A few months ago, we told you five SEO tips you could use to maximize your credit union’s web presence. We hope you’ve seen your search rankings improve since then. If not, you might want to keep reading to discover three SEO mistakes you might be making on your credit union website. To get the most from your SEO strategy, you should audit your site for ways to improve anchor text, internal linking, and mobile optimization.
- Using Generic or Repetitious Anchor Text
- Having Poor Internal Linking Structure
- Being Responsive but Not Optimized for Mobile
- Final Words
Using Generic or Repetitious Anchor Text
One of the main purposes of your website is to convert a visit into a sale. Logically, you do this by including a call to action in your content to drive members to the appropriate page.
Do the hyperlinks on your credit union website sound like the following: “Click here for more information” or “Follow this link to learn more”? If so or if you’re using similar generic phrases, you’re missing an opportunity to enhance your SEO.
You can improve your anchor text by including keywords and meaningful phrases. For instance, replace, “To view our CD rates, click here,” with “Our CD rates are competitive with the national average.” If you must include a call to action, make the meaningful portion of the sentence your anchor text: “To view our CD rates, click here.”
When you can, include your credit union, product, or service names in your anchor text. Not only will this help build brand recognition with your members, but branded SEO keywords are more unique and will bump up your rankings.
Be careful not to use the same anchor text, such as “CD rates,” repeatedly on the page. Doing so is similar to keyword stuffing, which search engine crawlers will detect.
Having Poor Internal Linking Structure
Internal links improve SEO by building a hierarchal structure that is easily understood by search engine crawlers. Not only does this increase your credit union website’s search ranking, but internal linking also boosts the rankings of individual pages on your site. If you know what pages rank the highest, don’t fail to link to them as long as it sounds natural.
Internal links shouldn’t be more than two clicks away from your home page or the conversion page. That is, your user shouldn’t have to visit pages that are irrelevant to the information he or she needs to reach the target page.
Along the same vein, you only want to link to pages that are relevant to the content on the page. For instance, if your member is on your personal checking Accounts page, don’t include content about and link to the page for business loans just for the sake of linking.
Being Responsive but Not Optimized for Mobile
We’ve discussed before the importance of having a mobile-friendly website to provide an optimal user experience. Search engines can detect if your website is not optimized for mobile viewing. Thus, according to Google, “Mobile-friendly sites show up higher in search results.”
Mobile optimization is more than just designing your site to be responsive and resize for various screen sizes. The site structure or organization and loading time also affect user experience.
Improving your internal linking structure will help ensure your site architecture is organized as well. You can quicken your load time by compressing your images and selecting any of our WordPress themes that are built for responsiveness.
Final Words
If you’re making any of these three common SEO mistakes on your credit union website, now is the time to remedy the situation with the solutions we’ve offered. Make sure you’re not missing the latest trends and tips about SEO by subscribing to our newsletter and reading our blog.
