← Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
Optimizing financial content with SEO
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- [00:00]
A
The Voices of Search Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast, I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iheareverything.com welcome to the Voices of Search Podcast. A member of the I Hear Everything Podcast network, ready to expedite your company's organic growth efforts. Sit back, relax, and get ready for your daily dose of search engine optimization wisdom. Here's today's host of the Voices of Search podcast, Tyson Stockton.
- [00:43]
B
According to Rank tracker, in 2024, 61% of marketers in the financial sector identified SEO as their top inbound marketing priority. This underscores and heightens the competition for visibility and personal finance results. But here's the challenge. Financial SEO requires specialized knowledge. Content must be balanced accuracy with accessibility. Technical terms need to be clear explanations. How can financial sites build authority while maintaining user engagement in a new world of AI search? This is the Voice of Search Podcast. My name is Tyson and joining us today is Zackly US General Manager at Finder Finder helps consumers make better financial decisions through comparison tools. Zach and I will share how to optimize financial content both for search engines and everyday users. Zach, welcome to the podcast.
- [01:37]
A
Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
- [01:39]
B
I was looking forward to the conversation because obviously there's a lot going on, a lot of change, but I feel like you're in one of these like highly competitive, like one of the top arenas I would say for like SEO. And so like maybe before we get in too far, like how are you viewing like some of the recent changes in search? Like how is it affecting kind of like your day to day?
- [02:05]
A
So you're totally right. I think any category that is in the YM YL space is extremely competitive. Finance is no exception. I've always sort of referred to it as like the NBA of SEO. There's like where it's dominated by like a few players and then there's the rest of the league trying to sort of win where we can and it's only getting more competitive. But at the same time I'm really encouraged by the opportunity that AI might present for a bit of a reset in terms of visibility. I think since the hcu we've seen a lot of our traffic just broadly across the spectrum has gone away. There was this guidance we've gotten from Google about people first content and all the things you sort of need to do. Scaled content don't do any scaled Content abuse to recover and none of that's panned out. And so it kind of feels like the industry has been in a bit of a holding pattern for the last three years. And so AI might be this opportunity for a few folks to break out of it.
- [03:04]
B
Yeah, I mean, honestly, it's super refreshing because most of the time in a lot of conversations you're just kind of surrounded by this doom and gloom. There's a lot of fear going on right now, a lot of uncertainty. And so I feel like it's a little refreshing to hear some optimism, especially in such competitive and like you said, it's one of the really dominated sectors by a few players. Maybe if you can elaborate a little bit more on how that's giving you this optimism where you're seeing these angles for others to compete.
- [03:45]
A
Well, to set some context, I did a bit of an analysis a few weeks ago about SERP diversity. And so when I looked at that, the top like 10 terms like, you know, best car insurance, best personal loans, best credit cards providers actually accounted for the majority of that. You know, if we're not counting SERP features providers accounted for the majority of that. And then content sites only accounted for about 23% of the results that showed up. When you remove NerdWallet, Bankrate, Forbes, that number goes down to 3%. So it really wasn't much, you know, optimism for the last few years anyways. And now it's sort of a resetting of the playing field in that these smaller publishers now have tools, they have new channels. You know, Google does dominate 90% of the search market, but ChatGPT is like quickly gaining and people's user behavior is changing and I think with zero click search it actually is going to present an opportunity for someone who doesn't necessarily have the most backlinks to win, but actually someone who's catering to the user the most, someone who's being as user centric as possible, creating great memorable experiences because they're going to get all of that informational content information from the AIOS and the generative AI. But to actually the actual on page experience is going to be the sort of difference maker here. And I don't think anyone has monopoly on that right now.
- [05:11]
B
Such a great point. And as you were describing that as a little bit of kind of a light bulb moment in the sense is we've seen over the last, I don't know, call it three to five years and it's like Rand's been, you know, one of the people banging the drum on this is although more and more users like there's more search searches than ever on Google and there is more traffic leaving Google like Google being a referral source, but that traffic is being kind of taken by a smaller group of players. And I mean this is me going a little bit on a limb, but I feel like there's a component of that that probably ties into some like consumer behavior element where Google's rewarding through nav booth engagement metrics. If someone's familiar with a brand or a company, they're probably going to be more likely to click on it. Hence that just further amplifies this kind of piece where if you're not having that, you know, user engagement metric as far as like that click through the CTR of going to a site, you don't really have that in AI search or LLMs. So then it's like it is in some ways kind of like leveling, you know, that playing field.
- [06:27]
A
Yes, completely agree. You know, I think we know at this point that Google uses Chrome data to monitor clicks and it uses like how long you hover over SERP and all of those sort of user metrics and it created a cumulative advantage. Right. So it was almost a winner take all system where if you were on P1, of course you were going to have more clicks and of course you were going to have better user engagement than someone who doesn't have any authority writing a best credit cards article, who doesn't even get seen unless someone goes directly to their website. So this sort of breaks us out of that a bit. Don't get me wrong, I still think backlinks are going to be incredibly important and I actually think mentions are going to be just as important going forward, especially for LLMs. As far as I know, ChatGPT and Claude and all of them don't have access to Chrome data. So I do think this is one of those moments where what we're going to see some shuffling of the deck.
- [07:18]
B
Yeah, interesting. And maybe if you can elaborate a little bit more on kind of how you're taking this into your approach. I mean you don't have to kind of give the playbook as far as your strategy, but maybe like a little bit of like how do these shifts change your perspective on strategy or even prioritization of efforts in kind of this new age of search.
- [07:44]
A
So I know at Finder we're sort of embracing the search everywhere optimization line that Rand Fishkin had said at one point where it's more about the multimodal success. So it's not just about being on search, it's about being wherever your audience is. So that's being on YouTube, that's being on social, that's being in forum sites, you know, making sure that our content is human and authentic and feels real in a way that I think the sort of generic Internet of the last 10 years sort of robbed us of. And so now Finder is trying to look for these pockets of opportunity that other, these bigger sites haven't said. So we're playing a lot in the long tail we're doing because I guess like if I'm going to speak more plainly as people used to search for what they really, you know, people couldn't really search for what they really wanted on Google, right? The more specific your term, the less helpful the results you would get. So you. And it sort of forced us all into this keyword backed way of using the Internet, right? So instead of saying best credit cards for someone who lives in Brooklyn whose car just broke down, you know, and get as nuanced as you can, you had to just say best credit cards, right? Or maybe you add one other qualifier to that, but AI and these LLMs, they're actually catering to the very specific needs of what the user actually wants. You finally can say I want the best credit card for the person who lives in Brooklyn whose car just broke down. And Finder's playing in those spaces. We are creating content for the very specific use case of this one user who needs that cash advance app to connect to that one bank. We're playing wherever we can to actually cater to real issues instead of doing the broad generic sort of best and then just the head term way of SEO that we used to see in the past.
- [09:35]
B
Interesting. So it's like, I mean in some ways for a while in SEO we've been kind of doing this like consolidation holistic like super long pages with tries to fill every possible expectation from the user around like that topic. Because then it's a safe bet for a search engine to send to you where now we can kind of be more granular, less focused on that kind of hey, we need authority from this one page versus the heightened relevancy of the specific nuance that may be included in a longer prompt than a typical query or in a series of prompts that have like this historical component which is like I think one of also like the challenges in how we look at and like how we measure SEO is because like I really been questioning like how much value do you have in like looking at rankings or like some of the more traditional performance metrics when there's going to be so many more variations of how people will ask a question. When you lengthen that question.
- [10:46]
A
I mean, there's a couple companies that have come out. I mean, you see people like Profound and Ahrefs is building this, like, sort of brand monitor. So there's a lot of folks attempting to do it. I mean, I saw some hacks in GSC where you just type the word reply as to the query contains and you can see a lot of what folks have typed in in AI mode. But it is one of those things that is going to be hard to track, and we may never be able to track it because there's an infinite amount of queries. You could probably group them semantically, like these sort of searches are all sort of the same, which was probably what people will do. And I think as a result of that, people will create pages that sort of approach the full funnel. The sort of the same way that people walk themselves down the funnel when they're using LLMs, where they start with what they want and then they keep clarifying till they get what they want. And I think that's also just a side note. Why the quality of the lead is higher when people do eventually click out is because they've walked themselves all the way down the funnel. But I think it's just about. Again, I need to go back to about being everywhere. I think how people consume information is changing. And so the way we used to do things of do I rank P1 for this or do I rank P2 for that? It's gonna be like, do I have a YouTube video? So it's gonna almost be more about the input metrics. Have I covered this on social? Have I covered this on YouTube? Is my audience replying to me? Are they commenting on my stuff? Like, it's gonna be about the impact you make. And I think it's gonna be, we're gonna watch our KPIs change and we're gonna see a lot of conversations, I think, happening internally at companies with stakeholders to. With, especially within the SEO. Can you just say, like, hey, this is how we need to measure success going forward. It's no longer going to be the whole traffic number or the, you know, whatever it was or clicks, but it's going to be the quality and the, you know, user engagement. I think that's, that's ultimately going to be, you know, how we measure success going forward.
- [12:40]
B
And with, like, kind of that, you know, quality of click or quality of user coming to the site, like, have you been finding, like, with your finder that the traffic you're getting from, whether it's ChatGPT, Claude, whoever. Have you noticed, like, a difference in quality of leads coming in?
- [13:00]
A
Definitely. So the volume is significantly less, but the quality of that volume is significantly higher. So, you know, we might have a page that gets like 100 clicks and it's from ChatGPT, and of those hundred, maybe 50 of them end up doing an action on the site. So it's like much, much higher conversion. You scale those numbers out, we'll see what that conversion rate looks like if we were with 1,000 or 10,000 clicks. But we are seeing that. And I do think it's because these folks are closer to the decision stage than they would be if they had just clicked on a blue link from a generic sort of keyword.
- [13:34]
B
Interesting. Now, I guess it's somewhat tactical still, but in terms of, like, mobilizing the organization around this, because, like, you mentioned, within your organization, you're looking at it of where is the user? It's not just Google. It's like, more holistic in the sense of, like, you know, not strictly just Google search. What was the process to kind of get everybody aligned and on the same page? Because I think that's one of the other challenges that SEOs are facing is the narrative that we've been saying for a while has shifted, and then now they're thinking, or we are thinking, how do we kind of, like, steer this ship back into this other direction when we were pushing everyone to care about rankings and care about these, like, items?
- [14:25]
A
So I think you're seeing a lot on LinkedIn, but just showing folks that bifurcation of the clicks and impressions in Google Search console is a really good way to sort of highlight the stakes and the direction that the industry is moving. And again, if you're working in Ymyl category and you aren't one of the big guys, you've been looking for a way out for a long time. And so I don't think it didn't take much convincing, I'll say, at least in Finder in the US because we're hungry. We really do care about our readers, and we want to make sure we're delivering the best product possible for them. It's not always a great experience when you put a lot of work and effort into creating something and then no one sees it. And now we're like, okay, well, now we're on YouTube and we're getting. We're getting some good feedback there and now we're on Instagram and we're getting some good feedback there. And you know, so now we have a newsletter and we have this one to one direct relationship with our audience. And so I think if you approach it from a place of like what your purpose is, like what your vision for the company is outside of like ranking, all of that stuff sort of doesn't matter because it's not about the activity, it's about what you get out of doing the activities.
- [15:31]
B
Yeah. And in some ways too, I feel like part of the challenge or battle that we've had in SEO is like we've and not everybody, but like a large portion of the SEO community has been like trying to speak to SEO in SEO jargon and in our own terms, in which case it alienates those that are not familiar with it, which is typically the executive leadership group. So then there's this kind of like, I don't want to say resentment, but a little bit of resentment on like having that recognition. And I feel the way that you're describing that also has a natural way that makes probably the topic or search in general more approachable from a broader audience. Where I think an executive could hear what you just said. I mean, it helps your gm, but someone that's not as close to the industry could hear that and be like, yep, okay, that makes sense. Where before it was maybe a little like the barrier to entry from the other side was a bit higher.
- [16:36]
A
Oh, totally. I mean it's one thing I've always sort of disliked and liked. I'm a huge nerd obviously, but like the over sort of intellectualization of SEO and you know, you can't really walk into these meetings with folks who are not nerdy SEOs and start talking about query fan out technique or N grams or semantic matches and content chunk and what was it? Chunking. There's a new one about chunking. And so it's like, and that also takes the spirit, the heart out of a lot of this stuff. It's like you've moved back into a mindset where you're trying to hack a system versus create a good product. And going to someone who's not technical or going to the CFO and say I'm going to hack the system. And then you start throwing jargon at them, they're going to be like, hold on, do we actually need your department? But if you tell them, I'm going to create something that our customers love and that adds up to our conversion rate and it's a part of the Funnel, they'll understand that and they'll be really on board. And then internally in your slacks and in your team's messages, you can start talking about the fan out techniques and ngrams. But on the surface, I think just speaking to people, like people is the way. Yeah, how.
- [17:42]
B
I mean, this is a little bit of a tangent, but what stage of your career did you start to really realize that and feel that? Because I feel like there's a natural kind of arc of someone that's newer into the industry. You get really excited about learning this jargon that maybe you didn't know before. And then you're speaking to others and you're like, why don't they care the same as me? And then you're like, okay. And you kind of start changing it. Like, where were you? Like, how did you kind of make that mindset shift?
- [18:14]
A
So I had the luxury, I guess of being a pm, like building apps and stuff beforehand before I got really into SEO. And so talking to devs is the same way. And so like learning to get dev engineers to sort of talk in a more human way, I think prepared me for it. But I think, you know, when I, when it really hit me that you couldn't sort of present things that way is when. And it's the simplest thing ever, you start talking in that way and then they point to a result on Google and say that, okay, then why isn't it working? And you're like, oh, it kind of puts things in perspective for you. And a lot of it is good, it's good hygiene. I love structured data. It's great for accessibility, people who need screen readers and all of that. And technical SEO is probably more important than it ever has been before. But a lot of it just comes down to length and brand awareness and you know, click metrics as we spoke about earlier. And so in a lot of those, and you know, I think we were talking about eat before we started recording, which is not a direct ranking factor, but it's the human element, right? It's, it's something where you are going to trust the information more if it's written by an expert or reviewed by an expert. And because of that they're probably more likely to click on your affiliate link or use your tool or whatever. So all of it leads back to just thinking like a regular human, like, are you going to go with the insurance company that you've never seen before or the one that, you know, are you going to, you know, click on this affiliate link from this site that is Just nothing but buttons? Or are you going to go to the one that has some content that provides context around it? Like the more you think like a human, the more user centric you are, the more value you add to actual people. I think the more you'll be rewarded and naturally as a result of that, you'll start to rise in visibility.
- [19:54]
B
Absolutely. So we've hit on a fair amount of these changes and we're talking about positioning to it. How do you see more of the role of the SEO? So we've kind of hit on how they're communicating it and some of the fundamental strategies towards it. But what's next for the SEO manager and the function?
- [20:18]
A
I think the function of the SEO is going to be more of a growth manager. It's not going to be someone who, you know, depending on the company, it may, it may focus primarily on organic, you know, free traffic, high margin traffic. But it's not going to be constrained to Google. I think it's going to. Or Google search. Because YouTube, you know, it'll be on YouTube, it'll be on Google, it'll be on Instagram, It'll be on TikTok. It'll. It'll really be about being the performance manager for everything. And I think it's actually going to become more of a brand focused role more than anything. I think performance is still going to play a big role about it, a role in it, but it's going to be more about your entity management. Right. Is your brand being associated with the right products? Are you getting the right links and how are you getting them? Doesn't necessarily matter. You could because GPT and all these LLMs understand mentions and that's how they build their entity and not links. It's not necessarily about your website doing, getting backlinks to it, it's about, you know, so and so Tyson Stockton of Pre Visible and you, you know, a set on TikTok that SEO is not dead and Right. And so now they know Tyson Stockton and they know Pre Visible and it's not because it was set on your website or even another web like you know, whatever it was because you said it on TikTok. Sorry, it was a bit incoherent but it's like it's building that web of entity.
- [21:35]
B
No, I'm with you on it. And also I appreciate the. Within the same answer in the same sentence you hit the executive speak and you had brand recognition and entity recognition in the same piece, which I appreciate. And I think I was actually just in a conversation with A client the other day where they were asking about and a lot of people, they were worried, hey, our clicks are down, our impressions are up. It was like, yeah, it's from a glossary directory. No real surprises in that sense. And then the question was like, okay, what's going on with leads? Has that changed during this? Answer was no. So in case that was a piece. But then the conversation led into like, well, how should we be looking at this channel then? If before we were measuring success on impressions, clicks, leads, floor just got knocked out on a couple of them, how do we look at that? And like, one of the pieces I came back with was actually 2 on the brand piece, where, you know, I kind of use the analogy. I was like, if you have a billboard, you're not going to see that impression count. Like, you might have a generic thing from when you purchased it, but you're expecting then that direct traffic. And so I think like, as SEOs, we need to start looking. And sure, we can't claim all of the direct traffic, but I think like, we do need to use how much our direct traffic is fluctuating as a little bit of a proxy of how well we are doing being present in AIOS and ChatGPT and these other ones, regardless if it's sending traffic or not.
- [23:18]
A
Oh, totally. And, and also how you're capturing that traffic and retaining that traffic because there's a less, you know, the ocean got a little smaller in terms of the volume that can be sent to websites when someone does come to your site, really like hammer home that the experience is really well and on their, you know, and get them into a newsletter, get them into a membership flow, get them into your ecosystem in some way, ask them to follow you on this channel or to subscribe to your YouTube or to, you know, whatever it is. But you want to make sure that you're capturing them because before, if you ranked for the keyword, it was almost like you owned just, you owned a search, right? You owned the real estate of people searching that. But we don't own it the same way anymore. It's. It's never been more clear that we're renting our traffic from these platforms. And so when you do get them onto your site for that brief period of time, you do own that user, capture them, keep them, find a way to reactivate them again and again and again so you're not so dependent on all of these platforms.
- [24:21]
B
Interesting as you're saying that too. I was thinking, like, I've always told people, like, as SEOs we cannot be successful on our own. Like, we require the dev and engineering team, we require analytics, we require all these partners. I feel like, as you're describing that it's like almost like we need to shift some of that efforts towards partnering with other marketing channels, which before we've kind of just been resentful of, like, hey, they get more budget than us. But now it's more like, hey, we probably need to be working hand in hand with the social teams, with the, you know, affiliate teams, whoever, because it's going to have that kind of intertwined impact, 100%.
- [25:05]
A
I think one of the reasons, and I'm sure this is the same with you, is that SEO scratches every itch, right? It allows you to be really technical and it also allows you to be creative and it allows you to touch really every part of the business in some way, shape or form. And that's still the case, if not more so. And I also think there's a little bit less dependency on other departments than there were before. You know, ChatGPT does enable you to do a lot of technical work, allows you to build things quickly. Maybe you don't ship something that has a secret API key or anything like that, but you can build a proof of concept and pass that onto your product team now, or you can create a marketing plan or something and then pass it on to pr and you can articulate the vision so much more quickly and accurately. And I don't know, I think the SEO is going to become one of the most important roles. It might not be called an SEO, it might be called something with the word growth in it, or it might be called just a market, you know, digital marketer. But it is going to be sort of the role that brings it all together because distribution is the most. As someone who's shipped many failed products, distribution is one of the most important things that you can think about. And the SEO is distribution in a nutshell.
- [26:17]
B
Well said. I feel like that's a great way to kind of like encapsulate a lot of this conversation where, you know, it's. The pendulum is swinging a little bit. Like we have to broaden the perspective of it and kind of take that step back to then be more strategic in how we're competing. But it's like I also just going back to the beginning of the conversation, I love that you're advocating for some more optimism of especially in these David versus Goliath categories. You have a new playing field. And I think something else in addition is typically takes a lot More to change direction of how we're talking about in a large Fortune 500 enterprise versus the smaller nimble company. And if you're able to move quickly, align the company quickly, you will have an upper hand on these larger organizations that struggle to make significant changes because of just the bureaucracy that exists within it.
- [27:22]
A
Totally. I mean there's a, it's like a meme out there right now that's like social media managers talking about how many layers of approval they have to go through and by the time they get the yes, they, the trend is no longer relevant. So I think smaller orgs do have a strong advantage right now because those, yeah, like you said, those big companies to even shift at a degree to the right takes a long time. Whereas small and medium sized publishers can shift on a dime and really see impact and get those learnings as quickly as possible. The one thing I really think about a lot is that, and what I would caution though to these smaller publishers is to not put all of your chips in trying to win citations on Google. I think the value exchange between the creator and Google has never been more imbalanced right now. And so you may use chunk, chunking and you know, N grams and semantic, you know, whatever to get to, you know, being cited in the aio, but you can't pay your bills with impressions and so figure out where you can add the most value. You know, you still want traffic, you still want all that, but diversify your streams. And I think teaching people that Google is just one stream, you know, or maybe it's a river. Right, but it's not the ocean anymore. And so use everything you've learned as being like a marketing scientist and apply that to these other channels. I'm really excited to see what happens when people with traditional SEO backgrounds break into social and when they break into video. I think they're going to, you know, shift the industry on its head because these are real geniuses, a lot of them. Like a lot of people in this industry, you know, you have to have a really generalist sort of set of skills which in a world of specialists is kind of rare. So I really am excited to see how we approach this. But I would just caution, don't put all of your chips just in the, in a single Google basket. It's not that that's not where we are anymore.
- [29:18]
B
Yeah. And like to that point, I think as SEOs, we are very well equipped for this. And as fearful as some people may be is it's like, I mean, at least for myself, like that's what attracted me to search was the fast pace, the complexity. It's not straightforward. It's like the other things to me were a little more boring because it was like quite linear, a bit more simplistic. And the same things that I think attracted a lot of us to the industry is also going to be the same characteristics that will set us up for success in this area. And I feel like in that same David Rickliff, we should be able to move quicker to adapt to these changes. As you've been working within it, it's like it's been there just hasn't been as visible as it is now.
- [30:11]
A
Oh, totally. And one thing I'll say is like outside of engineers, SEOs, I feel like they're the group that's used AI the most outside of engineers and people who use it as their therapists, which I think is like the leading cause. Use that according to Harvard. But we've really used it to. Because our business depends on it, right? Like our traffic is our business. And so when it came out, we were trying to crack it immediately and using it to automate workflows and to generate schema and to do a lot of the busy work that comes with doing SEO. You know, uploading articles is one thing that is always, you know, sort of a pain and it's monotonous. And so we were like, all right, we'll just start for. I'll get ChatGPT to do, give me all the HTML, I'll give ChatGPT to give me the schema markup. I'll give, you know, and so we're kind of ahead of the curve and I think continue to lean into AI to make the workflow easier. It creates the space to do more multi channel activity. And I think I would, for the SEOs who are working with editorial teams of content focused companies, I would say ask them to lean into it as well and how to use it and how to get it to augment some of the BAU that they do. That's not necessarily moving the needle. And also another thing is because editorial roles and SEO roles are so hand in hand, I think one thing that's also going to shift is that editorial roles are now going to be very high visibility or they have to be, I don't think because you're a great writer anymore, it doesn't necessarily have the impact it used to when it comes to sorting, writing this type of content. They're still going to be the ones who are winning on substack and all these newsletter platforms. But for SEO content, never has it been more important to demonstrate human effort. And so to have an editor that is active on social as well, building their own personal brand, being more of a creator, almost like an editor creator hybrid role is going to be. I think what plays the best in.
- [32:06]
B
The future, which I have to double back, is that actually the thing is Harvard said that the therapy is number one.
- [32:15]
A
Yeah. Yeah, they did.
- [32:16]
B
I mean, I don't know, maybe that's good. People are getting more help, but also feels a little concerning at the same time.
- [32:22]
A
That's a bit scary.
- [32:24]
B
All right, so that wraps up this episode of the Voice of Search podcast. Thanks to Zach Ali from Finder for joining us. If you'd like to contact Zach, you can find a link to his LinkedIn profile in the show notes or go on over to his company's website@finder.com. if you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of SEO and content marketing knowledge in your podcast feed, hit that subscribe button in your podcast app or on YouTube and we'll be back in your feed soon with that. That's all for today. Thanks for stopping by and we'll see you in the next episode.