50,000+ Organic Visits Added to Self Financial

Self Financial is a fintech company that offers credit builder loans and secured credit cards to individuals with limited or poor credit history. Their site traffic took a major hit in December 2020 after Google’s core algorithm update. Content remained stagnant throughout of 2021 — it wasn’t producing traffic, rankings, or sign-ups.

As a result, they approached us to help them regain traffic and rank for their core terms like “build credit” and “credit builder loan.”

Audit Content and Refocus Keywords

Because the whole site took a hit, we knew it would be a long road to recovery. We prioritized a content audit to prune thin content and revamp pages that weren’t reaching their potential.

Then, we conducted comprehensive keyword research to identify credit score, credit report, and credit bureau terms closely related to Self’s core competencies. These terms met two core criteria:

1. They spoke to Self’s audience — people with limited disposable income who had negative marks on their credit or were new to building credit. We avoided general personal finance topics that wouldn’t drive qualified traffic.
2. They were low and medium difficulty. Since the finance space is highly competitive, we zeroed in on low and medium difficulty terms that could drive results more quickly.

The ultimate goal was to refocus content to build topical authority in the credit-building space and elevate the blog quality. This included designing custom visuals, which had the potential to rank in the SERP features and drive additional visibility.

Improve E-E-A-T Signals

We worked with Self’s team to improve E-E-A-T signals, namely partnering with an Accredited Financial Counselor® to review content and adding more robust author bios. We also added detailed source citations, which weren’t previously included on the blog. Sources were carefully chosen based on authoritativeness and currentness, and every statement was backed up per Self’s compliance requirements.

Pass Compliance Requirements

Because financial advice is highly regulated, a stringent compliance review was a key part of the content creation process. We weren’t given compliance guidelines, so we documented feedback to create a comprehensive resource that covered content restrictions and approved language for a wide range of topics. This streamlined the process and led to time savings for both teams.

It also helped us proactively identify topics that would cause concern and flag how restrictions could impact results. This led to productive conversations about what boundaries could be adjusted and helped us find middle ground.

Our efforts drove over 50,000 additional monthly organic visitors to the blog. More importantly, we helped Self gain visibility to their mid-to-bottom funnel terms and increase Credit Builder Account sign-ups through their blog content.

They are now ranking on page one for “how to build credit” and “credit builder loan.” These informational posts are top-converting content.

In the past year alone, Self’s blog has driven over 685 new customers to open Credit Builder Accounts.

Additionally, we’ve captured 51 featured snippets and there has been a 373% increase in keywords ranking in positions one to three.