Software

Google study shows companies need to tap into organic search strategies to drive greater traffic

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February 26, 2021

Terakeet, a leading enterprise search engine optimization technology company headquartered in Syracuse, New York, released findings from its latest study which examined how financial brands and institutions have fared in the organic search landscape, according to a press release.

The report, Google Market Share Report for Personal Finance, focuses on three primary areas of personal finance: consumer banking, credit cards and personal investing, along with nine underlying market sectors to reveal that non-bank websites are dominating Google across all sectors. For example, non-banks hold 90% of the market share for cashback credit cards and for rewards credit cards, with NerdWallet owning the large percentage of both categories at 19.62% and 24.92% respectively.

"According to Moz and Google, organic search results capturing 71% of online clicks and driving more than five times the ROI than paid search, it's clear that organic search presents a significant business opportunity, but our study shows that it's undervalued by prominent banking and financial institutions," Shannon Reedy, SVP of account management, Terakeet said in the release.

The report also reveals that financial institutions are being outperformed by non-banks because:

• Google now looks for rewarding content at the top and middle of the funnel, versus only lower funnel information.
• The competitive SEO landscape has evolved and encompasses more than just traditional offline competitors, including publishers, aggregators, comparison sites, government sites and others.
• Many of the websites have long-form content clearly organized by topic areas. For example, Bankrate's long-form content has helped it capture more than 29% of the organic search market share for keywords examined.
• The websites offer a range of free, interactive online tools and calculators (i.e. financial literacy scoring tools, free credit score tools, free credit reports, and free credit monitoring) that are not only helpful to site visitors, but offer backlinks to other websites to increase SEO visibility.

Reedy added: "Google has also stated that organic search is the only channel that accrues value over time, therefore it is imperative for traditional financial institutions to look deeper at the new competitive landscape and tap into smart, organic search strategies to drive greater traffic, conversion and business results. It's not that the landscape is stagnant. It's simply that a smarter approach to content should be taken."

Terakeet used Carina, its proprietary search engine market share analysis tool, to examine 501 high-value, non-branded personal finance terms that account for more than 6 million monthly Google searches.