Case Study: Financial Services SEO Results

Boomcycle dramatically increased the number of keywords ranking on this financial services website and increased their traffic value to over $350K per month! Learn how we did it here.

0 to 25,000 ranking keywords
1 K
Increase in Brand Searches
1 %
Site’s traffic value following this work
$ 1 K+
M4

From Zero to Hero With 25,000 Ranking Keywords

The financial niche is perhaps one of the most challenging and the most profitable spaces online. Our client, a financial company, began their campaign with a trickle of visitors to the website.

Read to learn how we dramatically increased the number of keywords ranking on this website and increased this financial services SEO client’s traffic value to over $350K per month.

Background

Our client was eager to compete with the biggest brands in their shared space. The website was built in August of 2018 and had seen traffic levels between 12K-13K visitors per month before signing on as a client with Boomcycle in late 2018.

We worked with the client to create an aggressive SEO strategy, starting with a $5K per month budget and building to over $35K per month, as we showed them positive results.

The SEO Audit

With each new project, we perform an SEO audit. An audit helps to ensure there are no glaring problems with the site: broken links, redirect chains, missing meta descriptions, etc. We also perform a backlink audit to check referring sites and anchor text.

In this case, we noted that the site had a reasonably large amount of keyword-heavy (i.e., non-natural) anchor text, comprising approximately 7% of the backlinks. Google can look at over-optimized anchor text as a spam signal. As a result, we knew we needed to expand the anchor text options when building new links. 

Keyword Analysis

We began our keyword analysis by identifying over 200 keywords ranking in positions 4-30 with volumes between 20-11,000 per month. We consider these “striking distance” keywords vital since we could hone in on them for fast ranking and traffic gains.

Many of these keywords indicated that another business was bidding on them using Google Ads. Seeing CPC numbers can indicate that someone had previously mined some “gold” using these terms. Some of the lower volume keywords were very interesting, with up to a $20 cost per click.

Everything we learned we rolled into our plan of action for developing topics and pages. 

When we shared this information with our client, they contributed even more relevant search terms based on their understanding of their business niche. 

Competitive Gap Analysis

A “gap analysis” brings to light keywords that your competitors are ranking for and you are not. Often these keywords can lead to many new content ideas. For example, if a competitor is ranking for a niche-relevant keyword for which you haven’t built content, creating new pages with this type of content is imperative.

All-in-all, we identified 1000+ keywords the competition was targeting that our client was not. We further determined the Top Three types of content to target and built every kind during the campaign:

Category Pages

Category pages use broad, high-volume keywords that talk in more general terms about a subject. Many clients are reluctant to build these pages, as they feel they cover too “obvious” a topic and that their prospects already know this type of data. However, Google does not know that you know this type of content, and cluing Google into understanding your expertise will help it rank you for more relevant keywords.

Product Review Pages

With the content gap analysis, we were able to identify valuable brand and service terms to review. Then, we used these terms to build a substantial amount of content that would produce revenue.

Supporting Content

Later in the campaign, we also began creating supporting content for high competition keywords after completing many base content pages.

For instance, we would support an extensive broad category keyword with contextually relevant articles linked to a high competition keywords blog post to build a foundation for the rankings. These were usually niche, persona-specific, or variations of hub pages.

Financial Services SEO Campaign

With almost all campaigns, we create a variety of high-quality links and content – the key ranking factors in SEO. We always start with a base of diverse links. Then, depending on the campaign’s efficiency, we begin to build higher-quality and more powerful links and additional content.

One of the strategies we use to generate top-quality links is guest post link building. For this engagement, we heavily relied on blogger outreach and tons of blog content to increase the number of visitors to the client’s website.

This campaign started with a mix of services, a diversity of links, Guest Posts, and fresh content for the client’s website. In the following months, we added additional content and moved to building higher-quality links. Then, as we saw the success of the custom content in the rankings and the large spread of ranking keywords, we moved more budget into content development while building high-quality links.

Results of SEO

The results of this campaign were potent thanks to a clear strategy, a regular cadence of execution, and excellent communication with the client.

In less than 12 months, this site became a major player in its market space, ranking for some of the most competitive keywords targeted by many competitors.

The site’s current traffic value is estimated at $350K+ per month. 

It ranks for over 25,000 keywords, and the traffic graph grew steadily and somewhat aggressively over the last year:

Ahrefs graphic

Conclusion

This campaign highlighted how client input and industry knowledge, combined with link building and the SEO expertise of our search engine optimization team, can bring about tremendous results.

Our client trusted our input and trusted us to execute the process according to the plan to hit our KPIs and expand their visibility and share of voice within their industry.

In addition, our team performed a deep analysis of the competition, which gave the client insights that helped them better understand their best clients and guide future business decisions.

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