Question 1

SEO winners and losers in the Building Societies industry

Accepted Answer

Everyone wants to be at the top of this chart. Visibility is so important for site traffic and, therefore, conversions. Let’s see who made the top ten:
Nationwide has the best visibility by a clear mile. We must point out that they are also a national bank who also provides lots of other services which is most likely why they look miles ahead of their competition. They did lose 3% of their visibility year on year.
Yorkshire Building Society is next in the chart after losing 2% visibility.
Skipton has had a successful year with a 12% increase in visibility, unlike Coventry Building Society who lost 22% of theirs.
Leeds Building Society also lost 11% of their visibility year on year.
The rest of the top ten has had some great wins and some significant losses:

Principality (+8%)
Chelsea Building Society (+68%)
Newcastle Building Society (-25%)
The Cumberland (+3%)
Nottingham Building Society (-26%)

Question 2

Keyword opportunities for Building Societies

Accepted Answer

In the report you’ll find a list of keywords that have high search volumes and high competition as well as those that are less competitive but offer the best opportunities.
We first must mention that there are a lot of questions in this market meaning sites like Moneysupermarket and money.co.uk are ranking well for lots of terms, but building societies may have trouble ranking against them.
Well done to Nationwide who is ranking within the top five for the highest competition keyword ‘mortgage calculator’. The page they are ranking with has lots of tools to help customers work out how much they could afford, how much they’ll spend and how much they will be owed if they overpay or repay early.
It’s worth noting also that Google has their own mortgage calculator tools as featured snippets so terms like ‘mortgage calculator’ and ‘mortgage repayment calculator’ may end up being no-click searches for those using mobile devices.
A huge well done to Leeds Building Society who is ranking within the top 3 for the term ‘interest only mortgages’.
Their page is filled with useful information and rich copy which answers relevant questions and also promotes their own interest only mortgages.
Resource content is key
We’ve already established that you’re likely to be competing with longform articles, guides and advice columns from financial websites.
However, there’s no reason you can’t also rank for key terms – you just have to provide the right answers to the right questions.
We love this guide on buying a second home from NatWest which covers all the basics and has links to other articles within.
Use Google’s ‘people also ask’ boxes to give you inspiration on what to write about.

Question 3

Who is winning the social for Building Societies

Accepted Answer

While finance is quite a hush-hush subject, there’s still a lot of social space to play with.
Nationwide is topping the social charts with the highest number of brand searches and highest owned social score of all the providers.
They use their social platforms to shout about the great work that they do in communities and their achievements over the past year.
They also use their platforms to remind customers not to be misled by scams and advise them what to do if they are suspicious.
Skipton is next in the list. Their Facebook feed features videos that answer commonly asked questions like ‘what is a flexible isa?’ from experts who work in the field.
They also did a live Q&A session earlier in the year which gained 2.6K views and 92 engagements.
Being transparent can help customers to trust you more – this is extremely important in the financial market.
Both of these building societies also use Facebook and Twitter to encourage people to vote in their Annual General Meetings. This is another way in which customers can feel they have a say in the way the business is run, so it’s a good idea to promote it on social media.
With finance and lending being a sensitive subject, it can be difficult to engage with customers. These two building societies have used their platforms to try to help answer customer questions, be transparent and show ways in which they give back to communities.

Question 4

Which Building Society has the best page speed?

Accepted Answer

Page speed has emerged as one of the most important ranking factors when it comes to SEO. If your site is struggling to rank well, we’d suggest checking how fast your pages load as Google favours quicker page speeds.
Here’s why page speed is so important.
Using Google PageSpeed Insights we identified these as the top five fastest sites:

thevernon.co.uk
dudleybuildingsociety.co.uk
mhbs.co.uk
thetipton.co.uk
monbs.com

If you’d like more information about your own data, speak to us.

What this Building Societies Report is all about…

Our Building Societies market analysis

What to expect inside

Building Society Marketing Report FAQs

Resource content is key

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