Banking and finance SEO

Banks, building societies, insurers, brokers, financial advisers and wealth managers all sell something people research carefully and distrust easily. Much of that research happens in Google, and Google holds financial pages to a higher standard than most. I help UK regulated firms get the right product and advice pages found, write content that answers what people actually ask, and plan the work around your compliance sign-off from the start, so changes do not stall at approval.

How people search for financial products in the UK

A financial decision rarely starts and ends with one search. Someone remortgaging might begin with a broad question about fixed rates, try a repayment calculator, compare lenders on a price comparison site, then search a firm’s name with “reviews” or “FCA” before getting in touch. Each of those searches wants a different kind of page, and treating them as one keyword is where many finance sites go wrong.

A few patterns come up across the sector:

• Broad product terms are crowded. Searches such as “best savings account” or “car insurance” are dominated by comparison sites, the largest banks and national consumer finance publishers. A smaller firm rarely wins those, and its budget usually does more on narrower searches.
• Searches that describe a situation are closer to a decision. A mortgage for a self-employed contractor, income protection for a nurse, or pension advice before selling a business: these come from people who know what they need, and fewer strong pages compete for them.
• Trust checks are searches too. People search your brand alongside words like “reviews”, “complaints”, “FSCS” or “FCA registered”. If your own site does not answer those plainly, a forum thread or review site answers for you.
• Advice is often chosen locally. Mortgage brokers, independent financial advisers and building society branches are frequently found by town or “near me” searches, which makes the map results and each branch’s Google Business Profile part of the job.

Google treats money topics as ones that can seriously affect a person’s life, and its quality guidelines expect clear evidence of who wrote a page and why they should be trusted. In practice that means named authors, reviewers with relevant qualifications, dated content and an organisation that is easy to verify. The E-E-A-T framework is a useful way to think about this, as long as it is read as a description of what Google looks for rather than a box to tick.

What is different about SEO for a regulated firm

The biggest difference is that a large part of your website is regulated copy. Under section 21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, a communication that invites or induces someone to engage in investment activity is a financial promotion, and it must be made or approved by an authorised person. Product pages, rate tables, landing pages and some articles fall within that. The Financial Conduct Authority rules then require them to be fair, clear and not misleading, with the right risk warnings and, for consumer credit, a representative example wherever one is triggered.

That changes how SEO work is done, not whether it can be done:

• Rewriting a product page’s heading or opening paragraph is a change to a promotion, so it needs approval before it goes live. I group changes into batches that fit your compliance team’s review cycle.
• Search snippets count. A title tag or meta description is how your product is presented in Google results, so I write those for approval alongside the page copy rather than slipping them in afterwards.
• The Consumer Duty, in force since July 2023, expects firms to support customer understanding. Plain explanations, well-organised product information and honest answers to common questions serve that duty and search at the same time.
• If your firm is an appointed representative, your principal firm normally approves your promotions, and its process becomes part of the timeline.

I am an SEO consultant, not a compliance officer. I flag pages that look like promotions, write with the rules in mind and keep a record of every change, but the decision on whether copy can go live stays with your compliance function or your approver.

How I run the work

1. Audit and map the site. I crawl the site, review Search Console and sort pages into product pages, guides, tools, trust pages and the application journey. Alongside the usual technical and content findings, I note which pages appear to be promotions and who approves them today.
2. Research by product line and situation. Keyword research is split by product and by the circumstances people search with, so each page has one clear job. This is where I catch two product pages chasing the same search, a common form of keyword cannibalisation on sites with many similar products.
3. Briefs with compliance notes. Each brief sets out the search the page targets, the questions it must answer, claims to avoid, the warnings it needs and who has to review it.
4. Write, review, publish. I draft or edit the copy, your approver reviews it, and I keep the approved version and its date on file so later edits start from the signed-off text.
5. Fix the technical layer. I work with your developers on crawling, indexing, duplicate product URLs, structured data and page speed, as described on my technical SEO services page.
6. Measure honestly. Under UK GDPR and PECR, analytics cookies should only load for visitors who accept them, so on-site data is usually partial. I report from Search Console alongside analytics and explain what the gap means rather than presenting the numbers as complete.

For firms with branches or advisers in several towns, the local side follows my approach to SEO for multi-location businesses: one accurate page and profile per branch, not a run of near-identical town pages. The guides and explainers that build trust before someone is ready to apply come under my content SEO and strategy work.

Mistakes I see on finance websites

• Stale figures. Rates and thresholds move with Bank of England decisions and each new tax year on 6 April. A guide still quoting an old Bank Rate or last year’s thresholds misleads readers and weakens trust in every other page on the site.
• Thin, duplicated product pages. Dozens of pages that differ only by loan-to-value or term, carrying the same text, split signals and leave Google unsure which to show. Often they work better as one stronger page with a clear comparison table.
• Key information locked in PDFs or images. Eligibility criteria, key facts and risk warnings shown as images or only in downloads are harder to read on a phone and harder for search engines to understand.
• Guides with nobody behind them. Articles on pensions or protection published under “Admin”, with no author, no reviewer and no date, give readers and Google no reason to trust them.
• Articles that drift into promotion. An educational post that ends with “apply today for our two-year fix” may now be a promotion. If nobody approved it, that is a compliance problem as well as an SEO one.
• Withdrawn products simply deleted. When a product closes, its page often starts returning an error and the links it earned are wasted. Redirecting it to the closest current product or a useful explainer, with a clear note that the product has closed, keeps that value.

Is this the right page for your firm?

This page is for UK firms regulated by the FCA or the PRA, or working under an authorised principal: banks, building societies, credit unions, insurers, insurance and mortgage brokers, financial advisers and wealth managers. If you run a payments, money transfer or personal finance app, the searches and product questions are different, and my fintech SEO page covers that work. If you want paid search as well, Google asks UK financial services advertisers to complete its financial services verification before their ads can run, which I explain in Google Ads for financial services.