In the rapidly changing and competitive fintech industry, having a website alone is no longer enough to stand out. To gain an edge online, fintech brands need to optimise their digital presence to reach the right audience and build trust. Effective SEO in fintech involves more than just ranking for popular keywords – it requires creating content that educates and simplifies complex terms for users while remaining compliant with regulations.
Whether you’re targeting the consumer (B2C) or other businesses (B2B), fintech companies need to show the real-world value of their product or service and how it can help solve a problem. This often means breaking down complicated financial concepts into clear content that drives engagement and builds the user’s confidence. While this may seem simple, the fintech industry faces the added challenge of strict compliance requirements. Transparency is key if you want to build credibility with your customers. Before you can create an effective SEO strategy for your fintech brand, it’s essential to understand these challenges and the best way to overcome them.
This fintech SEO guide will cover everything you need to build an effective SEO strategy tailored to the fintech sector. Along the way, we’ll look at challenges associated with fintech compared to other markets, as well as the general and technical SEO strategies you should consider to drive visibility and achieve long-term success.
If you’re looking for something specific, use the links below to navigate to it.
- What is fintech SEO?
- Why SEO is important for fintech businesses
- SEO challenges associated with fintech
- 5 fintech SEO strategies
- Key fintech technical SEO strategies
- Monitoring SEO performance for fintech
- Optimise your SEO fintech performance with Impression
Ready to get started with a Fintech SEO agency? For a free consultation, speak to our team today.
What is fintech SEO?
Fintech SEO is the practice of optimising a financial technology company’s website to improve its visibility in the search engine results. By targeting the right keywords and search intent, you can attract your ideal customer. Fintech companies can use SEO to drive organic traffic to their financial products and services by aligning content with the specific needs customers are searching for, making their brand appear as a trustworthy and relevant source at the right stage of the decision-making process.
As a complex industry dealing with highly sensitive data, SEO content must be simplified and educational. It should also be relevant, keeping users informed on the latest industry news, all while demonstrating the value of the product and how it remains compliant with the ever-changing financial regulations. Not only will this build trust and retain customers, but it will also position a brand as a credible source in the fintech space.
With the rise of large language models (LLMs and generative AI in search, fintech SEO needs to adapt to the new search behaviours – including AI overviews. Potential customers are increasingly using AI search tools to explore broad questions around fintech queries in the middle of their buying journey, such as “how does a digital wallet work?”. Bottom-of-the-funnel searches are also key for conversion, like “best digital wallet app for saving money”. This highlights the importance of using fintech SEO strategies that target both the purchase-intent and exploratory queries to remain visible and relevant at all stages of the customer journey.
Why SEO is important for fintech businesses
To stand out in today’s highly saturated fintech landscape, it requires more than just visibility. Customers value safety, trust, and knowledge when it comes to your products and services. With so many digital banks and investment platforms competing for attention, customers rely heavily on search engines to compare and evaluate financial products. Google’s “People Also Ask” queries frequently revolve around safety, transparency, and functionality. This presents a clear opportunity for fintech brands to educate their existing and potential customers and attract, convert, and retain them through helpful and trustworthy content.
Paired with an effective SEO strategy, fintech companies should compete for top positions in organic search results. Google’s algorithm likes websites that show experience, expertise, authority and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T), which is even more important in the fintech industry. By utilising SEO, the fintech industry can simplify complex topics and create more user-focused content that answers some of their most asked questions – all while meeting regulations.
Unlike PPC, which can be expensive for fintech brands looking to appear at the top of search results, SEO can provide a more sustainable and long-term strategy for better visibility. Having an effective SEO strategy can ensure you gain high-ranking positions without the need for ongoing paid ads. The return on investment for SEO builds over time as your content begins to gain authority and visibility –eventually driving more traffic and leads at a lower cost. For fintech businesses, this makes SEO one of the most efficient and sustainable growth strategies.
SEO challenges associated with fintech
While SEO has many proven benefits for fintech businesses to help improve visibility and increase conversion, it can also come with its own set of challenges. In a highly competitive industry where trust is essential, effective SEO isn’t just about ranking well – it’s about clearly communicating the value of your product, building credibility and gaining long-term loyalty with customers with compliant and educational content. However, achieving this can be difficult when competition is fierce. Below, we will discuss the key SEO challenges associated with fintech.
Industry regulations
With heavily regulated rules to adhere to, the fintech sector faces significant restrictions on the language that can be used in marketing materials. Fintech brands must be extra cautious in following these regulations to avoid legal repercussions. All content should be accurate to ensure it does not mislead customers, downplay risks, or exaggerate your product. This is especially important with the use of any advertising platforms, where there are strict rules around terms related to lending and investing. Violations can result in serious consequences, including account suspensions and penalties.
Even when marketing materials do remain compliant, the fintech industry can often experience delays in campaigns due to lengthy compliance review processes. This can limit the flexibility of SEO strategies and make it more challenging to produce timely and high-ranking content.
The complexities don’t stop there. All fintech content must comply with the guidelines set out by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). It’s crucial to ensure your fintech brand is following advertising guidelines when inviting users to engage with their financial services, such as opening an account or applying for credit. Content must be clear, fair, and not misleading, highlighting all risk disclaimers to remain transparent to customers. To prevent any regulatory breaches, fintech companies need to work closely with their legal and compliance teams throughout the process of content creation – ensuring all materials meet FCA standards while still being highly optimised to improve organic search performance.
Keyword competition
The fintech industry is a lucrative space, and high-value keywords are extremely competitive.To stand out from the competition, fintech companies need to focus on long-tail keywords and specific queries related to their service, rather than trying to rank for highly competitive and broader terms. Highlighting a fintech brand’s specialty is much more effective and can ultimately lead to higher conversions while improving relevance. This approach can also build stronger connections with users searching for tailored fintech solutions.
For example, in the personal finance space, a broad keyword like “investment app” has a search volume of 900 and a keyword difficulty score of 63 in Ahrefs. Instead of targeting a highly competitive term, aiming to rank for a long-tail keyword like “best investment app for beginners” with a search volume of 150 and a keyword difficulty ranking of 5, can capture a clearer and more actionable audience. This can help appeal directly to those who are new to investments and looking for tailored advice. Long-tail keywords can better meet user intent and can help position a brand as an expert in a specialised segment of the market.
Handling complex financial concepts
The complex terminology and concepts of fintech can be difficult to understand and could easily confuse customers – especially if you’re not familiar with the industry. SEO content should be simplified to allow customers to get a better understanding of your product or service and its value. Guides, FAQs, videos and even jargon busters can help bridge the knowledge gap to ensure the target audience understands your offering. Not only does this gain their trust, but it also shows that your brand is highly transparent.
UK-based embedded finance platform Weavr, which enables businesses to integrate financial services directly to their app, includes a highly detailed fintech glossary of terms. This interactive glossary acts like a jargon buster, breaking down more complex terms and providing clear definitions. Throughout the glossary, Weavr also includes internal links to their blog posts, discussing some of these topics further – ensuring users grasp key concepts and further engage with their content. With easy navigation and an A-Z menu of terms, the brand’s glossary educates its audience while building trust and emphasising its expertise in the industry.
5 fintech SEO strategies
Success in fintech relies on standing out from the competition and keeping on top of industry trends. A clear SEO strategy is what will ensure your website gains more visibility, reaches the right audience and increases conversions. If you want to explore how to build an effective fintech marketing strategy in more detail, I have written about this before. If you’re looking for some inspiration, carry on reading to explore the 5 key strategies that will help fintech companies build trust and credibility while delivering results.
1. Make E-E-A-T your guiding principle
Credibility isn’t just a competitive advantage in fintech – it’s a requirement. This is why Google’s E-E-A-T framework is essential for SEO success. You need to communicate to both the audience and search engines that you’re a trustworthy source for financial information. It’s key to educate your audience through SEO content to prove that your brand is an expert in the market, while showing accuracy and transparency. Applying this framework across all touchpoints is what’s going to establish your business as a reliable and safe choice in the market. Gaining authority through backlinks and earning links from reputable resources, including industry articles and news outlets, will further show your brand as a trusted leader. When done well, E-E-A-T can strengthen your brand’s positioning while showing your commitment to reliability and transparency.
UK-based digital bank Monzo clearly follows the E-E-A-T framework through its blog content, regularly updating the guides to keep customers informed and engaged about their services. The guides are written in a clear tone of voice, making it easy to understand while supporting their audience in understanding everyday financial decisions. Posts like updated engineering principles and processing payments show both expertise and transparency in how Monzo operates. Highlighting the women’s network shows their commitment to real-world experiences – fostering trust and showing they create an environment of collaboration.
2. Use keywords to target every stage of the customer journey
Effective SEO in fintech is more than just identifying and targeting high-volume keywords that everyone else in the industry is aiming for. It begins with understanding the broader informational and transaction needs of your audience. As a highly saturated space, fintech brands all try to compete for the same keywords, so to stand you need to focus on your audience. Targeting long-tail keywords and intent-specific queries presents a more strategic opportunity.
Instead of just chasing traffic alone, keywords should target different stages from the customer journey, from early research around the product, to product comparison in the decision-making process and ultimately, conversions. Tailored content that appeals to the early, mid, and late stages of the guide customers towards making a purchase is more effective than just targeting competitive keyword terms.
Wealthfront, a leading robo-advisor and financial services company, effectively targets keywords and tailors content to every stage of the customer journey. At the awareness stage, they answer general questions around “what is a robo-advisor?” to attract new potential customers who have begun their search into automated investing. During the consideration phase, they compare themselves in their content against competitors to clearly show the brand’s USPs. At the decision-making phase, there is a guide on “which Weatherfront account is right for you?”, helping customers make informed decisions, educating users on their offerings, while moving closer to a conversion.
3. Focus on growing brand authority
In the fintech industry, backlinks can be a trust signal for search engines – helping you build authority and improve your site’s rankings. Brands should focus on link building from high authority and relevant sources, like reputable financial news websites and industry blogs. Not only can this help to boost your visibility, it can also reinforce your credibility with customers by showing how your brand is renowned in the fintech space.
Creating valuable resources such as industry reports and webinars will encourage fintech news outlets and blogs to reference and link to your site. Building this relationship and collaborating with other reputable names in the industry can also help to attract additional backlinks. The most important thing to note is quality over quantity. A few strong and relevant links can make more of an impact for your site than acquiring lower-quality ones.
Leading fintech app Revolut has successfully grown its brand authority by securing backlinks from high-profile financial publications like The Financial Times and Forbes. Revolut regularly posts educational content, marketing insights and product updates on their site – keeping both customers and reputable publications informed. Creating content that others can easily link to encourages organic backlinks that strengthen both the brand’s credibility and visibility.
4. Align content strategy with AI search trends
As AI-generated search and large language models (LLMs) are becoming more prominent in the search results, it’s beginning to change the way users discover information. Fintech SEO strategies need to include more than just traditional SEO – it’s about creating content that AI can summarise, interpret and present. Generative AI surfaces content by prioritising authority, clarity and direct answers to financial queries. Fintech brands need to focus on discussing their products, regulations and other key concerns to help solve a problem for a customer to appear in AI searches.
Instead of using formats like FAQs and snippets, there should be a focus on creating expert-driven content that AI overviews can easily extract. User intent and trustworthiness are still key factors to consider to ensure your content remains relevant and competitive – especially as search has shifted towards more overview-style answers. Focusing on ranking in AI-generated searches can help fintech brands to maintain visibility and gain authority before competitors in the AI landscape.
Neobank Starling uses their blog to address a wide range of questions in a clear and authoritative tone of voice. The guides are split into different sections, including fraud, money truths and business. Topics include fraud protection and account switching, simplifying topics and answering customer queries. The straightforward language used throughout the content makes it easy for Generative AI tools to extract answers, ensuring Starling remains visible in the conversational search landscape.
5. On-page optimisation
On-page optimisation is crucial to any fintech SEO strategy, but to drive real impact, it needs to be approached with intent and prioritisation. In fintech, clarity, compliance and building a foundation of trust are what will persuade users to convert. High-impact pages should be optimised first to appeal to those at the bottom of the funnel, such as product or sign-up pages. This is where you can begin to influence user actions with clear page structures, headings and strong internal linking. Once the core pages are optimised, fintech brands can begin to work towards the mid and top funnel content. This can be guides and FAQs to help build topical authority across financial topics – all while driving traffic to informational content.
UK-based digital bank Tandem uses a clear and conversational layout on their product pages, with key benefits highlighted with bold headings and infographics. Tandem links to relevant guides throughout for further information, and also includes an FAQ page at the bottom to answer various questions throughout different stages of the customer journey. They also have a green hub page containing even more FAQs, which includes a link to. Not only do Tandem build topical authority with their financial content, they can also effectively drive long-tail traffic by answering customer queries.
Key fintech technical SEO focus areas
Now that we’ve explored the key SEO fintech strategies, we also need to consider the best fintech technical SEO strategies. Technical SEO plays a vital role in ensuring your fintech website is visible, user-friendly and trusted by search engines. It’s also important to create a seamless experience for users when trying to stand out in a competitive and trust-driven market. A strong site performance not only ensures that your content is discoverable but also can create stronger user confidence.
Web speed
Fast-loading pages are crucial from both an SEO perspective and when building user trust in a fintech space – especially where customers expect quick access to sensitive information. A slow website could contribute to higher bounce rates and lower search visibility. To avoid this, it’s important to prioritise site performance by optimising image sizes, removing any unnecessary scripts, leveraging browser caching and using a CDN to deliver content faster. Tools like Google PageSpeed Insights can help pinpoint any specific issues, while offering actionable recommendations for fintech brands, ensuring they meet the high expectations of their audience.
Mobile responsiveness
With the majority of users accessing financial services on mobile devices, fintech websites need to prioritise being fully responsive across all screen sizes. A poor mobile optimisation experience not only frustrates users, but can also negatively impact rankings due to Google’s mobile-first indexing. Fintech brands need to use responsive design principles, clear CTAs and touch-friendly elements to enhance the user experience. Mobile optimisation isn’t just about the layout of the websites– it also includes the load speed and creating easy navigation around your site to meet expectations for a competitive advantage against the competition.
Mobile App Optimisation (ASO) and deep linking
While mobile-responsive design is key for your website, the majority of active users will perform sensitive transactions via your fintech company’s dedicated mobile app. For these services, the optimisation strategy shifts to App Store Optimisation (ASO). ASO shares many principles with SEO, such as keyword optimisation and trust signals, but focuses on maximising visibility and driving downloads within the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
Key ASO elements that align with your SEO strategy include:
- Keyword strategy: Optimising your app’s title, subtitle, and description for high-intent search terms (e.g., “investment tracker,” “instant payments”).
- Visual and conversion elements: Testing icons, screenshots, and video previews to improve click-through and install rates.
- Trust and compliance signals: Managing positive ratings and reviews, responding to feedback, and clearly communicating security standards and compliance (e.g., PCI DSS, GDPR).
From a technical SEO standpoint, integrating deep linking is crucial. Deep links allow search engines and users to link directly from a mobile search result or a webpage to a specific screen inside the mobile app, rather than a generic home screen. Implementing tools like App Indexing (Google) and Universal Links (Apple) is essential for bridging the gap between your website content and your app’s user experience. For a wider view on connecting all mobile touchpoints, see this guide on mobile marketing by Sabrina Cale.
Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are essential for measuring a website’s overall page experience, which can impact both the user experience and SEO performance. Fintech companies need to focus on the loading performance, stability and responsiveness of their website to meet customers’ demands. Users expect this level of page experience when relying on a fintech product or service that’s handling financial data. Maintaining and measuring the largest contentful paint (LCP), interaction to next paint (INP) and cumulative layout shift (CLS) scores is crucial. Regular monitoring of these metrics can help fintech brands identify experience gaps and further optimise their sites to uphold trust and engagement.
Structured data
Structured data plays the role of helping search engines to better understand a fintech website’s content. It can also help enable rich results like star ratings, FAQs, or product details. By leveraging the relevant schema markup, structured data can enhance visibility and improve click-through rates – especially in a competitive sector like the fintech industry. Including structured data as part of your fintech SEO strategy ensures your site communicates clearly with search engines and users. Applying relevant schema types to key pages and regularly testing them using Google’s Rich Results Test can not only elevate brand authority but also improve the search presence.
Crawlability issues
Search engines need to be able to access and index your content to ensure it can rank effectively. If they aren’t able to, there could be crawlability issues. These issues, such as broken links, orphaned pages and misconfigured noindex tags, can prevent important pages from being indexed, reducing visibility and limiting user access. Using tools like Google Search Console and Screaming Frog can help you identify and fix these errors. All important pages should be included in your website’s sitemap to ensure they’re easily discoverable. Having a clean crawl path on your fintech websites can not only support stronger rankings but can also improve the user experience and ensure your audience can access the right content.
Monitoring SEO performance for fintech
Tracking and monitoring SEO performance is essential for understanding your customers better, while identifying what’s working – and what isn’t. Regularly monitoring your SEO efforts can ensure your content is aligned with your target market’s ever-changing needs. It also allows you to uncover their unique challenges and help them solve the problem, rather than just being a service provider. With these insights, you can refine your SEO content strategy to attract the right audience and guide them towards meaningful actions, from signing up for an account to educational blog content.
Some of the best ways to track SEO performance include using tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console and third-party platforms like Ahrefs and SEMrush. These tools can help track keyword performance, organic traffic, and user behaviour on the site. It’s not just about traffic for fintech brands; it’s about attracting the right people and turning them into conversions.
Tracking and monitoring key metrics that target industry-specific KPIs like customer lifetime value (CLV) and cost per acquisition (CPA) can be beneficial when analysing your SEO performance. A strong SEO strategy can create a better customer lifetime value, keeping customers engaged and ensuring they’re retained over time. This can also reduce the cost per acquisition by decreasing the reliance on paid acquisition – highlighting the important role SEO plays in the fintech industry as a sustainable and long-term growth strategy.
Key metrics for tracking fintech SEO performance
To ensure your SEO efforts are working, it’s important to track specific performance metrics to measure their effectiveness. It can also help fintech brands identify what’s working, what needs improvement and any other opportunities that may arise. Below, we will explore the key metrics to measure the success of SEO campaigns.
Organic traffic growth
Organic traffic growth is about tracking the number of OS users that visit your website through search engines. It can also help a fintech company understand if its SEO efforts are increasing in visibility and attracting the right audience. Monitoring this metric over time can also show growth trends and any seasonal patterns that may appear. By tracking organic traffic, you can learn what SEO strategies are driving success and adjust accordingly if they’re not, based on the results.
Keyword rankings
Tracking keyword rankings can allow you to monitor your positions for important financial keywords. Using third-party tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush, you can track your position in search results for target keywords and compare your rankings against competitors. It’s also important to double-check keyword rankings by searching manually in an incognito browser, as sometimes third-party tools aren’t completely accurate. Keyword rankings can not only help you understand what pages are ranking – they can also identify new keyword opportunities. Analysing keywords competitors rank for can also reveal any gaps in your strategy, offering further opportunities.
Click-through rate
Click-through rates can measure how many users click on your website after seeing it in the search results pages. Creating compelling meta titles and descriptions is key to driving clicks while being relevant to user queries. A click-through rate can also be affected by where you rank on the search engine page – higher rankings usually attract more clicks. This highlights the importance of ensuring your meta tags align with the user intent and stand out against competitors in the SERPs.
AI overview rankings
With the rise in AI-powered search features, fintech brands should monitor how often their site is featured in AI overviews in search results. Third-party tools like SEO Monitor can help track what keywords are gaining AI overviews, as well as if your brand is mentioned or linked within them. Not only can they help build brand awareness, but AI can also gain credibility and trust in your fintech brand – both crucial in this competitive market.
Backlink profile
High-quality backlinks are essential for improving your site’s domain authority and search rankings – helping to gain trust in both search engines and users. Tracking your backlink profile can be achieved using Ahrefs or SEMrush, discovering how many backlinks are gained and their quality. For fintech brands, it’s key to focus on targeting more authoritative sites in the fintech industry. You need to gain trust in the market that is built on transparency, sensitive user data and educating others, and having backlinks from credible resources can help build that trust. While brand authority isn’t a direct ranking factor, it can still influence SEO performance by improving link authority and user experience.
Engagement metrics
Engagement metrics like bounce rate, time on page and pages per session can give insights into how effectively content is engaging users. For example, a high bounce rate could suggest a mismatch between user intent and the content provided, suggesting a need to review the intent. How much time is spent on a page can reflect on the user engagement and content relevance, which also lets search engines know if a page is valuable. Pages per session, on the other hand, is also crucial to track, allowing you to understand the user’s interest and interaction with the website. These metrics can support the content strategy, allowing you to change and adjust accordingly to how users interact with your content.
Conversion rates
Conversions and conversion rates can help you see how many visitors from search engines become leads or customers. Tracking these metrics in Google Analytics allows you to see how well your SEO efforts are driving outcomes like account sign-ups, lead generation and sales. Setting up conversions that are directly related to organic traffic performance can give clearer insights into your SEO strategy – determining if it’s working or if adjustments are needed.
Core Web Vitals
Fintech websites need to ensure they meet Google’s performance standards using Core Web Vitals. These include Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), which measures the site speed and how quickly the main content loads, Interaction to Next Paint (INP), evaluating the site’s responsiveness to user interactions and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), tracking, and unexpected layout movements. Website speed and responsiveness are crucial for keeping customers happy. Fintech brands need to ensure that trust and a seamless experience are achieved, as poor site performance can cause users to leave before engaging with your product or service.
Optimise your SEO fintech performance with Impression
In this article, we’ve explored the importance of fintech SEO and how to overcome industry-specific challenges, while outlining on-page and technical strategies to set your brand up for long-term success. Impression offers specialist Fintech SEO services to help your B2B or B2C fintech brand in a highly competitive market. To find out what we can do for your business, speak to our team today.
