generate some buzz/authority.
  • Create content featuring multiple financial experts to offer additional relevant information on a broader topic.
  • Form partnerships with data or analytics companies for original research into trends.
  • Create a survey about a broad topic to see where trends in the industry are shifting.
  • Utilize video and alternative media to create shareable content on your website.

2. Complying With Regulations

Like medical businesses, false information can quickly get your client into trouble with authorities.

And of course, this will ruin your image, something that’s hard to build when you’ve been the focus of much negative criticism.

Unfortunately, financial services, especially, have some of the most intense regulatory scrutinies when it comes to producing online content, sharing it over social media, and advertising your brand.

FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) is a well-known regulatory agency that monitors everything over social media from influencers to financial services content.

FINRA’s rules intend to “protect investors from false, misleading claims, exaggerated statements, and material omissions.”

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In addition to FINRA, there are a number of additional regulations that tap into every niche of financial services content.

For example, the Office of the Comptroller of Currency has strict rules in place regulating the accuracy, clarity, and compliance of content specifically related to banking services.

Solutions

  • Create disclaimers that shield your client from legal liability.
  • Update their website to reflect regional privacy laws to avoid liability.
  • Hire writers with knowledge of financial services.
  • Set strict guidelines for content based on commonly known regulatory barriers.
  • Make sure your client employs a legal review process to ensure proper compliance.
  • Stick to topics you are knowledgeable about and their legal team has experience with.

3. Finding Knowledgeable Writers

In the solutions above, I outlined the need to find writers that have expertise in financial and regulatory matters.

However, as someone who’s managed a team of freelancers for years now, that’s certainly easier said than done.

The largest problem is finding those that are subject matter experts. Once you do find an expert, two other issues surface – the writer is either too expensive for your budget, or they simply can’t write well.

Solutions

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  • Reverse engineer E-A-T. Find writers on high-ranking SERP articles and offer them a freelance partnership (if in the budget –many of the best finance writers won’t touch articles for under $1 a word or $750 per piece!)
  • Use LinkedIn to create exact ads about what you’re looking for, with examples and budget in mind. You’ll get much noise there, but you’ll find someone capable. My success rate for riders is about 10% – yes, one out of every 10 writers is typically capable of creating the content needed.
  • Hire and train in-house writers.

4. Time Is Of The Essence

Financial news and current events move fast, as government and independent financial reports are generated daily.

The last thing you want is a post on a major story stuck in a week-long review. These frustrations are further amplified when working with the extended review process of enterprise companies.

If your client offers any sort of financial advice or reporting, it’s essential to optimize review processes to pump out content in real-time.

Solutions

  • Set content guidelines of legal compliance with your client to reduce review times.
  • Prioritize real-time and interactive content editorial review.
  • Something about streamlining review with other partners (maybe taking ownership of channels or getting prior go ahead).

5. Targeting The Right Readers

You will come across a wide variety of people with different levels of expertise in the finance world.

It’s easy for readers to become inundated by jargon and complicated financial procedures, especially when dealing with topics like taxes, cryptocurrency, retirement accounts, and portfolio investing.

Simplifying content so it’s understandable by most readers is important, but so is making the optimal content for those readers most likely to go further with you or your client’s brand.

You’ll need to create a strategy that caters to people looking for general financial advice to increase your client’s authority and create targeted content for people specifically interested in employing their company.

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Solutions

  • Simplify top-funnel content to attract a broader audience.
  • Employ a CMS to meet customers mid-funnel with targeted content based on their interaction with your site (content can be more sophisticated).
  • Nurture intent by following up with relevant advice and selling points based on their engagement history.
  • Feed this information to sales staff to follow up with a sales call that focuses on specific customer pain points.

6. Update Stale Content

Generally, stale content can be a waste on any site, but it could leave websites with outdated or uncompliant content in a world of legal trouble.

The solutions are simple but time-consuming.

Solutions

  • Conduct a sitewide audit using a website crawler like Screaming Frog and download all URLs to a spreadsheet. After the major run, I recommend doing this bi-annually or quarterly for larger clients.
  • Analyze which topics trend the most on Semrush or any tool to decipher which content needs updating or disposal.
  • Delete any temporal content that is outdated or no longer complies with regulations.
  • Update evergreen content with significant traffic dropoff.

7. Finding The Resources

As you know by now, financial content is complicated.

If you write on behalf of other companies or for yourself, it can be difficult to justify a budget for a single blog post that costs $750+ between research and labor.

Solutions

  • Set a budget that accounts for the additional burden of writing long-form content full of financial advice.
  • Set clear expectations when working with other content marketing partners about time and money.

Although the barriers to financial services and all YMYL content are higher than in other niche fields, the rewards of investing in content marketing are equally as high.

Target a blend of evergreen and trending content, and follow the advice above to speak to every target client and satisfy the tough regulations and legalities of finance content.

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Content Pruning: Why It Works, and How to Do It

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Content Pruning: Why It Works, and How to Do It

Content pruning sounds pretty appealing: delete a ton of content and see your organic traffic improve. But pruning has risks (like deleting useful pages and useful backlinks), and benefits are not guaranteed: So how does pruning actually work? And when

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8 Free SEO Reporting Tools

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8 Free SEO Reporting Tools

There’s no shortage of SEO reporting tools to choose from—but what are the core tools you need to put together an SEO report?

In this article, I’ll share eight of my favorite SEO reporting tools to help you create a comprehensive SEO report for free.

Price: Free

Google Search Console, often called GSC, is one of the most widely used tools to track important SEO metrics from Google Search.

Most common reporting use case

GSC has a ton of data to dive into, but the main performance indicator SEOs look at first in GSC is Clicks on the main Overview dashboard.

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As the data is from Google, SEOs consider it to be a good barometer for tracking organic search performance. As well as clicks data, you can also track the following from the Performance report:

  • Total Impressions
  • Average CTR
  • Average Position
gsc-performance-overviewgsc-performance-overview

Tip

If you’ve signed up for AWT using Google Search Console, you can view your GSC performance data in Ahrefs by clicking “GSC Performance” from the main dashboard.

But for most SEO reporting, GSC clicks data is exported into a spreadsheet and turned into a chart to visualize year-over-year performance.

organic-traffic-graph-showing-clicks-year-over-yearorganic-traffic-graph-showing-clicks-year-over-year

Favorite feature

One of my favorite reports in GSC is the Indexing report. It’s useful for SEO reporting because you can share the indexed to non-indexed pages ratio in your SEO report.

google-search-console-indexed-pages-reportgoogle-search-console-indexed-pages-report

If the website has a lot of non-indexed pages, then it’s worth reviewing the pages to understand why they haven’t been indexed.

Price: Free

Google Looker Studio (GLS), previously known as Google Data Studio (GDS), is a free tool that helps visualize data in shareable dashboards.

Most common reporting use case

Dashboards are an important part of SEO reporting, and GLS allows you to get a total view of search performance from multiple sources through its integrations.

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Out of the box, GLS allows you to connect to many different data sources.

Such as:

  • Marketing products – Google Ads, Google Analytics, Display & Video 360, Search Ads 360
  • Consumer products – Google Sheets, YouTube, and Google Search Console
  • Databases – BigQuery, MySQL, and PostgreSQL
  • Social media platformsFacebook, Reddit, and Twitter
  • Files – CSV file upload and Google Cloud Storage

Sidenote.

If you don’t have the time to create your own report manually, Ahrefs has three Google Looker Studio connectors that can help you create automated SEO reporting for any website in a few clicks

google-looker-studio-partner-connectorsgoogle-looker-studio-partner-connectors

Here’s what a dashboard in GLS looks like:

ahrefs-seo-audit-dashboardahrefs-seo-audit-dashboard
Ahrefs Google Looker Studio integration

With this type of dashboard, you share reports that are easy to understand with clients or other stakeholders.

Favorite feature

The ability to blend and filter data from different sources, like GA and GSC, means you can get a customized overview of your total search performance, tailored to your website.

Price: Free for 500 URLs

Screaming Frog is a website crawler that helps you audit your website.

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Screaming Frog’s free version of its crawler is perfect if you want to run a quick audit on a bunch of URLs. The free version is limited to 500 URLs—making it ideal for crawling smaller websites.

screaming-frog-user-interface-screenshotscreaming-frog-user-interface-screenshot

Most common reporting use case

When it comes to reporting, the Reports menu in Screaming Frog SEO Spider has a wealth of information you can look over that covers all the technical aspects of your website, such as analyzing, redirects, canonicals, pagination, hreflang, structured data, and more.

Once you’ve crawled your site, it’s just a matter of downloading the reports you need and working out the main issues to summarize in your SEO report.

Favorite feature

Screaming Frog can pull in data from other tools, including Ahrefs, using APIs. 

If you already had access to a few SEO tools’ APIs, you could pull data from all of them directly into Screaming Frog. This is useful if you want to combine crawl data with performance data or other 3rd party tools.

screaming-frog-api-accessscreaming-frog-api-access

Even if you’ve never configured an API, connecting other tools to Screaming Frog is straightforward.

Price: Free

Ahrefs has a large selection of free SEO tools to help you at every stage of your SEO campaign, and many of these can be used to provide insights for your SEO reporting.

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when-to-use-ahrefs-free-tools-across-the-seo-process-illustrationwhen-to-use-ahrefs-free-tools-across-the-seo-process-illustration

For example, you could use our:

Most common reporting use case

One of our most popular free SEO tools is Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT), which you can use for your SEO reporting.

With AWT, you can:

  • Monitor your SEO health over time by setting up scheduled SEO audits
  • See the performance of your website
  • Check all known backlinks for your website
ahrefs-overviewahrefs-overview

Favorite feature

Of all the Ahrefs free tools, my favorite is AWT. Within it, site auditing is my favorite feature—once you’ve set it up, it’s a completely hands-free way to keep track of your website’s technical performance and monitor its health.

If you already have access to Google Search Console, it’s a no-brainer to set up a free AWT account and schedule a technical crawl of your website(s).

Price: Free

Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar is a free Chrome and Firefox extension useful for diagnosing on-page technical issues and performing quick spot checks on your website’s pages.

Most common reporting use case

For SEO reporting, it’s useful to run an on-page check on your website’s top pages to ensure there aren’t any serious on-page issues.

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ahrefs-seo-toolbar-overviewahrefs-seo-toolbar-overview

With the free version, you get the following features:

  • On-page SEO report
  • Redirect tracer with HTTP Headers
  • Outgoing links report with link highlighter and broken link checker
  • SERP positions
  • Country changer for SERP

The SEO toolbar is excellent for spot-checking issues with pages on your website. If you are not confident with inspecting the code, it can also give you valuable pointers on what elements you need to include on your pages to make them search-friendly.

If anything is wrong with the page, the toolbar highlights it, with red indicating a critical issue.

severity-highlight-ahrefs-seo-toolbarseverity-highlight-ahrefs-seo-toolbar

Favorite feature

The section I use the most frequently in the SEO toolbar is the Indexability tab. In this section, you can see whether the page can be crawled and indexed by Google.

indexability-tab-ahrefs-seo-toolbarindexability-tab-ahrefs-seo-toolbar

Although you can do this by inspecting the code manually, using the toolbar is much faster.

Price: Free

Like GSC, Google Analytics is another tool you can use to track the performance of your website, tracking sessions and conversions and much more on your website.

google-analytics-screenshotgoogle-analytics-screenshot

Most common reporting use case

GA gives you a total view of website traffic from several different sources, such as direct, social, organic, paid traffic, and more.

Favorite feature

You can create and track up to 300 events and 30 conversions with GA4. Previously, with universal analytics, you could only track 20 conversions. This makes conversion and event tracking easier within GA4.

Price: Free

Google Slides is Google’s version of Microsoft PowerPoint. If you don’t have a dashboard set up to report on your SEO performance, the next best thing is to assemble a slide deck.

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Many SEO agencies present their report through dashboard insights and PowerPoint presentations. However, if you don’t have access to PowerPoint, then Google Slides is an excellent (free) alternative.

google-slides-screenshotgoogle-slides-screenshot

Most common reporting use cases

The most common use of Google Slides is to create a monthly SEO report. If you don’t know what to include in a monthly report, use our SEO report template.

Favorite feature

One of my favorite features is the ability to share your presentation on a video chat directly from Google Slides. You can do this by clicking the camera icon in the top right.

share-video-chat-google-slidesshare-video-chat-google-slides

This is useful if you are working with remote clients and makes sharing your reports easy.

Price: Free

Google Trends allows you to view a keyword’s popularity over time in any country. The data shown is the relative popularity ratio scaled from 0-100, not the direct volume of search queries.

Most common reporting use cases

Google Trends is useful for showing how the popularity of certain searches can increase or decrease over time. If you work with a website that often has trending products, services, or news, it can be useful to illustrate this visually in your SEO report.

Google Trends makes it easy to spot seasonal trends for product categories. For example, people want to buy BBQs when the weather is sunny.

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Using Google Trends, we can see that peak demand for BBQs usually happens in June-July every year.

bbq-google-trends-graphbbq-google-trends-graph

Using this data across the last five years, we could be fairly sure when the BBQ season would start and end.

Favorite feature

Comparing two or more search terms against each other over time is one of my favorite uses of Google Trends, as it can be used to tell its own story.

google-trends-comparison-examplegoogle-trends-comparison-example

Embellishing your report with trends data allows you to gain further insights into market trends.

You can even dig into trends at a regional level if you need to.

regional-trends-via-google-trendsregional-trends-via-google-trends

Final thoughts

These free tools will help you put together the foundations for a well-rounded SEO report.

The tools you use for SEO reporting don’t always have to be expensive—even large companies use many of the free tools mentioned to create insights for their client’s SEO reports.

Got more questions? Ping me on X 🙂

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Study Reveals Potential Disruption For Brands & SEO

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Study Reveals Potential Disruption For Brands & SEO

A new study by Authoritas suggests that Google’s AI-powered Search Generative Experience (SGE), currently being tested with a limited group of users, could adversely impact brand visibility and organic search traffic.

These findings include:

  • When an SGE box is expanded, the top organic result drops by over 1,200 pixels on average, significantly reducing visibility.
  • 62% of SGE links come from domains outside the top 10 organic results.
  • Ecommerce, electronics, and fashion-related searches saw the greatest disruption, though all verticals were somewhat impacted.

Adapting to generative search may require a shift in SEO strategies, focusing more on long-form content, expert insights, and multimedia formats.

As Google continues to invest in AI-powered search, the Authoritas study provides an early look at the potential challenges and opportunities ahead.

High Penetration Rate & Industry-Wide Effects

The study analyzed 2,900 brand and product-related keywords across 15 industry verticals and found that Google displays SGE results for 91.4% of all search queries.

The prevalence of SGE results indicates they impact a majority of websites across various industries.

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The research analyzed the typical composition of SGE results. On average, each SGE element contained between 10-11 links sourced from an average of four different domains.

This indicates brands may need to earn multiple links and listings within these AI-curated results to maintain visibility and traffic.

The research also suggests that larger, well-established websites like Quora and Reddit will likely perform better in SGE results than smaller websites and lesser-known brands.

Shifting Dynamics In Organic Search Results

With SGE results occupying the entire first page, websites that currently hold the top positions may experience a significant decrease in traffic and click-through rates.

When a user clicks to expand the SGE element, the study found that, on average, the #1 ranked organic result drops a sizeable 1,255 pixels down the page.

Even if a website ranks number one in organic search, it may effectively be pushed down to the second page due to the prominence of SGE results.

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New Competition From Unexpected Sources

The study revealed that SGE frequently surfaces links and content from websites that didn’t appear in the top organic rankings.

On average, only 20.1% of SGE links exactly matched a URL from the first page of Google search results.

An additional 17.9% of SGE links were from the same domains as page one results but linked to different pages. The remaining 62% of SGE links came from sources outside the top organic results.

Challenges For Brand Term Optimization & Local Search

The study reveals that SGE results for branded terms may include competitors’ websites alongside the brand’s own site, potentially leading to increased competition for brand visibility.

Laurence O’Toole, CEO and founder of Authoritas, states:

“Brands are not immune. These new types of generative results introduce more opportunities for third-party sites and even competitors to rank for your brand terms and related brand and product terms that you care about.”

Additionally, local businesses may face similar challenges, as SGE results could feature competing local brands even when users search for a specific brand in a regional context.

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Methodology & Limitations

To arrive at these insights, Authoritas analyzed a robust dataset of 2,900 search keywords across a spectrum of query types, including specific brand names, brand + generic terms, brand + product names, generic terms, and specific product names. The keywords were distributed across 15 industry verticals.

The study utilized a consistent desktop browser viewport to quantify pixel-based changes in the search results. Authoritas also developed proprietary “alignment scores” to measure the degree of overlap between traditional organic search results and the new SGE links.

While acknowledging some limitations, such as the keyword set needing to be fully representative of each vertical and the still-evolving nature of SGE, Authoritas maintains that the insights hold value in preparing brands for the new realities of an AI-powered search ecosystem.

Why We Care

The findings of the Authoritas study have implications for businesses, marketers, and SEO professionals. As Google’s SGE becomes more prevalent, it could disrupt traditional organic search rankings and traffic patterns.

Brands that have invested heavily in SEO and have achieved top rankings for key terms may find their visibility and click-through rates diminished by the prominence of SGE results.

SGE introduces new competition from unexpected sources, as most SGE links come from domains outside the top 10 organic results. This means businesses may need to compete not only with their traditional rivals but also with a broader range of websites that gain visibility through SGE.

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As Google is a primary source of traffic and leads for many businesses, any changes to its search results can impact visibility, brand awareness, and revenue.

How This Could Help You

While the rise of SGE presents challenges, it also offers opportunities.

Taking into account what we’ve learned from the Authoritas study, here are some actionable takeaways:

  • As SGE favors in-depth, informative content, businesses may benefit from investing in comprehensive, well-researched articles and guides that provide value to users.
  • Incorporating expert quotes, interviews, and authoritative sources within your content could increase the likelihood of being featured in SGE results.
  • Enriching your content with images, videos, and other multimedia elements may help capture the attention of both users and the SGE algorithm.
  • Building a strong brand presence across multiple channels, including social media, industry forums, and relevant websites, can increase your chances of appearing in SGE.
  • Creating a trustworthy brand and managing your online reputation will be crucial, as SGE may feature competitors alongside your website.

Looking Ahead

While the long-term impact of SGE will depend on user adoption and the perceived usefulness of results, this study’s findings serve as a valuable starting point for businesses and SEO professionals.

By proactively addressing the challenges and opportunities SGE presents, you can increase your chances of success in the new search environment.


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