Dec 11 2007
Credit Cards Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) in Australia
Search Engine Rankings and Online Marketing Success
The major search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN) regularly index websites and rank these according to their relevance and popularity to a specific topic. Being at the top of the first results page ensures maximum visibility and can attract a large number of visitors.
Search engine rankings are therefore a good measure to determine the online marketing success of a website. Traffic volume, website conversion rate and total revenue generated from search and associated ROI are other (important metrics for online success).
Credit Card Industry – Search Engine Rankings Analysis
First Rate has investigated the Ranking Based Reach ™ (RBR™) in Chart 1, of the main competitors in the Australian credit card industry against the top 20 industry keywords.
Chart 1: Ranking Based Reach™ (RBR™) of the major competitors in the Credit Card industry in Australia
Chart 1 demonstrates a clear division among the banks in the credit card market. Major competitors such as HSBC, Commonwealth bank, St George, Virgin, Westpac and ANZ manage to achieve an RBR ™ close to 25% corresponding to a potential market share superior or equal at 25% of the natural search traffic for the top 20 industry keywords. These results demonstrate that some efforts have been made to capture online market share via natural search.
Many others are still struggling to reach 10% of shares, while American Express, Diners Club and NAB do not even reach 5%. As a result these players have limited chances to attract qualified traffic from search engines and are therefore missing out on online market shares.
A comparison of Google PageRank of credit card page of the same competitor’s websites (Chart 2) confirms the weaknesses of the major players to take advantage of online opportunities:
Chart 2: Google Page Rank of the Credit Card page of the major competitors in the credit card industry
NAB, American Express have a PageRank of 5 for their credit card page. This score is amongst the highest in the industry, but unfortunately this PageRank is not being leveraged to increase the rankings in the search engine results. Citibank does not even have a PageRank score for the credit card page! Citibank is therefore totally left behind in the online market from a PageRank perspective.
On the other hand, HSBC and St George have one of the highest Ranking Based Reach indicator score in the industry, without having a high PageRank, which prevents them to from capturing a larger share of the online market.
Conclusion
The online market for credit cards is growing at a high rate every year. The opportunities are real, but they are not fully embraced. At the moment, the major industry players have not demonstrated a strong ability to capture market share online using search engine optimisation.
Major players should incorporate search engine optimisation as part of their online marketing strategy to sustain their online competitive advantage.
Methodology
Ranking Based Reach ™ (RBR™) indicator
First Rate has created the Ranking Based Reach ™ (RBR™) indicator to evaluate the potential market share of search engine traffic captured by a website based on its particular search engine ranking for a specific keyword search. The Ranking Based Reach ™ (RBR™) indicator is determined using the Average page Listing (APL) indicator, which is the average position in search engine results pages for a specific keyword search, multiplied by a Click/Search ratio.
The Click/Search ratio represents the percentage of expected clicks from search engine traffic based on the website search engine ranking. The Click/Search ratio has been determined using the figures from the search engine user behaviour research conducted by Jupiter Research and IProspect in April 2006.
The RBR ™ Indicator is a percentage. A website with RBR ™ of 20% could expect capturing 20% of the search engine traffic for the top 20 keyword of the industry.
Average Google PageRank
Google PageRank is a link analysis algorithm, which measures the link popularity of a website. The Google PageRank algorithm is one of the major factors used by Google to determine the search engine rankings of a website. As a result, PageRank is a good indicator to evaluate the potential of a website to achieve high search engine rankings.
Google PageRank ranges from 0 to 10. Zero means that the website has a very low popularity and therefore a low potential to rank high in search engines, whereas a high PageRank of 7-10 can give a website a huge competitive advantage.
First Rate is a leading online marketing agency and are specialists in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Email Marketing and Banner Advertising. Please contact us for a search engine optimisation quote.
