As any other type of business, banks need to stay up to date with the trends of digital marketing and enhance their online presence. SEO is a crucial element of any digital marketing strategy, and it’s a step that shouldn’t be skipped. When in need of a reliable and trustworthy bank, most people rely on and trust search engines such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo to find one. So, if you want your bank website to appear in your potential customers’ search results, it’s imperative that you invest in SEO, or search engine optimization which will help your website reach the top positions for the searches most relevant for your business. When you reach the top positions, you can be sure to get many organic and practically free website visits that have proven to have the highest conversion rates.
Although SEO is a topic that every marketer has at least heard of, many don’t know that it is not only about the titles, keywords, and content on the website. Another critical part of SEO is the technical optimization of the website, which will guarantee that search engines will understand your website and process its information properly.
In this guide, we’ll examine some basic steps to technical SEO to successfully optimize your bank website.
Which are the Main Components of Technical SEO?
Apart from the basic and fundamental steps of SEO such as keyword research, on-page SEO, and internal and external linking, it’s of prime importance to work on the technical aspects of website optimization. To begin with, search engines give preference to websites that follow some technical requirements such as responsive design, secure connection, and fast page loading. All these requirements are part of the technical SEO. For that reason, bank websites must follow these guidelines to ensure their websites in the search results of the potential customers.
Perform Technical Site Audit
The first step to technically optimize your bank website is to perform a site-wide technical audit. Simply put, the technical audit is a method of full technical analysis of all factors that affect your website’s visibility in search engines. The results from this analysis will give you a detailed insight into how search engines see your website in general as well as all individual pages. The audit that is usually performed using SEO tools such as Ahrefs, Semrush, or Moz, will identify any potential issues and give you recommendations on how to fix them.
Install SSL Certificate
One of the most important aspects of a website is its security. The abbreviation SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer which is a security technology that has the purpose of creating an encrypted link between a web server and a browser.
In essence, when we say SSL certificate we are referring to the ‘https://’ part of the website’s URL. To put it simply, Google will always give preference to the secured websites over the non-secure ones whose URL begins with ‘https://’. Hence installing the SSL certificate to your bank website should be one of your top priorities.
Ensure Your Website is Mobile Friendly
Ever since Google has introduced the “mobile-first” approach to indexing content, ensuring your website is fully responsive on all devices is a crucial element of the technical SEO strategy. Potential customers have the option to visit your website through laptop, tablet, or smartphone, so your bank website needs to display the content in the best possible format on all these devices. So, not only will your visitors be happy with the website experience, but Google will also reward your website and give it a preference over others that aren’t mobile-friendly.
Enable Fast Page loading
It’s a well-known fact that your visitors don’t have patience with pages that load slowly and won’t give this type of website a second chance. So are search engines. Page speed is a very important ranking factor, and if your web pages load fast your website will rank higher.
Some of the ways of speeding your website up are: using fast hosting, getting a fast DNS provider, making the image files as small as possible, minimizing HTTP requests, and compressing your web pages.
Create an XML Sitemap
In the process of crawling it, search engines need to understand your website and the file that they require is the XML sitemap. This file contains all important information about every page of your bank website. For instance, it shows when a certain page was modified, what priority it has over other pages, and how frequently it’s updated. Some hosting providers create the XML sitemap automatically, but in most cases, you would need a sitemap generator for this purpose.
Don’t Forget Local SEO
Although local SEO is not part of the technical SEO, both are still closely related. In reality, local SEO is particularly important for bank websites and can provide a great value. Whenever your potential customers browse for banks, the first results that appear would be businesses in their vicinity – all thanks to the local SEO. In other words, to implement local SEO in your website means to add location pages, add Google my business, improve your NAP consistency, and include customer reviews.
Finally, keep in mind that for a well-optimized website, you need to follow these technical SEO tactics and be aware of the search engines’ ranking factors. Above all, there is always the option to get a team of professionals to guide you through this process or perform the SEO optimization for you. The team here at BankSITE Services is at your service, so feel free to contact us.
