The Secret to Top Ranking Content

Today, we’ll be looking at Nerdwallet—the site that helps you “make all the right money moves”.

It’s incredibly successful at organic search so we’re going to take a closer look at how they get it right.

Nerdwallet launched their UK site in November 2020 and traffic growth has been explosive 💥

Although they’ve been able to expedite growth using their existing resources and domain rating, the tactic they’ve used have also been smart.

To give you an insight into their tactics, let’s look at one of the site’s most successful hubs: mortgages.

The mortgage hub page generates $375,600 worth of traffic yearly—I’m sure with their partners it makes considerably more than this.

Interestingly, it hasn’t all been plain sailing.

Traffic was inconsistent on this page until Nerdwallet worked out what readers wanted, and since then growth has been fast 🚀

Here are the top ten traffic generating terms on the page:

These are all highly competitive terms with large buyer intent. So, how are they capturing the traffic? Let’s take a closer look at four key elements.

To rank for competitive terms, useful content isn’t enough. You need to give users something to do.

The users that land on this page are either:

• In the process of looking for a mortgage.
• Researching mortgages for the future.

If you can help them arrive at answers (especially on cost and eligibility) you will keep them hooked.

But the first goal is to convince them your tool is worth investing time in—Nerdwallet does this well.

Nerdwallet gives you compelling reasons to use the tool:

• Breadth – They claim the search is for the whole market.
• Speed – The search is only 8 questions.
• Curiosity – See whether you can beat your current deal.

It sounds simple but putting the logos of big UK mortgage lenders provides a sense of comfort for the reader—they feel like they are in the right place.

The main mortgage page is like a train station. It guides you to the page that answers your specific query.

See below how each small section has a link to a comparison page. Keeping the reader on the site and providing them with more information.

This page is updated regularly to add new information and prove relevance.

Interest rates are set to increase in the UK to combat inflation, so I expect the implications of this to be added.

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There really is no secret to winning in competitive fields, but remember these five things:

✅   Update content regularly.

✅   Keep iterating – Nerdwallet didn’t win at first but they kept going.

✅   Use interactive tools to engage readers

✅   Link to other relevant pages where possible.

✅   Add social proof (Nerdwallet use logos).

Lets’ go and win some rankings today 👊