What Google’s changing

Rather than rewarding content that’s overly SEO purpose-driven, Google’s new update will benefit content that’s human-first and provides a satisfying user experience. This means your financial marketing content needs to be created for people, rather than search engines.

This update should start rolling out at the beginning of September and will identify content that’s unhelpful for web users. If your site has a large amount of unhelpful content, then it will be pushed further down search engine rankings. Currently, this update will only affect English-speaking content and countries, with it being planned to expand in the coming months.

So, what does a people-first approach mean? And how can you make sure your financial marketing content isn’t penalised by Google?

How financial marketers can respond to Google’s update

While Google may be changing the algorithm of how sites can get to the top spot in search engine rankings, your content shouldn’t need to alter drastically. If your finance brand has been creating value-driven content that’s tailored to your target market (which it should be!), this content will remain beneficial, despite the changes taking place.

To ensure your finance brand remains high in search engine rankings, you need to remove all unhelpful content as this is less likely to perform well. If you’re not sure what content is deemed unhelpful, ask yourself:

• Is this content created for search engines or for people to find relevant information?
• Is this content duplicated across your site with the hopes of it performing well in search?
• Is your content adding value or repeating what others have said on a topic?
• Does your content answer people’s questions?
• Do people need to continue searching for further information after reading your content?

Key takeaways for financial marketers

At the end of the day, this algorithm change will only affect content that’s unhelpful or has only been created for SEO purposes. What your finance brand needs to do is to create content that’s tailored to your target audience and adds value. This can be achieved by:

• Presenting timely information in an easy-to-understand way
• Answering people’s search queries
• Creating content with the end-user in mind
• Creating value-driven content that includes useful data and research
• Having a purpose (content can’t just be created to hopefully rank on Google, it needs to be targeted and helpful)
• Presenting educational content that will improve user’s financial skills and knowledge

By ensuring your content has been designed to benefit end-users and written in a personable and ‘human’ way, you can maintain or improve your spot in search engine rankings. If your finance brand isn’t yet creating helpful content for people, it’s time to change your marketing content strategy.

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How to keep pace with Google algorithm updates?

Ultimately, keeping pace with Google’s algorithm updates comes down to keeping an eye out for updates and being ready to devote time to the necessary changes the updates require. If you think you’re already lagging behind, here’s a history of past major algorithm updates and the kinds of changes that took place alongside their release. And for advice on how to tackle these major changes, we’ve got you covered.

Getting ready for June’s Google Page Experience update

The task at hand and the major Google algorithm update we have our eyes on is the one coming in mid-June, 2021 – the Google Page Experience update. Initially this had been announced as an update that would affect only mobile search indexing but Google have recently shifted (sensing a theme?) and announced that the Google Page Experience update will also be coming to desktop search indexing as well.

The page experience update will be an important algorithm update that will affect the search rankings of all sites on both mobile and desktop.

User Experience Signals

As the name of the update implies, Google will be looking more closely at the ‘user experience’ quality of websites and incorporating this into the ranking system. The diagram below shows what Google will be taking into account when analysing ‘user experience’ quality with the ‘Core Web Vitals’ recently added as some new criteria. Previously, Google had taken ‘user experience’ criteria such as whether a site was ‘mobile friendly’ into account, but this new update will be unifying these metrics into a more direct view on whether a site offers a positive user experience (and boosting search rankings if they do) or a negative user experience (and demoting search rankings if they don’t).

So what are Core Web Vitals?

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP):

This is a measure of how quickly the content elements (text, images, rich-media) load or first appear on a website. It’s measured in seconds with anything less than 2.5 seconds being considered good and anything longer than 4.0 seconds being considered poor (and in between considered needing improvement).

First Input Delay (FID): 

This measures the time from when a user first interacts with your site (i.e. when they click a link, tap on a button, or use a custom, JavaScript-powered control) to the time when the browser is actually able to respond to that interaction. This basically measures a site’s responsiveness and we have all felt the frustration of a slow website and not being sure whether it has registered our clicks.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS):

This metric looks at the amount elements on a page move location as the page is being progressively loaded. Google gives an example of why this is a usability issue and shows how a user may accidentally click on the wrong button of a form as it shifts down during loading. In some circumstances, this can have serious implications if it takes a user by surprise. 

Other user Experience signals

While the measures below aren’t new they’re now being included as part of the overall ‘user experience’ ranking that will come into effect with the Google Page Experience update.

Mobile Friendly?

Having a mobile responsive website that reconfigures for optimal mobile display will still be important and mobile will still be the priority for search indexing.

HTTPS:

Having an SSL certificate implemented on a website is a basic measure that all websites should be taking. SSL certificates come in a number of configurations that range from paid versions from well-known brands such as digicert to free versions from groups like Lets Encrypt.

Safe-Browsing:

This is a check of whether the website has malware running or deceptive content. It ensures visitors to a website aren’t putting their personal information at risk.

Interstitial advertising or content:

This looks at whether the website has intrusive content on the page that implements pop-up windows or covers up content on the page. Functional elements such as logins and age verification windows don’t negatively affect this measure.

How to Check your Page Experience

1. Set up access to Google search console – This will allow you to run a Core Web Vitals report that will indicate how your site is performing and will alert if any attention is required to improve specific Core Web Vitals.
   
   
2. Use a website audit tool such as Lighthouse which has also been incorporated into the SEMrush platform as part of its toolkit. A lighthouse report provides recommendations for actions to take to improve Core Web Vitals scores
   
   
3. Install the Chrome extension for Web Vitals. This only works on desktop but it does allow an easy and real-time way to monitor webpage’s Core Web Vitals performance.
   
   

While taking steps to meet the criteria set by Google’s algorithm updates is critical, financial marketers need to realise that if the content on the website isn’t relevant and engaging for your audience, then no matter how fast it loads or how mobile-friendly your website is it won’t compete with a competitor’s website that has high quality content presented in a user-friendly manner.

The post Ready for Google’s Page Experience update? appeared first on Financial Marketer.

Why finance brands should care about Google Knowledge Panels

A Knowledge Panel can serve multiple uses for financial brands. The panel is a vital piece of real estate for a brand name search – a key opportunity at the pointy end of the marketing funnel. We also know that zero-click searches are on the rise and users may not always click through to a landing page. Ensuring your brand’s Google Knowledge Panel is present and up-to-date contributes to an improved online presence, greater authority and consumer engagement. This Nerdwallet panel is a great example of the vast amount of information that can be included for a single brand.

Unlike the featured snippet – which appears in the main search results on the left-hand side of the page – the Knowledge Panel doesn’t aim to answer a user’s non-branded question. Rather it shows on searches for specific brands/companies; making it more of a brand marketing tool than a lead generation tool.

How can finance brands get a Knowledge Panel?

There are two types of Knowledge Panels: local and brand. The local version is connected to your Google My Business account. A physical business can create their local panel through their GMB account and add relevant details such as location and opening hours directly into their listing. While it’s not possible to guarantee that Google will show this local panel, this is a simple but critical step for any financial brand with a local address. 

A brand Knowledge Panel can’t be created; it’s shown automatically if Google feels there’s enough relevant information pertaining to your brand. You can check if your brand does have a Knowledge Panel and verify it by ‘claiming’ it at the bottom of the panel. Once verified you can ‘suggest’ edits to your panel although these aren’t guaranteed.

What can finance brands do to improve their Knowledge Panels?

All of the information that you see in the Knowledge Panel panel including both text and images are powered by Google’s Knowledge Graph. This was launched back in 2012 as a way to not only categorise entities on the internet but also understand the relationship between them. While it’s not possible to directly influence the panel, brands can have indirect influence by reviewing what information they are making available to Google and the Knowledge Graph and how easy it is to understand.

1. Take a look at what the Knowledge Graph already knows about your brand
   Use tools like Kalicube or the Knowledge Graph Search API to better understand what information about your brand is already in the Knowledge Graph.
2. Talk to your developers
   Google depends on schema markup to understand what topics your brand relates to so it’s critical that your site’s content is correctly marked up. Simple updates could include adding all of your social media channels, clear markup of your ‘organisation’ and ensuring all of your markups are regularly validated using tools like the Structured Data Testing Tool.
3. Consider Wikidata and Wikipedia
   Google heavily relies on these data sources and while not necessarily easy to gain, pages on these sites have a huge impact on your visibility with the Knowledge Graph so it’s worth investigating.

Like many of Google’s features, Knowledge Panels aren’t black and white, but they can have huge benefits for your brand’s online presence. Optimising your brand’s content for the Knowledge Graph may take some time and effort but it will not only benefit your Knowledge Panel but also your SEO visibility as a whole. At The Dubs we specialise in technical and on-page SEO, get in touch.

The post Google Knowledge Panels: what they are and how to get one appeared first on Financial Marketer.

Understanding customer search intent

When trying to capture attention online the intent of your audience in the channel where you’re speaking to them is important. On social channels people are usually in a browsing and content snacking mode, often with no predetermined objective in mind. Search on the other hand is a high intent channel where users have a pre-planned motive to find a specific piece of information which is usually either ‘informational’ (more details about a specific subject) or ‘transactional’ in nature (how to do something specific).

Given this high intent, search can be considered further down the marketing funnel than other digital channels such as social, closer to the point where leads and sales can be made.

How Google lead form extensions work

One of the key principles when planning any customer journey is to reduce the number of clicks it takes to perform any task. Each extra click required by a user is a point of potential traffic drop-off, often dramatically.

With Google lead form extensions Google has combined the ability to reach high intent search users with minimal click lead generation campaigns (at least on mobile and tablet) – a very interesting prospect for financial marketers trying to generate business leads.

Google lead form extensions are displayed below search ads on mobile and tablet devices. Search users can fill in a simple lead gen form with their contact information directly through the ad or if they’re already signed into their Google account the form will be pre-populated and can be submitted with one click without the need to even fill in the form.

This is an ideal user-journey for a user with high intent, removing the need to even have to click and go to a traditional landing page with a form that has to be manually filled in and submitted.

An added bonus is that the Google lead form extension makes the search ad appear larger in size, making it more prominent than regular search ads.

Implementing Google lead form extensions

There are some requirements to be able to use Google lead form extensions however most finance brands should be eligible:

• A good history of policy compliance
• A Google Ads account in an eligible vertical or sub-vertical. Sensitive verticals or sub-verticals (for example, sexual content) aren’t eligible for lead forms
• A privacy policy for your business. When you create a lead form extension in Google Ads you need to provide a link to your privacy policy. The privacy policy appears at the end of the lead form
• They are still quite a new format so they may also not be rolled out in all geographic regions yet

Implementing Google lead form extensions is a simple process. Within the Google Ads editor select ‘Leads’ as the goal and ‘Search’ as the campaign type. Go to ‘Ads and extensions’ and complete the simple setup process.

For best practice, although up to 10 question fields can be populated in the form only those fields that can extract data from a Google signed-in account will be able to be pre-populated and may force users to manually enter information into some fields. Whenever possible, restricting the fields required to just name and email will ensure that all users will be able to have that information pre-populated and allow a simple 1 click submit user journey.

The leads themselves can be downloaded as leads via a CSV file or can be hooked up to a CRM system allowing for more sophisticated segmentation and targeted communication.

Although these ads are restricted to mobile and tablet, that’s how the majority of users are already accessing the internet, so it makes sense that finance brands wanting to generate leads should look seriously at Google’s native lead generation ads which are specifically optimised for mobile usage.

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Google E-A-T isn’t a ranking factor

It’s important to understand that while the E-A-T guidelines are part of Google’s quality guidelines, they aren’t actively included in Google’s algorithm. So what’s the difference? 

In contrast to Google’s ranking algorithm, Google’s quality guidelines are human-reviewed and manually updated. They rely on manual quality analysis of webpages and represent what Google is ideally looking for. The ranking algorithm is composed of hundreds (if not thousands) of ranking factors that combine together to define the SERPs. While some SEO experts are divided, not being a ranking factor isn’t a reason in our eyes to write E-A-T off. 

Why financial services should care about E-A-T

Brands and websites across the financial industry are what is known as YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) sites. These are sites that could potentially affect a person’s legal, financial or health status and as a result are deemed by Google to be of higher risk than other sites. As a result, only sites that demonstrate high Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness are likely to rank. 

Although E-A-T isn’t officially a ranking factor, the steps financial brands could take to ensure they are optimising towards E-A-T align well with algorithmic ranking factors, particularly with Google’s ongoing focus on the user’s search intent. As the search engine continues to tweak its algorithm towards improving user experience, there has been a resurgence in discussion around the value of Google E-A-T with it featuring on numerous 2021 SEO trends lists, including our own. 

How to optimise for E-A-T?

Google E-A-T is a set of guidelines that should be front of mind when producing any kind of financial content – it’s unlikely that a finance site will rank for any key terms if it can’t demonstrate Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. Here are some practical tips that can help:

• Write impartial, clear content backed up by identified experts and clear sources.
• Avoid combining sales and information. Pages that aim to provide information or advice should focus on doing this rather than pushing to a conversion. Try to avoid actively pushing to your product on the same page.
• Avoid ‘persuading’ your reader that your product is the answer to all of their problems – try to ensure your content is always unbiased particularly on informational pages.

Google’s E-A-T guidelines may not be a defined ranking factor but they remain immensely important for finance marketers looking to ensure their content ranks today and in the future as ranking factors evolve. User experience and search intent are at the forefront of Google’s plans; finance brands with high E-A-T scores that can demonstrate they truly understand what their potential consumers are looking for could find themselves ahead of the competition.

At The Dubs we’re abreast of the latest in best-practice SEO and can create content that will ensure your finance brand gets found. Get in touch. 

To find out how your website SEO is performing, use our free SEO website audit tool.

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Anyone who has been following the story in Australia about Google search and The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) proposed News Media Bargaining Code will soon realise that this is a story about big tech vs big media and money. 

Both sides of the argument

Big tech, in the form of Google and Facebook, are making loads of it. Big media wants more of the action, and with friends in the right places big media has managed to get something they have been kicking and screaming about for several years onto the table. The proposed law will effectively force big tech to pay for something that has never been paid for before anywhere in the world – organic links on a search engine results page. 

Like this…

or this…

The gist of big media’s argument is that the prestige of their news content – which requires a lot of infrastructure, expertise and investment to create – adds value when listed on a search engine and therefore the owners of that search engine should pay for the privilege of having it listed there.

On the flip side, big tech’s argument is that those search engine links are sending traffic to the news sites free of charge where they can become valuable subscribers and viewers of advertising on big media’s websites.

As an example, 9news.com.au would have received an estimated 6,457,720 website visits from free organic Google search links in the month of January. 

Source: SEMRush

From Google’s perspective, as voiced by Mel Silva, Managing Director for Google Australia in an open letter and video on Google’s website, “paying for links breaks the way search works and undermines how the web works too.” Describing the proposed law as a slippery slope, Silva used the open letter to question why one type of business should get paid and not others, instead offering up Google News Showcase as a fairer alternative solution. 

“The Code’s rules would dismantle a free and open service that’s been built to serve everyone, and replace it with one where links come at a price, and where the Government would give a handful of news businesses an advantage over everybody else. That puts Google’s business in Australia—and the services we provide more than 19 million Australians—at enormous risk,” explained Silva. “We’re not against a new law but we need it to be a fair one. Google has an alternative solution that supports journalism. It’s called Google news showcase.”

Arguments can be made both for and against the introduction of this code and everyone can draw their own conclusions about who is right and who is wrong, but at the end of the day there will only be one of two outcomes – Google search in Australia stays or Google search in Australia goes.

Can Australia live without Google Search?

So what happens if Australia joins a very exclusive club where Google search doesn’t exist? A club where the only members in the world would be Australia and China. Sounds like quite a frosty party doesn’t it.

If Google search goes, I think there are really two ways of looking at it – what it means for the average consumer in Australia and what it means for businesses in Australia.

For the consumer, almost every journey on the internet starts with a search and this isn’t going to change just because Google is gone. The main contender to fill the search engine hole will most likely be Microsoft-owned Bing (and that presumably would only be if Microsoft agrees to buy into the ACCC code as well). Bing is the 2nd ranked search engine in most countries, although a distant 2nd it must be said. Would this be a big deal for most Australian consumers? I suspect probably not if they are just looking for a good doughnut in Sydney, after all, it’s just a doughnut.

Google:

The Best Doughnut Shops in Sydney – Concrete Playground 

So, here’s our list of the city’s best and most extravagant doughnuts … at the Redfern eatery (or you can order via UberEats or Deliveroo).

Bing:

Dr. Dough Donuts – Delivered Across Sydney For Every Occasion

Donuts delivered across Sydney for every occasion. Order now for next day delivery. Delivering 7 days a week. Birthdays, Thank You, Congrats, I Love You, Get Well Soon, Thinking of You, New Born, Anniversary. Select from Classic range or choose a bespoke design.

But what if it’s a $750,000 home loan?

Google:

Compare $750,000 Home Loans | Rates from 1.75% | RateCity

www.ratecity.com.au › Home Loans

Approved for $750000 and thinking of taking the full amount? Compare rates as low as 1.75% in February 2021 to find the $750K home loan for your needs

Bing:

$750,000 House — Mortgage Payment Calculator

https://www.mortgagecalculatorplus.com › 750000-mortgage

Assuming you have a 20% down payment ($150,000), your total mortgage on a $750,000 home would be $600,000. For a 30-year fixed mortgage with a 3.5% interest rate, you would be looking at a $2,694 monthly payment. Please keep in mind that the exact cost and monthly payment for your mortgage will vary, depending its length and terms.

Now I don’t know if Google’s number one ranked RateCity is a better option than Bing’s number one ranked mortgagecalculatorplus.com, but the important thing is that they are different and in this instance, that difference could lead to considerably different financial outcomes for the consumer. The question is, who is more trustworthy in terms of internet search?

The answer is whichever search engine has access to better or more complete data and the largest dataset of user activity for its algorithm to interpret, along with the better-trained AI. The answer is pretty clear I think – Google is a data company at the forefront of AI research, Microsoft is at its heart a software company.

Even for a consumer, search accuracy and relevancy are important, so regardless of what they’re searching for, life without Google isn’t a win for consumers. 

The impact for Australian businesses

For Australian businesses, unfortunately, the impact is potentially even greater. Organic search traffic accounts for more than  30% of most inbound website traffic and more than 90% of that organic search traffic comes from Google search. Google search is the largest channel of inbound website traffic for many, if not most Australian businesses.

Australian businesses that rely on website traffic for new business often put considerable effort into trying to rank well in Google search. This is no easy task, requiring constant tweaking to technical aspects of their website and time spent creating the right kind of website content that indexes well on Google search. A Google page one result for important keyword searches relevant to a business is an enormous advantage over its competitors.

If Google search leaves Australia, a lot of this effort will be lost and will have to largely be redone to adhere to the specific best ranking criterias and parameters for whichever search engine takes Google’s place. Not a win for Australian business.

Any Australian business that relies on international exposure on the internet for their products and services may suffer if Google search leaves Australia. International audiences will still be searching on Google even if Australian businesses are not being indexed and kept relevant in the Google search engine. Not a win for Australian business.

Google search also includes Google map search as a component and presumably this too will be impacted, not only in browser search but also in apps that integrate with Google map search. 

The impact of Google leaving Australia is a no-win situation for Australian consumers and businesses alike, and something we’ll be watching intently here at The Dubs. Sign up to the Financial Marketer newsletter to stay abreast of the latest content marketing news and insights relevant for finance brands. 

The post The Google Search showdown down under appeared first on Financial Marketer.

Show expertise via financial content marketing

Positioning your finance brand as an expert isn’t something that can be done with a single piece of content. It’s achieved through the creation of consistent content that demonstrates the brand’s depth of knowledge and original thought, backed by the weight of internal experts, analysis and custom research.

At risk of being a Jack of all trades, master of none, finance brands need to identify the areas of expertise they want to own and channel content and distribution to these areas. Not simply a case of identifying the areas that are relevant for the brand, the areas of expertise your brand chooses to pursue should align with what’s of most interest to your target audience.

At risk of being a Jack of all trades, master of none, finance brands need to identify the areas of expertise they want to own and channel content and distribution to these areas.

One of the best ways to identify the topics of greatest relevance to your audience is to conduct keyword research using the Google Keyword Planner or other similar tools. You want to find “long tail” keywords that are getting traffic but aren’t as competitive as one or two-word phrases. Optimising your well-written content with these keywords will help it rank on the first page of Google.

When researching trending topics your audience needs assistance with, consider their needs at different times of the year or at different life stages.

Authority through financial content marketing

What is the difference between an expert and an authority? An expert is someone who is knowledgeable in a field, but an authority is recommended by other experts in the same field.

The next best step for your financial content marketing strategy is to get links from other experts in your field. Obtaining these links will improve your credibility from Google’s standpoint, which will lead to higher rankings and traffic.

Some great ways to become an authority are to write guest posts on other relevant experts’ sites such as industry publications, as these links will point back to your site. This is commonly referred to as a “backlink” and you can use Moz’s free SEO tool, or MozBar, to see the domain authority (DA) of each site on Google.

Turn on SERP overlay and it will show you the backlinks and redirects of each website as you browse.

Gain trust with financial marketing

Trust is extremely important when it comes to financial services marketing. One great way to build trust is to ensure your institution is or has gone through a digital transformation. Having a website with a good design and user experience (UX) will show your firm is serious about providing the best financial services in a way that’s efficient and clear for customers to understand.

Another easy way to gain trust with financial marketing is to produce regular white papers that show off your expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. White papers can provide great opportunities for customers to learn about your services in a clear and concise way, positioning your brand as a thought leader in the industry.

Want to learn more about how you can build authority through effective financial content marketing? Get in touch.

Related articles

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• Another reason why finance brands should produce podcasts
• What Google’s new search feature means for finance marketers

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The post How Google’s E-A-T Score impacts financial content marketing appeared first on Financial Marketer.

What is Google BERT?

BERT stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, it is a natural-language processing system designed to help Google improve its understanding of the context of words in search queries. With BERT, Google is able to better understand the nuances and context of words in searches and match those queries with more relevant results.

With BERT, Google is able to better understand the nuances and context of words in searches and match those queries with more relevant results.

Although Google announced the update on 24 October 2019, the company confirmed that the roll-out had started from the week of October 21 and is now live in the USA for English-language search queries and featured snippets. BERT is now impacting 1 in 10 search queries in the US. This will continue to roll out across other countries and languages, although there is no definitive calendar on when this will happen as yet.

Why is Google’s BERT update so major?

While traditional SEO has been reliant on understanding ‘keywords’, BERT is all about understanding more conversational search queries. As the official Google post explains:

“Particularly for longer, more conversational queries, or searches where prepositions like “for” and “to” matter a lot to the meaning, Search will be able to understand the context of the words in your query. You can search in a way that feels natural for you.”

Being bidirectional means BERT helps Google read the entire search query as a single entity, understanding the context of the keywords based on the entire phrase (so taking into account both left and right of the keyword).

Google is yet to provide any finance-specific examples but you can see from the more general examples they have provided that these context nuances can have a significant impact on the search results returned:

How can finance marketers optimise content for Google’s BERT update?

Unlike other core algorithm updates, there is no ‘penalty’ aspect to the BERT update, rather it is only designed to better understand search queries and user intent. The impact of BERT on search queries will also likely be unpredictable as it is focused on user interactions; which are difficult to pre-empt. Therefore it is not possible to ‘optimise’ for this update per se. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be taking BERT into account across your financial content marketing. When producing content:

1. Write with your target audience in mind. Natural and relevant language, limited jargon, appropriate research and strong knowledge of both your topic and your audience are as vital as ever. Financial content, in particular, can be jargon-heavy, so understanding how your audience searches your topic is crucial.
2. BERT affects both standard search results and featured snippets so ensure your content takes both into consideration.
3. Pay attention to the ‘People also ask’ section of the search results. It’s a great way to better understand the context around your key search phrases, and the related content you should ensure you are also covering.

Being so recent an update it’s hard to gauge the full impact of BERT. But in our minds, anything that encourages finance brands to communicate with customers in a natural and human way, keeping audience intent front of mind, is undeniably a good thing. Beyond optimisation, focus on answering your users’ questions, and give your audience the content they are looking for. Unsure who exactly your audience is and how you should be communicating with them? We can help, get in touch.

To find out how your website SEO is performing, use our free SEO website audit tool.

Related articles

• Finance marketer’s guide to SEO content gap analysis
• 7 SEO tactics to help finance brands secure the top spot
• Audience needs: The starting point for financial content

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Should finance brands care about Featured Snippets?

Featured Snippets are enhanced organic search results that can take the form of paragraphs, lists or tables, all of which point through to the relevant ranking website. But are they important for finance brands? According to an insightful infographic produced by SEO tool, Searchmetrics, the answer is a resounding yes.

Key takeaways include:

• Featured Snippets show up most frequently in the health and finance industries. 18% of health and 27% of finance keywords return a Featured Snippet so there is a huge opportunity for finance brands to optimise.
• Finance websites get an average of 2,622 clicks to their websites from Featured Snippets per month.
• If you set up an AdWords campaign for finance keywords that return a Featured Snippet, then the average Cost-per-Click would be $5.17. This is a higher CPC than in other industries analysed and shows there’s much greater potential to save costs by pursuing a Featured Snippets spot.
• Aside from key informational sites like Wikipedia and Investopedia, brands such as Nerdwallet and Wells Fargo are excelling at Featured Snippets, winning 4.7% and 2.8% of total Featured Snippets respectively.

How to optimise finance content for Featured Snippets

1. Find out where your snippet opportunities lie
   A great place to start is to review the relevant keyphrases that are likely to have Featured Snippets you can optimise for. You can do this in a number of ways:
   – Do a lot of Googling and get to know the landscape!
   – Look at your existing top keywords in analytics and review if they, or related keyphrases, have Featured Snippets.
   – Use a tool like SerpStat to highlight keyphrases that do and don’t have a Featured Snippet.
   
2. Know your Schema
   Great for both Featured Snippet optimisation AND voice search, getting comfortable with marking up your site’s content with schema will only become increasingly important in the coming years for finance brands.
3. Keep your answers clear and concise
   According to analysis by E-consultancy, Featured Snippets are short and sweet with the optimum number of words sitting between 45 and 53. Although this varies significantly between industries, it’s worth remembering that your reader wants a clear and concise answer; and this is what Google wants to reflect. Remember to also use clear headings and subheadings to help break up your content.
   
4. Get your SEO basics right
   According to an Ahrefs study, it is 99.58% positive that Google only shows Featured Snippets for pages that already rank in the top 10. So don’t expect to get that position zero if you’re not already working on your SEO basics. Our 7 SEO best practice tips are a good place to start to ensure you have established the right foundations.

The search engine results pages are a constantly changing landscape, but Featured Snippets in all their variations look set to stay. Optimising your finance content for Featured Snippets could help future proof and grow your brand, so it’s worth experimenting to see what results you can achieve.

Need help in your hunt for position zero? We can help your finance brand establish a best-practice SEO strategy that will help your brand get found, get in touch.

To find out how your website SEO is performing, use our free SEO website audit tool.

Related articles

• How finance marketers can use schema to boost SEO
• Where to start with technical SEO
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Image credit: E-Consultancy

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What is the nofollow attribute?

Links are a key part of the Google algorithm and have a direct impact on the potential ranking of your content. A link from a trusted website is a strong signal to Google that the site trusts and endorses the page it is linking to. For example, if a well-known financial industry publisher links to your article, this is an indication to Google that your page is likely of increased value.

Google introduced the nofollow link attribute in 2005 in an attempt to limit spammers gaming their algorithm for higher rankings. So a nofollow attribute on a link tells Google to effectively ignore that link and its potential value or endorsement. Large sites like Wikipedia and Investopedia routinely use nofollow by default.

A nofollow attribute on a link tells Google to effectively ignore that link and its potential value or endorsement.

Why is Google changing the attribute?

Google announced that the nofollow link attribute will be seen as a hint rather than a directive. This change will only come into effect in March 2020. Google is also introducing two new link attributes in addition to nofollow to allow for greater context when linking to external sites. Google will now consider three key attributes in its algorithm:

• rel=”sponsored”: Use the sponsored attribute to identify links on your site that were created as part of advertisements, sponsorships or other compensation agreements.
• rel=”ugc”: UGC stands for User Generated Content and the ugc attribute value is recommended for links within user-generated content, such as comments and forum posts.
• rel=”nofollow”: Use this attribute for cases where you want to link to a page but don’t want to imply any type of endorsement, including passing along ranking credit to another page.

When nofollow was introduced all links marked with the attribute would not count as a signal for Google’s algorithms, however, after the update, all three attributes will be considered as ‘hints’ instead. So why the change? As Google explained:

Links contain valuable information that can help us improve search, such as how the words within links describe the content they point at. Looking at all the links we encounter can also help us better understand unnatural linking patterns.

By shifting to a hint model, we no longer lose this important information, while still allowing site owners to indicate that some links shouldn’t be given the weight of a first-party endorsement.

What does the nofollow change mean for finance marketers?

Google has stated that you do not need to make any changes to your existing content as part of this update. There is unlikely to be significant negative impact once these new attributes are rolled out, however, it would be beneficial to ensure everyone involved with content for your brand understands that this process is happening. This should include editors, account management and development teams.

Although Google has given six months’ notice, we would recommend getting ready for this change as soon as possible. The nofollow attribute will continue to be supported but your brand should consider updating its CMS/development options in order to allow for the use of the new attributes as well. Speak to your development team to ensure you are able to use all three of the link attributes once they are rolled out.

Take time to understand when you should use each of the attributes, particularly if your brand allows users to create their own content (including comments) on your platform. Ensure also that any partner sites understand which attribute to use when linking back to your brand.

The Google algorithm and its attributes are complicated, but by taking note of these changes across your brand you can ensure you continue to future proof your SEO efforts.

At The Dubs, one of our specialties is boosting SEO performance for finance brands. Get in touch to find out how we can help.

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