Increasing Your Financial Institution’s Website Traffic
Financial institutions need to maintain a strong presence online and at the center of that is an organization’s website. In today’s digital marketplace, about 33% of people search for local businesses using the internet daily. Setting a website apart from other banks, credit unions, and lenders can be challenging, but there are ways to remain competitive in today’s digital world and increase online visibility. Whether you are planning a new website design project or need a simple refresh of your web strategy, these tips can help you improve your financial institution’s website traffic.
Optimize Your Website for Mobile
Mobile is taking over, with over 60% of U.S online traffic reported on mobile platforms in July 2022. That’s why it’s more important than ever to ensure that your website is responsive on mobile. To optimize for mobile, keep the content per page relatively simple with images optimized for smaller-sized screens. This will ensure loading times on mobile devices are reasonable to prevent excessive bounces. In addition, highlighting the critical information on a page allows mobile website viewers to pick out what they are looking for within their average 8.25-second attention span. Lastly, avoid putting buttons or links too close together, as this can cause viewers on mobile devices to misclick, become frustrated, and bounce off the site.
Create High-Quality Content
Generating a variety of high-quality content that directs web viewers to your site can be very effective in increasing overall traffic by building credibility. One of the most effective content types is blog posts with relevant financial information, tips, and video content. Blogs are a great way to provide up-to-date insights and developments into your operations and financial tips relevant to the economic climate and time of year as users search these topics. In addition, other content recommended to lead users to your site includes an FAQ or about us page that answers common questions and provides information on your goals and services. These pages are also highly effective during search engine optimization, as users search for answers to their questions or specific info that current or prospective customers may search for.
Share Content to High Traffic Sites
Take advantage of backlinking on the top websites worldwide by optimizing content for Google or sharing it to one or more leading worldwide sites such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter with a link to the site for more information. Blog content can be taken even further and turned into shareable video content, allowing marketers to turn a particularly complex financial topic into a short, animated video that is easier to understand and can be consumed quicker. With video content on the rise in recent years, banks and credit unions will remain competitive on platforms such as Instagram and Facebook that have been altering their algorithms to favor this type of content.
Use Keyword Research
About 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine. Therefore, optimizing your website to appear on the first page of search engine results is essential to generating website traffic. You can use keyword research to determine and use words most often typed into these sites. Keyword research can be done using online tools or, most effectively, through industry experts, who can choose the most efficient strands of keywords that will drive increased traffic to a bank or credit union website. In addition, these strategies should be employed when creating landing pages. Developers should organize pages in a dropdown menu with paragraphs of descriptive information. For example, a landing page for “Mortgages” would include keywords like “home loans,” “home lending,” or “first-time homebuyer” to capture the maximum number of potential searches. While you may be running PPC advertising for these keywords, high-quality organic SEO services are cheaper on average, making your overall return higher.
Set up Google PPC Advertising
Google is the number one search engine in the U.S., holding 90.7% of the overall web traffic in the U.S. on search engines. To capitalize on the large share of this search engine, Google offers PPC advertising, providing an excellent method for financial institutions to bid on popular keywords used by competitors in their geographic area. The ranking for keywords will be determined by the ad’s quality and the bid total. It is highly recommended to create several ads centered on various keywords, gauge their performance over a specified period, and take advantage of mobile optimization tools. These ads are most effective for quickly driving traffic to a website, but they can take time to understand and develop in the long term. However, with the right amount of research and expertise for optimizing a budget, these ads can become the hero your website traffic reports need.
Is your financial institution in need of an increase in website traffic? Strategis is a full-service marketing agency developing strategies proven to increase (ROI) through a wide range of personalized methods. Contact us today!
