ABA Banking Journal
No Result
View All Result
  • Topics
    • Ag Banking
    • Commercial Lending
    • Community Banking
    • Compliance and Risk
    • Cybersecurity
    • Economy
    • Human Resources
    • Insurance
    • Legal
    • Mortgage
    • Mutual Funds
    • Payments
    • Policy
    • Retail and Marketing
    • Tax and Accounting
    • Technology
    • Wealth Management
  • Newsbytes
  • Podcasts
  • Magazine
    • Subscribe
    • Advertise
    • Magazine Archive
    • Newsletter Archive
    • Podcast Archive
    • Sponsored Content Archive
SUBSCRIBE
ABA Banking Journal
  • Topics
    • Ag Banking
    • Commercial Lending
    • Community Banking
    • Compliance and Risk
    • Cybersecurity
    • Economy
    • Human Resources
    • Insurance
    • Legal
    • Mortgage
    • Mutual Funds
    • Payments
    • Policy
    • Retail and Marketing
    • Tax and Accounting
    • Technology
    • Wealth Management
  • Newsbytes
  • Podcasts
  • Magazine
    • Subscribe
    • Advertise
    • Magazine Archive
    • Newsletter Archive
    • Podcast Archive
    • Sponsored Content Archive
No Result
View All Result
No Result
View All Result
ADVERTISEMENT
Home Retail and Marketing

SEO and Your Bank’s Bottom Line

December 14, 2016
Reading Time: 4 mins read

By Justin Smorawske

Improving your bank website’s SEO can affect your bottom line.

Here’s the cold, hard (and unfortunate) truth—it’s really hard to increase your rankings for financial and banking terms in search engines such as Google and Bing.

If you are a regional or local bank, you are competing against huge national banks for terms such as “home loan.” And if you’re a huge national bank, you’re competing against even huger national banks for keywords like “credit card.”

But you probably already know that. If you’re a marketing manager or director at a financial institution, you have probably already spent a fair amount of time bemoaning your low rankings in search results. You may have even dismissed SEO (search engine optimization) as something impossible, something that you simply need to forget about.

But don’t do it—all is not lost.

SEO includes a wide range of services, with multiple and varied goals, all of which can work to increase your financial institution’s profitability. (Now that’s a word that can land you some executive buy-in.)

Outside of frantic keyword tracking, here are some SEO services you may have overlooked that have the ability to increase your bank’s website performance and have positive ripple effects on your FI’s bottom line.

Get conversions.

Sometimes we get so used to our own company’s website that we forget to view it from an outsider’s perspective. Is your website easy to use? (This is an extremely important question that many people struggle to answer.) Your website should have clear goals for users, such as “click here to apply” or “learn more.”

Potential and current customers should be able to arrive on your site and figure out very quickly what path to take next. Optimize your website for conversions by testing things like font size and color, the way your pages are formatted, adding buttons to important next steps and other user-experience methods. When you find a change that results in more leads, keep it. Your website just got that much better.

Get technical.

This is the boring stuff. It’s also the stuff that search engines value. Search engines like Google and Bing don’t know that your financial institution has the best level of customer care around. All they know is that your website isn’t mobile-friendly.

To search engines, lack of mobile-friendliness is a huge red flag. There are other small changes you can make, like improving your page titles and meta-descriptions. Many banks ignore this aspect of their websites, because they do not directly affect page rankings.

But many SEO experts estimate that improving your metadata, as it’s called collectively, can increase click-through rates to your site from search-engine users by more than 20%.

That boring stuff just became a little more interesting, no?

Get local.

One of the most important areas of SEO for a regional bank to focus on is local SEO. Local SEO is a term that refers to community-focused possibilities, such as Google Maps, Yellow Pages, official city websites, and other city-specific marketplaces. Local SEO is an easier arena to master than search-engine rankings, but you’ll still have to put in the time.

Local SEO is mostly about being making sure potential customers can find you when you want them to. You should check your listings across all websites and make sure that you have the correct address, phone number and other business details. Tools like Moz Local and BrightLocal can help you find these profiles without having to spend hours scouring the internet.

Now for the bonus round…

ADVERTISEMENT

This bonus round suggestion isn’t directly related to SEO, but it can affect everything you do on the Internet.

Measure your measurements.

Take a good, hard look at what you’re measuring online. Is it things like Facebook likes or the overall number of website visitors? Does a dip or growth in Facebook likes directly affect your bottom line?

If not, maybe it’s time to take into account the measure of your measurements. Write down simple and achievable digital goals for your business—things that translate to your business’s real-life goals.

For instance, if your bank wants to grow its lending department, your goal could be to see a 5% increase in the number of loan leads through the website. Goals like this are much more important to base decisions around than Twitter followers. Although, for the record, we still recommend keeping an eye on the overall growth or decline of your social media following—just give it the appropriate weight in the reporting process so decisions are made based off the most important key metrics.

Justin Smorawske is CMO/Partner at Epicosity, a financial services marketing agency in Sioux Falls, S.D. Epicosity has a keen insight into meeting millennial demand with its expertise in creative development, digital strategy, video production, website development and public relations. Contact: [email protected]

Online training in digital, mobile and social media from ABA.

Tags: GoogleLocal marketingSEOWebsites
ShareTweetPin

Related Posts

ABA urges FCC to combat illegal call spoofing

ABA urges FCC to impose call authentication requirement for non-IP networks, mandate IP transition

Compliance and Risk
July 16, 2025

ABA joined six trade associations in urging the FCC to adopt a proposal to create a new call authentication requirement designed to limit criminal access to the U.S. calling network.

Capturing These Three Data Types Can Transform Your Fraud Monitoring

ABA Fraudcast: How the ABA Foundation helps banks protect their customers

Compliance and Risk
July 16, 2025

As more older Americans are major targets for criminals, Safe Banking for Seniors is an effective program to inform and defend against targeted scams.

Director’s Briefing: How a Maryland bank’s CEO is prioritizing strategy and governance

Director’s Briefing: How a Maryland bank’s CEO is prioritizing strategy and governance

Directors Briefing
July 14, 2025

Why deliberately separating CEO and board chair roles is a good idea. And the value of strategic planning ahead of a major asset threshold.

How to Hyper-Segment Your Customer Communications without Losing Control

Marketing Money Podcast: The 30-month plan to future-proof bank marketing

Retail and Marketing
July 11, 2025

How aligning marketing with executive and business-line goals can make a massive impact.

Using Artificial Intelligence to Make Sense of Mountains of Data

Three myths about AI in banking

Technology
July 3, 2025

Common myths and misperceptions might confuse about what to expect and misdirect investment and efforts.

Chair’s View: Celebrating a century of giving back

Chair’s View: Celebrating a century of giving back

Community Banking
July 1, 2025

Not only do we celebrate the 150th anniversary of our organization, we also commemorate an important milestone for the ABA Foundation.

NEWSBYTES

ABA urges FCC to impose call authentication requirement for non-IP networks, mandate IP transition

July 16, 2025

Banking agencies propose to rescind Community Reinvestment Act rule

July 16, 2025

Beige Book: Economic activity ticks up

July 16, 2025

SPONSORED CONTENT

Navigating Disruption in Ag Lending – Why Tariffs Are Just the Tip of the Iceberg

Navigating Disruption in Ag Lending – Why Tariffs Are Just the Tip of the Iceberg

July 1, 2025
AI Compliance and Regulation: What Financial Institutions Need to Know

Unlocking Deposit Growth: How Financial Institutions Can Activate Data for Precision Cross-Sell

June 1, 2025
Choosing the Right Account Opening Platform: 10 Key Considerations for Long-Term Success

Choosing the Right Account Opening Platform: 10 Key Considerations for Long-Term Success

April 25, 2025
Outsourcing: Getting to Go/No-Go

Outsourcing: Getting to Go/No-Go

April 5, 2025

PODCASTS

Breaking down the bank-related provisions in the big budget bill

July 10, 2025

Podcast: Inside ABA’s new Treasury Check Verification System API

June 25, 2025

Podcast: Staying close to clients amid tariff-driven volatility

June 18, 2025
ADVERTISEMENT

American Bankers Association
1333 New Hampshire Ave NW
Washington, DC 20036
1-800-BANKERS (800-226-5377)
www.aba.com
About ABA
Privacy Policy
Contact ABA

ABA Banking Journal
About ABA Banking Journal
Media Kit
Advertising
Subscribe

© 2025 American Bankers Association. All rights reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Topics
    • Ag Banking
    • Commercial Lending
    • Community Banking
    • Compliance and Risk
    • Cybersecurity
    • Economy
    • Human Resources
    • Insurance
    • Legal
    • Mortgage
    • Mutual Funds
    • Payments
    • Policy
    • Retail and Marketing
    • Tax and Accounting
    • Technology
    • Wealth Management
  • Newsbytes
  • Podcasts
  • Magazine
    • Subscribe
    • Advertise
    • Magazine Archive
    • Newsletter Archive
    • Podcast Archive
    • Sponsored Content Archive

© 2025 American Bankers Association. All rights reserved.