Banks & Credit Unions Local SEO Checklist

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What is one item that should be on a local SEO checklist for a bank or credit union?

To help banks and credit unions with their local SEO we asked SEO experts and marketing professionals this question for their best advice. From establishing prominence to SMS marketing, there are several useful items that may help you improve your local SEO.

Here are eight items that should be on your local SEO checklist:

  • Claim Your Google My Business (GMB) Account
  • Frequently Update Your GMB Account
  • Establish Prominence
  • Create a Long-Term SEO Strategy for Popular Keywords
  • The Content Has to be There
  • SMS Marketing
  • Optimize for Natural Language Search
  • Create Business Citations

Claim Your Google My Business (GMB) Account

According to ChatMeter, “Near me” searches grew by more than 900% over two years. If you don’t establish your location on search engines such as Google, it makes it that much more difficult for your potential customers to find you and visit your branch.

Audrey Hutnick, Smallwave Marketing

Frequently Update Your GMB Account

Providing holiday opening hours in advance, responding to comments and making sure the photos clearly show the branch entrance are some of the most important activities. They are likely the only point of contact for the clients on the go, searching on Google Maps.

Rebeca Sena, GetSpace.Digital

Establish Prominence

Google says that local rankings are determined by relevance, distance, and prominence. Prominence is how well a business is known both in the offline world and online. For banks and credit unions – many of whom are known very well in the offline world and within their communities – establishing prominence is largely a challenge to bring the offline reputation online. That challenge can be solved by thinking about areas of opportunities like building links, appearing in articles, and getting listed in financial directories.

Brett Farmiloe, Markitors

Create a Long-Term SEO Strategy for Popular Keywords

A few of the most popular bank terms online are “bank near me” and “credit union near me.” A bank or credit union will want to show up online with a Google Ad or website link. In 2020, there were 1 million USA searches each month for these two keywords. Banks and credit unions should create a long-term SEO strategy to rank for these popular keywords to start driving traffic from online leads looking for banks near them. These huge-volume keywords are not going away and they will likely increase in volume after the Covid-19 crisis as people become more comfortable doing business in public places.

Patrick Menzel, Internal Profits, LLC

The Content Has to be There

In other words, well-placed keywords and well-crafted meta titles and descriptions will only get you so far. It’s imperative that you produce high-quality content that you can optimize for SEO. “Thin” content or articles obviously written only to showcase particular keywords will not be successful, and they won’t be appreciated – by your readers OR Google.

Alexandra Zamolo, Beekeeper

SMS Marketing

In 2021, Marketers would focus more on performance-based deals that are based on the number of clicks/sales. That’s where SMS Marketing is vital in improving your mobile SEO. Imagine you have an influencer named Chris Jordan who’s offering his fans 10% off your product. He could tell his fans to text in “CJ10” to 900900. (CJ10 is a keyword that fans can text to a phone number to sign up for text messages.) When they do it, they will get a discount link, and the company will have one more number in their database where they can remarket it.

Muhammad Ali Sangi, PureVPN

Optimize for Natural Language Search

AI-powered voice assistants have shifted the focus of SEO from keywords and phrases to natural language search. No longer is it sufficient to optimize your website for key phrases such as “credit union Phoenix,” as the voice search query might be in the form of “show me a list of credit unions in the Phoenix area with mortgage loan officers who are open on Saturdays.” Help out Siri, Alexa, and Google by ensuring that your hours and services are up to date and consistent on Google maps and other important directories, as well as provide structured data markup to search engines on your own website’s location pages. This will help your bank or credit union be more visible in search engines, especially to mobile users.

Atilla Vekony, Icon Digital Solutions

Create Business Citations

Make sure to create all business citations on the local, state and national level. The more business citations you can create the more chance you will find customers. Apart from the referral traffic from business directories, there is the added benefit of links back to the bank or credit union website boosting its SEO authority.

Joe Flanagan, VelvetJobs

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