Link Building and Digital PR in Regulated Financial Markets

Digital PR, by its very nature, earns higher quality, editorial links from reputable sources. This makes digital PR a better option than traditional link building for finance, and directly addresses the authoritativeness and trustworthiness factors of E-E-A-T.

AccuraCast’s finance SEO and PR specialists recommend the following five strategies, which we’ve found work best for financial services link building:

Mining your proprietary data or conducting reliable, statistically significant surveys to find new data is a great way to generate research and tell stories that media outlets and industry bodies will cite. Presenting complex data in shareable snippets such as graphs or mini-infographics, attracts citation links, and interactive infographics or tools attracts editorial and organic social & forum links.

Answering requests for expert commentary from journalists, news producers and bloggers can earn valuable links. Your leadership team and advisors or analysts should be certified and/or able to demonstrate significant experience in the subject matter.

Speed is of the essence with newsjacking. Your team must have processes and guidelines in place to rapidly provide compliant, expert quotes on breaking financial news such as interest rate changes, earnings announcements or government budgets, to journalists working on tight deadlines. While newsjacking earns brand mentions, it may not result in link placement on the article organically – but it doesn’t hurt to ask politely beforehand; (journalists tend not to like being asked to edit an article after it’s been published!)

Thought leadership content & high-value assets

Creating linkable assets like comprehensive white papers, personal finance calculators, stock trading guides, economic forecasts or interactive calculators that serve as resources is another reliable way to get other websites to link to your resource.

A word of advice here: do your research and identify resources that are unique to your business and valuable to your audience. Producing tools or guides that already exist from reputable sources is unlikely to attract new links unless your resource is significantly better or different in its approach.

Journalist and media relationship building

Building relationships with journalists who cover financial, business, and even tech news – think FT, Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, Economist, Forbes etc. – can yield rich rewards in the long run. Once a journalist trusts your experts, they are likely to return to them for commentary, which in turn can earn your business a steady flow of highest-authority, relevant editorial links.

To build long-term relationships with journalists in the finance, business, tech or niche financial sectors, focus on value, consistency and credibility rather than one-off outreach. Creating a news hub on your site, offering useful angles (not press releases), and sharing quick responses with quotable insights, can help the journalist and secure your place in their “little black book” of sources.

In addition to digital PR, some traditional link building tactics can still be employed in the financial services industry, so long as they’re done in a compliant way. Here are four tactics that still work:

Unlinked brand mentions

Monitor the web for your brand or executives’ names and request the author to add a link for attribution.

Resource page link building

Identify high-authority pages that list ranked resources and then pitch your brand or product or resource to be included in that list of “best of…”. E.g. “best mortgage calculators” or “top tax advisors in New Jersey”.

Competitor backlink gap analysis

Using link analysis tools such as ahrefs and semrush, identify high-authority sites linking to your competitors and create superior resources to win those links.

Strategic partnerships

Collaborating with non-competing, complementary brands, such as your suppliers and brokers can also be a valuable source of high quality links. For example, a mortgage lender might link to a number of local mortgage advisory firms, or retail IT providers may link to a recommended payment terminal provider. Read more about local SEO considerations for banks, IFAs, insurance brokers, and other financial service providers.

We’ve already discussed the risks of non-compliant content on your website and third-party sites. It’s crucial for SEO, marketing and/or PR teams in financial institutions to check for compliance when building links.

• Disclaimers and disclosure – ensure you include non-advice disclaimers on all content used for link building
• Vet link partners – establish a system for assessing a linking site’s own E-E-A-T score, and avoid low-quality, untrustworthy, or downright spammy sources that could risk incurring a Google penalty or regulatory action.
• Avoid link schemes – stay away from black-hat tactics like buying links, participating in link farms, excessive reciprocal link exchanges, or disguising transactions to look like organic links.
• Author bio signal – ensure all expert content features detailed author bios including the individuals qualifications such as degrees, certifications and real-world experience, even on third-party sites where the person may be guest blogging.

A well-orchestrated link building and digital PR campaign should deliver measurable performance gains and deliver real outcomes for your business, beyond just a boost in vanity metrics such as domain authority (DA), domain rating (DR) or PageRank.

• Quality over quantity – The metrics that matter most are link source authority, link relevance, linking site traffic, referral traffic to your site, and the presence of E-E-A-T signals on the link source.
• Referral traffic value – Analyse which links drive qualified, high-intent traffic, not just SEO value, and acquire more links from that and similar sources.
• Branded search uplift – Digital PR should lead to an increase in direct search volume for your brand terms. This is best measured over longer time periods (6 months or longer).