For several years, we have specialised in providing SEO for short term lenders, helping them compete on Google for competitive terms, in a very tough industry. Following our success with other lenders in the industry such as Cashfloat, we were excited about a new challenge when approached with a lender from a similar sector.
MYJAR is a short-term and long-term lending company who are committed to treating their customers fairly at all times. The loans industry is highly competitive, so approaching SEO in a very methodical and technical way is important to be successful. It is also of value to stand out from the crowd in a sea of online lenders.
Our aim for MYJAR was to create a well-ranking and good-looking website which was user friendly. Like with any website offering a product, it is of great importance that the target audience spends as much time on the site and engages with it.
Meta Data – If you want a website to perform well on Google and other search engines, meta data is fundamental to achieving this. For MYJAR, we analysed the current meta-data they had and updated it to make it more SEO friendly according to the current Google algorithm.
Meta Data includes meta-descriptions and meta-titles which feature target keywords, as well as alt-text being present on all images which are on the website. Well optimised and carefully constructed meta data can be the difference between ranking on the first few pages of Google or ranking on the last few or somewhere in the middle. The reason for this is because the data with users will see on a Google search and is what Google will prioritise in its algorithm.
Website Clean Up – For MYJAR, it was necessary to conduct a full clean-up of the site. This involves seeking out error codes and broken links in order to fix them. Having these on a site can seriously slow down how quickly it loads and broken links can affect the user experience if a person cannot find where they want to go on the site. Clearly, Google favours websites which are clean and have a good user experience in place. Google’s algorithm helps the user out but suggesting websites which are going to be the most helpful and easy to use for them.
Links – Having strong backlinks through PR is an essential part of the SEO process. Having such links helps to build up authority and trust for a website. In the case of MYJAR, we reached out to relevant businesses and companies and to our own partners to see what links could be provided. We used our SEO tools to see what links competitors in the industry who ranked well had, and approached the relevant companies who provided these to enquire about MYJAR. Google favours websites which have strong backlinks and rewards them by bumping them up in terms of ranking. This is because they appear to be trustworthy if other websites are providing a link to them.