Finance SEO: Finanztip’s 5-step formula for building a beloved consumer brand in the competitive finance market
This SEO example covers Finanztip's SEO strategy and how they went from obscurity to one of Germany's most beloved and trusted consumer brands.
Finanztip is to Germany what Nerdwallet is to the US — a highly trusted platform offering consumer advice on all topics finance.
They receive approximately 3.4 million clicks per month and dominate many search results for highly competitive topics such as checking accounts, credit cards, and interest rates.
The value of which one can’t ignore:
Want to know how they built it? I interviewed Robert Senf, Senior Online Marketing Manager at Finanztip, who unveiled their winning formula and highlighted where they zigged while others zagged.
1. It all started with a clear point of view
The Finanztip story doesn’t start with keyword research.
But with a clear point of view that helped them attract media coverage, topical authority, and gain backlinks. And millions of readers as a consequence of that.
Their POV: When they started in 2014, there wasn’t a lot of accessible, high-quality finance content for consumers available online. Financial content was mostly dry, academic writing. People without a degree or keen interest in finance had nowhere to turn when they needed guidance the most.
Finanztip’s mission became clear: To make financial advice available to the general public. They knew they would only succeed, if they were able to make finance appealing to the masses.
But how did they do this?
2. Shaping their brand with personality
Their first significant chess move was getting Hermann Josef Tenhagen on board, then editor-in-chief at Finanztest, a well-known consumer magazine. Tenhagen was highly respected for his unbiased and thorough analysis of financial products.
He didn’t just bring a unique editorial style and years of experience to Finanztip, but also his reputation and network.
His name opened a lot of doors with existing media houses and publications. He was interviewed frequently and also wrote columns for prestigious publications such as Spiegel and Süddeutsche.
Almost a decade before Google would formulate its E-E-A-T guidelines, Tenhagen and Finanztip zero’d in on building experience, expertise, authority, and trust for their website. And ticking all the boxes for Y-M-Y-L content.
With all the media coverage came hundreds of high-quality backlinks, which significantly increased Finanztip’s domain authority and paved the way to rank for competitive topics later on.
3. Building trust through expertise
Of course, Tenhagen couldn’t have scaled Finanztip just by himself.
Like every major publication, Finanztip needed a team of writers. However, they didn’t leave it up to chance who was writing for them. They exclusively hired people with backgrounds in both journalism and finance. This strategic decision later proved to be crucial for their success.
It might look trivial now, but back in 2014, many companies were following the HubSpot playbook and getting freelancers or guest writers to churn out over-optimized long-form articles to rank for competitive keywords.
The problem with such content: Even though it might rank well, no one wants to read it because it’s just regurgitating what’s already out there. And this definitely wasn’t a viable strategy for a company that wanted to change how the general public makes financial decisions.
So Finanztip doubled down on quality to build trust with their audience.
One of their most-read content pieces is written not by a freelancer but by an expert in banking and stock markets:
4. Leveraging the power of first-hand experience
To be clear: Finanztip was able to set itself apart not just by hiring expert journalists, but because these journalists write about things they know from first-hand experience, not from a university book or a competitor's blog post.
Everything they recommend, whether it's saving tactics or tax software, they have tested themselves. And they break it down into actionable points, so everyone can understand, follow, and apply it to their lives.
Doing so for them didn’t just mean writing long paragraphs. They further added images, tables, and embedded audio and video:
“Last year, millions of people were required to submit a property tax return for the first time. However, no one really understood how to do it. In a guide, my colleague Jörg Leine described exactly how to proceed. The result: hundreds of thousands stopped complaining and were able to complete the return themselves.”
There are two SEO lessons hidden in this message:
Finding the right topic is not just about search volumes: Unlike many competitors, Finanztip doesn’t solely focus on keywords with the highest search volumes. Instead, they are in tune with the market, understand their target audience, and have an intuitive sense for their questions and pain points.
Creating information gain happens when you answer hard questions: In SEO, we consider a content piece to provide information gain when it adds something new to the conversation and differs from what’s already out there. Finanztip addresses real problems, that haven’t been solved before. Their approach leads to higher engagement and better rankings, as they continually attract more readers and backlinks.
Finanztip intuitively made the right decisions by being consumer-focused all the way. So when Robert Senf took over SEO as his responsibility, a lot of content only needed slight optimization to fulfill its SEO potential.
Top ranking articles on Finanztip according to the Ahrefs Tool:
What stands out here is that single articles rank for thousands of keywords and generate hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of traffic each month!
5. Helping users make progress on their journey
An important decision Finanztip made that enabled the rankings we saw above, was adding tools and calculators directly into existing articles. Let’s look at a screenshot of their top-performing page about Tagesgeld:
By integrating a comparison tool into existing content instead of creating a separate page for each tool or calculator, Finanztip now ranks for head terms such as “tagesgeld” as well as more transactional queries such as “tagesgeldkonto” with the same page.
They achieved this by satisfying the informational search intent of what Tagesgeld is and how it works, but also the transactional intent of comparing different offers and providers right there.
Overall, this single page about Tagesgeld now ranks for roughly 2,700 keywords, bringing in over 240,000 clicks and $129k in monetary value each month!
Top keyword rankings of the Tagesgeld page:
Not only did they succeed in satisfying multiple search intents. They also perfectly bridge the gap between informational content and transaction. This is key for a business like Finanztip that financially supports itself with commissions made from affiliate links. By incorporating their recommendations into the content, they minimize the drop-off rate that usually occurs when readers are sent from editorial content to a transactional page.
How I’d replicate this
Start with a clear point of view
Ideally, your POV aligns with how you provide value to customers. If you’re unsure about the value you create, conduct customer interviews. People that bought from you, will best be able to tell you what they valued the most.
Shape your brand with personality
People trust people more than brands. It can definitely pay off to give your brand a face. So, if you'd rather not appear front and center yourself, you need to find someone who wants to take over this part. Often it’s the CEO or founder who takes on this job. In expertise-based businesses, it might also be an industry expert.
Build trust through expertise
Without investing in content, you are unlikely to make SEO a key traffic channel. Here, it’s crucial to get the right writers on board to build trust and connect with your target audience. Invest enough time in finding writers (either in your company or communities online), onboarding them properly, and including them in everything you do. Only when there is a shared vision will writers perform to their full ability.
Leverage the power of first-hand experiences
Ask yourself: What’s out there? What can you add to the discussion? Is it a unique POV? Or repackaging your know-how into a new format that doesn't exist yet? Make your content stand out by providing information gain and at the same time delivering exactly what your audience needs. E.g. I am writing these SEO examples because my clients told me they enjoy reading case studies instead of boring SEO theory.
Help users make progress on their journey
Never lose sight of the final goal. Yes, it’s important to attract an audience first. But if you can’t convert them later, all SEO efforts are wasted. The art of content design lies in recognizing the target audience's next need and guiding them toward it, allowing them to progress on their journey. When in doubt, map the customer journey based on your customer interviews.
Special thanks go out to Robert Senf, for sharing his strategies in SEO so openly and providing valuable insights into how Finanztip works.