Research in FinTech: Key Trends & Opportunities In Search

The term fintech now refers to a variety of financial activities, including sending money, depositing a check, bypassing local banks to apply for credit, raising money for startups, or managing investments. The penetration of fintech and fintech-related words into everyday life is increasing.

A few of the most active areas in fintech innovation are (among others):

• Cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, NFTs). Bitcoin was introduced in 2009 and had a significant impact on the financial world. As the fintech industry developed, various business models emerged, including alternate credit scoring, digital wallets, and small ticket loans.
• Neobanks — fintech companies that offer apps, software, and other tools for making online and mobile banking more efficient.
• Insurtech aims to simplify and streamline the insurance industry using technology.
• Regtech company helps financial services firms comply with industry regulations, especially those relating to anti-money laundering.
• Wealthtech uses algorithms to automate investment advice to cut costs and make it more accessible. The concept covers any digital solution that facilitates wealth management processes.

In addition, there is the term "techfin", which refers to companies that offer software solutions that are not primarily related to financing. Techfin companies include Big Tech giants.

In general, fintech refers to non-traditional financial offerings, such as PayPal and Revolut. In alternative terms, techfin describes a technology company that develops a better way to deliver financial products as part of a broader service offering. As examples of techfin, ApplePay and GoogleWallet stand out from fintech because they place their focus on technology rather than finance.

With so many companies entering the financial technology space, it can be difficult to identify the major players to improve your promotion strategy. In order to help, we've compiled a list of the largest fintech companies by related keywords in Google search, as well as their SEO metrics, backlink strategies, keywords, SERP features, and SEM campaigns.

SEO strategies for FinTech companies can be challenging. Striking a balance between overpromising promotion and informative content requires real diligence. Google will heavily consider your expertise, authority, and trust (EAT). You'll rise in organic search results if you pass Google's test. 

Your strategy should be based on specific organic search queries. You provide value when you create content that solves your target audience's problems.

We analyzed a set of parameters of the leaders in SERP to determine what patterns you should consider if you wish to develop your project aimed at financial technologies. In our study, we used related keywords (without brand names and informational keywords) to analyze data in SERP from fintech companies based on the search databases of the United States.

Using API integration for Google Spread Sheets, we analyzed search engine results pages for two mentioned countries by keywords from our dataset. As a result, we have compiled a list of the best-represented companies as follows:

1. nextinsurance.com — finance and insurance;
2. opensea.io — NFT-marketplace;
3. ramp.com — computers and technologies;
4. intuit.com — finance;
5. usa.visa.com — finance;
6. revolut.com — financial planning and management;
7. stripe.com — computers and technologies;
8. wise.com — banking credit and lending;
9. mastercard.com  — banking credit and lending ;
10. paypal.com —  business and customer service.

In order to find out, which traffic source works better for analyzed companies, we checked the traffic distribution using SimilarWeb.

As we can see, direct traffic is the largest source for analyzed websites, 49 %. Traditionally, this traffic comes from visitors manually entering the website's URL or clicking on a bookmark. However, many factors can affect this traffic source. They may include internal employees, customers logging into client portals, emails sent using particular email clients that do not pass on referring data, or users clicking on mobile apps or desktop software.

When a user finds you through a site other than a major search engine, it's known as referral traffic. In our dataset, the rate of such traffic is 30%, which is second place. Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and PayPal use this traffic source more than any other.

Like direct traffic, organic search traffic (15%) has some gray areas. In most cases, organic traffic is driven by search engine optimization. The higher you rank for competitive keywords, the more organic traffic you will receive. Consistently creating search-optimized content will result in increased organic search traffic and improved placement in search results. A marketer must analyze your keywords and high-ranking pages monthly to identify SEO opportunities.  

The rest of the sources — Mail, Ads, and Social — are together 6 % of the total traffic.

The following step involved collecting data on Organic SEO traffic in Serpstat, estimated using the keywords domains, ranking in the Top-20, and visibility in the search engines for Google US. Visibility varies, but there are a few recognizable leaders in each region. Organic SEO traffic has some specificities as well:

Both SEO traffic and visibility depend on the keywords the domain is ranking for in the top 20, taking into account CTR and search volume of these search queries. You can evaluate any line of business using these metrics with a few similar competitors.

Considering the importance of traffic from referring domains, this is especially true. Direct traffic indicates a good level of brand awareness and loyalty. In any case, brand familiarity alone is not a scalable strategy for long-term growth. 

Fintech traffic highly depends on organic search, so investing in SEO is a wise decision. A scalable organic strategy would be to complement on-page SEO efforts with link-building activities aimed at high authority domains to improve rankings and brand awareness for your website.

Last but not least, social media and paid search are not the primary sources of site traffic, but they serve to increase brand awareness. It is important not to dismiss either of these scalable strategies.

Organic search is a significant source of the traffic to fintech websites. It's also a part of a long-term strategy for bringing awareness to your brand. 

Our organic research revealed insights into the total quantity of keywords used in organic search for each analyzed domain and keyword difficulty (KD) distribution.

The top ranking websites in search results have a substantial semantics volume, confirming the importance of ongoing keyword research.

The next research is related to the keyword difficulty score. This is a prediction of how difficult it would be for a keyword to rank in an organic search compared to its competitors. For calculation, Serpstat uses the number of backlinks in the top 10, URL complexity, the number of search terms associated with the page in the top 10, and the level of commercial of the query, based on internal Serpstat algorithms, following the classifications of request.

The gradation for KD (%) is as follows:

0-20 — easy to rank in organic search;
21-40 — medium level of difficulty;
41-60 — difficult to rank;
61-100 — very difficult to rank.

The graph shows that most keywords — 49.4%, are characterized by low KD. Despite the rapid expansion of the sphere, organic promotion faces relatively low competition. The reason for this may be that our dataset consists of companies with a wide range of services. Their products may be diversified using less competitive keywords to gain more specific clients.

People look for information about investing, creating a budget, making good money, etc. Demand creates offers, and some companies try to advance on high-volume requests, causing difficulties in the promotion. There may be more benefits to using less-competitive "long-tail" keywords. 

Align your content strategy with your target market's needs. Make your blog a destination for well-known authors and include a short author bio to boost credibility. Ensure you check KD for keywords when preparing technical requirements for your copywriter.

Google SERP features are elements that simplify search and make the result page more informative. When you search for facts and instructions, the "answer box" SERP feature will help to get structured solutions; a "knowledge graph" will provide detailed information about a company or another functional entity straight after you google it; the "sitelinks" SERP feature appears below the main URL for a particular domain and takes people to specific pages on your site, helping to receive more traffic.

CTR and traffic can be affected by these features, so check whether Google has marked your site with any of these elements.

To check how Fintech leaders improve their snippets, we analyzed the keywords and SERP features of examined domains.

As a result of the study, we found that “Breadcrumbs” is the most common SERP element — it occurs in more than 20 % of cases.

SERP features also often appeared: the People Also Ask (17%), Sitelinks inside the snippet (17%) and Related Search (15%). 

There are many features on the SERP for Fintech sites that site owners cannot control, and sometimes these features take away from the user's attention on the listings. When you are doing keyword research, you need to be aware of these factors. The features that are at the top of the search results are very competitive.

A good strategy might be to provide long tail-keyword-answers to popular search queries. Google has clearly explained methods and algorithms for delivering special search results elements in its documentation for webmasters.

After conducting a Domain batch analysis for our top 10 websites, we checked backlinks profile quality with the following metrics:

• Domain authority, measured by SDR (Serpstat Domain Rank);
• The number of referring domains;
• The total number of backlinks.

Let's take a closer look at what it all means:

SDR ranges from 0 to 100. In addition to looking at the number of referring domains, domain authority also considers the number of referring sites to those referring domains. So, all websites in the backlink index associated with the domain under analysis are evaluated.

Referring domains are the number of unique websites pointing to those we are looking at.

Backlinks are the particular links with unique IPs that lead to the analyzed website.

Graphs confirm the initial conclusions — the top is diverse, but the authority level for each domain in our list is generally high. High-handed websites have a quality backlink profile, as well as smaller sites with fewer links.

Then, for every domain in our list, we found information about redirecting entities to determine whether leaders use drop domains. In light of this, what conclusions are we trying to draw? Link juice flows to a redirecting domain when it completely redirects to the analyzed domain. In such cases, it is likely that the website has purchased drop domains and brought them to life or that it has acquired some related domains and attached them to its main domain to gain their backlinks, history, and traffic.

Our analysis of websites revealed that all domains in our study promoted their websites using the methods mentioned above. Dropped domains will enhance your promotion and attract more traffic if they match your purpose and product.

Both internal and external links are needed. In addition to helping your SEO, internal links encourage readers to click on other articles on your site. The process of acquiring external links can be accomplished in several ways, but it’s always better to think about quality, not only quantity. 

It is possible to use the “skyscraper” technique. Typically, you must find friendly content in your field (FinTech) with huge backlinks volume with good SDR. You outdo this content by providing more insights, pictures, videos, etc. Then, send email requests to the site's representatives linking to the top 10 ranking articles, asking them to add a link to your article instead. 

Expired domain technics have their pros and cons. You will save money by using an existing backlink profile rather than creating your own. But it is very important to ensure that the reputation of the dropped domain wasn't damaged.

Lastly, let's discuss the paid search for promotion in a sector. The purpose of contextual advertising, or PPC, is to attract the targeted audience quickly to the site. If you want to gain traction, you will most likely have to use paid ads, but if you commit to SEO, you can start to use paid ads less and less. After a while, you may not need PPC at all.

We analyzed the Top 100 search results for a dozen of keywords and concluded that representatives of the fintech industry are not so actively using paid promotion:

As you can see on the graph, 41 % of the companies in the top 100 use contextual advertising to promote their business. In some cases, it indicates a new direction that can easily be used for PPC traffic, which is why some players have begun to run advertisements. In terms of the number of keywords in paid search, the following companies led in our sample: wise.com, nextinsurance.com, opensea.io, stripe.com.

Based on the paid search results, we checked how competitive representatives' keywords are.

Competition level as a keyword metric shows how difficult it would be to rank well in paid search. The more domains running ads for this keyword, the higher the level of competition.

The graph shows that the majority of the targeted keywords — 32.2 % — fall into the medium competition category. Meanwhile, only 17.6 percent of keywords from ad campaigns are “easy” competition level.

Despite being a relatively minor source of traffic for Fintech sites, paid search is still valuable. Raising brand awareness and driving traffic to your website can be achieved by combining organic search practices with well-targeted paid ads. Although most search ads are formatted in traditional form, it's never too late to switch to a more friendly format and use a less competitive keyword. In case you want to target mobile devices more than desktops, select the most appropriate campaign option. Try the Rank tracker to observe real-time reports for both mobile and desktop SERPs.

In fintech, the right content in front of your targeted audience leading them through the sales funnel is only one part of the main strategy. Make sure you plan your approach and identify the specific goals before diving in. Identify your competitors and conduct research on their practices. 

It would be best if you keep in mind at the beginning of planning your fintech digital marketing strategy that there are legal requirements and government regulations concerning this sector. 

You can show and build trust by providing quality SEO-optimized and up-to-date content regularly. Establish your brand as a trustworthy source for your customers, and work on SEO to attract high-quality websites to link back to establish itself as a reliable, authoritative, and expert resource. Try to stay agile in your approach and find ways to use SEO tactics to increase organic traffic to your website and improve your conversion rates. 

Now you know which tools can help you achieve your goals and keep your strategies on track :)