Fintech SEO: How we increased traffic 3.5 times

In 2022, we were approached by a client of Silverbird, a fintech startup of banking services in the UK for small and medium-sized retail businesses that entered the international market. Silverbird’s main product is a service that helps you make international multicurrency payments. Our goal was to help the client reach the level of Revolut or Wise payment systems by attracting new users.

In this article, we will tell you how, despite the restrictions, we were able to attract international users, put content publications on stream, and increase search and brand traffic

The first step of any project is to set a goal andоdelve into the nuances of the problem and topic. We studied the specifics of the business, took into account the limitations in our work, and outlined two main directions:

At the initial stages of promotion, the client built the site on a Tilde, and this is convenient for a startup, but not very convenient for SEO promotion, since it does not allow you to create many pages. Therefore, it was important to highlight the key pages and promote them.

First, we analyzed the limitations of working with the blog:

Let’s tell you in order how we worked with these restrictions. 

High competition. It’s hard to argue with this, but the advantage of Silverbird is flexibility. Transfers are made quickly, and you can perform the operation immediately, avoiding cash gaps. 

A long chain of touches. Here it is important to show that, despite the fact that Silverbird is a startup, its employees are experienced in their niche and money will be safe with them. To do this, they wrote articles about the specifics of international currency transfers, and created expert content. Managers of potential clients Google relevant questions, come across expert articles of the same service, the name is remembered, and loyalty increases. 

One expert. We knew that we couldn’t do much content with just one expert, and it was important to prioritize tasks. We identified the most popular topics that are most likely to get into the top 10 search results, and that are most interesting to the target audience.

First, we conducted a site audit: we collected the semantic core, and divided it into two areas: commercial-for product pages, and informational — for the blog. We focused on optimizing existing pages.

We divided the flow of planned content into two areas: topics that constantly concern users, and situational hot questions. For constantly relevant topics, it is easier to predict the demand potential, but if you are late with hot topics, the content will quickly become irrelevant, and it will not be possible to restart it. Therefore, we tried to write situational content as quickly as possible with the highest priority. 

To facilitate the work of the content department, we developed an article template and made recommendations for layout and linking. We made a selection of competitors ‘ materials, collected semantics, and prepared a content plan with separate technical specifications, examples, and structure for each article.

There are two main ways to increase traffic: 

1. Reference books andservice pages. They are convenient because they do not require uniqueness, and we were able to find sites with precisely verified information. This didn’t take up much of the content team’s resources, so reference books were second only to expert articles.

2. Tops and ratings. We already need unique content, but the competition in the top rankings is stronger, so we deprioritized this task to deal with it later. 

So, we have formed a plan for working with content:

The main promotion region is the United Kingdom, and there we promoted the main page and other existing pages. We created separate pages for additional regions, but left the information «Join» and «Blog» linked to the UK, and did not duplicate them in subfolders.

We also combined the CMS of the site and blog, and gave technical recommendations: add robots.txt, fill in H1 and description, and fix several pages that gave the 404 error.

We promoted Silverbird mainly in Google, and for it, the link factor is very important. And at first, we were much inferior to our competitors:

Fintech refers to YMYL sites, that is, those that can affect money or health, and therefore special control over them. Therefore, it is better to work only with natural links, promote on thematic sites, and supplement the strategy with trust donors using PR activities and media.  

Placement in media was used as an additional tool. Silverbird prepared an article about the product, and we requested information from the sites, and realized that we needed to expand the geography, since links for the UK are expensive, and prepare template emails with a request for placement in order to cover more sites. At first, we received two placements in three months, but when we implemented updates, we were able to reach more sites, get about 150 responses per month, choose interesting ones, and publish 5-7 articles per month in third-party publications. 

We started working in April, and since May, we have managed to establish smooth operation of the content machine, as well as receive link placements. So by September, traffic increased 3.5 times. 

From April to September 2022, traffic increased 3.5 times, and from year to year — five times.