Doubling Organic Traffic for a Finance Website

Disclaimer: As a white label SEO agency, we keep the names of the websites we work on confidential to respect our partners.

• Operating in a YMYL (Your Money Your Life) niche, the site was lacking in Expertise-Authority-Trust (E-A-T) signals.
• Core landing pages were missing out on important informational content which would be beneficial to prospective customers as well as improve visibility.
• The site’s backlink authority was considerably behind its competitors.

Improving the Website’s E-A-T Signals

Google specifically asks its quality raters to check for signals that convey three core characteristics: Expertise-Authority-Trust (E-A-T). The idea is to show Google (and your audience) that the content on your website is coming from a trusted, well-respected and credible source. In the case of this particular client, we needed to convey E-A-T within the insurance sector – i.e. showcase the client’s expertise, authority and trustworthiness as an insurance broker.

To do this, we implemented a few different strategies:

1. Building Authorship – we made sure that the client’s About page included all the necessary information that shows both Google and prospective customers that there are real experts behind the organisation. 
2. Building Topical Authority – we expanded the site’s blog section (and core landing pages) with informational content (more information on this provided below) and made sure it was clear who created the content by adding an author section which included the following information:

• Author name
• Brief author bio showcasing the writer’s experience and expertise within the topic
• Links to the author’s social media profiles (i.e. LinkedIn, Twitter etc).
• A professional headshot

3. Ensure Content Freshness – as a YMYL site (a website whose content can directly impact a person’s wellbeing), it was crucial that the most up to date information was being provided. We reviewed legacy blog posts and landing pages and updated any content that was out of date or no longer relevant.

Targeting Long Tail Keywords With Informational Content

The core landing pages were lacking useful informational content, specifically, frequently asked questions that prospective customers may have about the services provided. This was a missed opportunity as it meant that the site wasn’t delivering the best user experience, but was also missing out on ranking for additional long tail informational keywords. 

Our content strategy was to find keywords that we could target for FAQs using the People Also Ask and Related Searches sections on the search results page for primary keywords that the client wanted to rank for. Doing this allowed us to create a list of questions (and keywords) that were relevant to our given topic.

After pooling together the keywords and questions for each landing page, our content team wrote clear and comprehensive answers whilst our SEO team implemented FAQ structured data to ensure our chances of appearing as featured snippets.

Executing A Competitor Based Link Building Strategy

The client’s backlink profile was considerably weaker in comparison to the top ranking competition at the start of the campaign. We reverse-engineered their backlink profiles by identifying topically relevant websites that our client didn’t have a backlink from, but the competitors did. 

Over the course of the campaign, we built the site’s authority with niche relevant backlinks that targeted the website’s core service pages in addition to the homepage. This has resulted in the site’s link velocity seeing consistent growth.

When compared the organic traffic for non-branded keywords year-or-year:

• The number of users increased by 135.51% from 597 to 1,406
• The number of sessions increased by 121.6% from 775 to 1,714