It's difficult for credit unions (CUs) to rank on page one of Google for many of their highest quality keywords because they must locally outrank national banks. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a process used to improve the visibility and ranking of a website or web page in search engine results pages (SERPs). By optimizing the website content, structure, and on-page elements like titles, meta tags, and anchor text, credit unions can improve their ranking for relevant keywords and outrank the national banks.
To get better results with SEO for your credit union website, here are the top three the most effective strategies to implement in 2022:
Technical SEO
The first step in any effective SEO strategy is to ensure that your website is technically sound and compliant with Google’s guidelines. This means your website must be well-coded, fast loading, and free of any errors or crawling issues.
Having a fast-loading website is a big deal in Google's eyes. They do not want to push traffic to a site that takes a long time to load. Some things that credit unions can do to speed up their website include optimizing images, reducing HTTP requests, and caching static files. You can use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and GT Metrix to assess your website’s loading speed and find ways to improve it.
Screaming Frog is a great tool for identifying technical SEO issues on your website. It crawls your entire website and reports on any errors or crawling issues, as well as any duplicate content.
Ahrefs and SEMrush are more comprehensive SEO tools that can help you improve your website’s ranking in SERPs. It includes a variety of features like site audits, backlink analysis, keyword research, and rank tracking.
It can often take a few months before you see any results from technical SEO. However, if you can fix all the errors and optimize your website for speed, you will see a big improvement in your website’s ranking.
Technical SEO can be intimidating because it often involves (minor) code-based updates, so it's important to start with the basics and work your way up. So the first step in the technical SEO process is to assess your site speed and identify easy fixes. Things like optimizing image sizes, reducing HTTP requests, and caching static files are easy to do and can make a big difference in website load speed. Check out GTMetrix to help with this since it's fairly comprehensive and it's free.
Next, you should perform a website audit to identify and fix any crawling issues or duplicate content on your website. We're big fans of using Screaming Frog to help us perform SEO audits.
Next, you should optimize your website for speed. This can be done by optimizing images, reducing HTTP requests, and caching static files. You can use a tool like GTMetrix to find ways to improve your website’s loading speed.
Create helpful content
One of the best ways to improve your credit union’s SEO is to create content that is helpful, informative, and keyword-rich. This content can be in the form of blog posts, infographics, videos, or even just well-written descriptions of your products and services.
When creating content, make sure to include relevant keywords that you want to rank for. But don’t stuff your content with too many keywords; this will only hurt your chances of ranking in SERPs. Aim for a keyword density of 1-2%.
Make sure your content is easy to read and understand. Use short paragraphs and sentences, and break up your text with headlines and bullet points.
One of the best ways to ensure that your website content is high quality and helpful is to develop a content calendar and stick to it. A content calendar can help you plan and organize your content ideas, as well as schedule and regularly publish them.
When creating a content calendar, it’s important to include both long-term and short-term goals. Long-term goals might include increasing website traffic or improving conversions, while short-term goals might be to publish one blog post per week or create a new infographic.
It’s also important to plan out different types of content. This might include blog posts, infographics, videos, social media posts, and even email newsletters. Having a variety of content types will help keep your website fresh and interesting for visitors. For some ideas, use Buzzsumo or search Google News to find relevant news topics to reference to bring your content to life.
Creating and using a content calendar is an effective way to improve the quality and visibility of your website content.
Backlinks
SEO is all about getting your website to rank higher in search engine results pages. One of the best ways to do this is by getting other websites to link back to yours. This is referred to as a backlink and it helps show Google that your website is valuable and worth ranking higher for specific keywords.
There are a few ways to get backlinks for your credit union website. The first is to focus on getting local backlinks from news outlets, Chamber of Commerce, Better Business Bureau, or any local trafficked website. Chances are your CU has been mentioned numerous times but the author of the article did not link your CU in the article. So you can simply email them and ask them to link back to your site.
Another way to get quality backlinks is to reach out to financial bloggers and ask them to link back to your site. You can find a list of financial bloggers at sites like Feedly, Alltop, or ProBlogger.
When reaching out to bloggers, be sure to include a brief introduction about your credit union, as well as a link to your website. You can also offer to write a guest post for their blog or share one of their articles on your own social media channels.
You can also create helpful resources, like infographics or eBooks, and then reach out to other websites and ask them to share these resources on their site.
If you create helpful content that is relevant to their audience, most bloggers will be happy to link back to your site. Just be sure to follow their guidelines for linking back, such as using proper anchor text and dofollow or nofollow links.
Getting backlinks from high-quality websites is one of the best ways to improve your credit union’s SEO.
By implementing tactics around these three SEO strategies, you will soon be out-ranking many national banks for many of your keywords.
