Unpacking NerdWallet’s SEO: 10 Things I Discovered 

Their S-1 exhibits over 70% of site visitors is unpaid. For a enterprise that transforms knowledge-seeking into revenue, that’s an ideal technique.

However it’s additionally imperfect. As a public firm, NerdWallet should overtly admit when its search engine optimization fails. Worse nonetheless, dips in natural site visitors can set off falling inventory costs and potential job losses. Decrease natural can set off falling inventory costs, which might result in job losses. And when Google tweaks its algorithms, it sends ripples by way of NerdWallet’s total ecosystem—from workers to stockholders.

Are you able to title one other firm with extra pores and skin within the search engine optimization recreation?

NerdWallet’s journey provides a masterclass in search engine optimization technique and adaptation. Their search engine optimization success story is spectacular, to say the least, however they’re strolling a tightrope the place missteps aren’t an possibility. That is exactly why there’ll at all times be a lot to study from NerdWallet.

Listed here are some issues I discovered from spending an excessive amount of time in Numberland with NerdWallet.

In keeping with our information, NerdWallet misplaced an estimated 6M in natural site visitors in three months. That’s a 23.6% loss in a really brief interval.

This loss was brought on by “surprising headwinds”, as their CEO put it within the 2024 Q2 financial report. And it seems just like the loss in site visitors resulted in a big loss in income and inventory worth.

Right here’s what the site visitors seemed like earlier than the beginning of Q3 2024.

And that is how the inventory worth chart seemed after they instructed everybody how the site visitors seemed.

Curiously, it occurred across the identical time because the latest March core update. The replace was mentioned to “repair” what you see on Google’s search outcomes by 40% by actually punishing websites that attempted to benefit from Google.

Was it the replace that hit NerdWallet so badly?

Julien Brault speculates it might need been due to Google’s new wealthy outcome kind.

As Search Engine Round Table reports, Beginning June 2024, Google might present bank cards proper contained in the SERPs. This implies much less site visitors for everybody who needs to rank for “greatest bank cards”, together with NerdWallet.

However the site visitors hunch began earlier than that. By June 1st, it was truly all over.

I believe there have been a number of causes for this hunch in site visitors. Considered one of them was search demand seasonality for a few of their “fattest” key phrases. Right here’s an instance.

This explains why their yearly site visitors dips across the identical time. However discover how they bounce again stronger after every drop.

Different causes:

• They dropped a number of spots to direct rivals. That is par for the course in search engine optimization.
• They noticed a number of huge drops, outranked by a distinct breed of web sites. It seemed as if Google had changed the previous items with new ones.

I’ll go deeper into the reason for the loss in a bit.

If NerdWallet misplaced all that site visitors, another person will need to have gained it, proper? I used to be curious, who deserved that site visitors greater than NerdWallet?

I discovered three forms of winners:

• Competing websites with related sources of income.
• Topically-specialized websites.
• Their companions.

I checked key phrases the place NerdWallet misplaced a minimum of 5k visits every or dropped by tens of rating positions. I discovered three forms of winners.

Kind 1 winners. Competing websites with related enterprise fashions or a minimum of related sources of income (e.g., Bankrate, Forbes). Examples: “excessive yield financial savings account” and “greatest on-line financial institution”.

That is enterprise as common. NerdWallet loses plenty of site visitors from small rating drops as a result of a competitor acquired extra hyperlinks or tweaked their content material. The outlook remains to be good for NerdWallet — they’ll do the identical to compete again.

This modification may even profit the common Google consumer if the brand new top-ranking content material provides extra worth.

Kind 2 winners. Extra topically specialised websites. NerdWallet doesn’t simply write about bank cards. In addition they write about matters unrelated to their core enterprise mannequin. Examples: “rv rental” and “do you want a passport to go to puerto rico”.

These specialised websites can simply discover related calls to motion or readers. NerdWallet, in distinction, may wrestle to attach their choices.

I believe we’ll probably see extra of this shift in search outcomes. Google talks about giving an opportunity to “small, independent sites”, which can probably be narrowly specialised websites.

For NerdWallet, writing about matters like “rv rental” could be a poor wager for natural site visitors on this local weather. Readers may nonetheless discover and belief this content material by way of different channels, given the sturdy model in finance. Nonetheless, the outlook for rating restoration or future competitors in these areas seems poor.

Whether or not this advantages customers is debatable. Personally, I would want NerdWallet’s associate provides for journey over somebody’s area of interest journey tales about journeys I’d by no means take.

Kind 3 winners. Massive manufacturers providing the merchandise that NerdWallet writes about; largely monetary suppliers. And that features their partners like Chase or Wells Fargo.

I’ve seen many such circumstances. Along with kind 2, these key phrases fell in rankings the most.

I additionally checked out a few of the rating historical past charts and I believe I do know which “headwinds” rocked the boat. As an example, have a look at the chart under — good, regular drifting, after which it hits.

It might be argued that it’s honest for, say, Chase to outrank NerdWallet for branded queries. However what if the outranking content material is a comparability of the financial institution’s bank card and the content material that loses is a market-wide comparability of bank cards? Which is healthier for the buyer?

So, since NerdWallet can’t actually afford to be on this scenario for too lengthy, what measures did they take to get the site visitors again up?

I checked the highest 20 pages that misplaced over 50k in site visitors between the top of February and June. Each single one had been up to date, with most present process main revisions or full overhauls.

In 8 out of 20 circumstances, it labored.

Past typical ways like tweaking titles and increasing matter protection, they employed two notable methods that probably helped regain some misplaced site visitors.

The primary key tactic was strengthening their E-E-A-T signals. Particularly, they added explanations about their content material creation course of and why readers ought to belief their experience.

Within the graph under, you possibly can see the second of the massive replace (darkish inexperienced circle) and the carry in site visitors that got here after.

Second tactic. When tweaking content material failed, they relocated pages to a brand new listing. This transfer seems to provide the content material a “recent begin” whereas retaining the hyperlink fairness from its unique location.

I questioned: if NerdWallet is shedding rankings to the services they overview, does this imply they’re truly shedding site visitors to their very own companions?

I checked a pattern of 9 companions providing bank cards. There are over 144K key phrases the place NerdWallet ranks within the prime 10, and a minimum of a kind of companions ranks as nicely, usually outranking the fintech firm.

It seems like a wise method to diversify site visitors sources for the companions.

From NerdWallet’s perspective, if deliberate, it might be an intriguing partnership proposition: “Accomplice with us as a result of we are able to outrank you, however you gained’t lose if we do.”

Nonetheless, this places vital strain on NerdWallet, particularly since a few of these key phrases are branded. They have to preserve top-tier search engine optimization efficiency whereas hoping Google doesn’t resolve they’re “too good at search engine optimization”.

There’s additionally the danger that Google may shorten the trail from search to product, favoring product creators over reviewers. NerdWallet has already misplaced some site visitors to their companions this manner. In case you have a look at the shift within the share of voice, it’s clear that NerdWallet misplaced a few of it to the banks. Prior to now, it was the opposite manner round.

You may assume that’s dangerous, nevertheless it’s truly fairly regular. It’s the Pareto precept in motion.

NerdWallet’s rivals present related or much more excessive site visitors distributions. Even at Ahrefs, we observe the identical sample.

Amongst NerdWallet’s prime 1.2% of traffic-driving content material, a stunning frontrunner emerges: a weblog publish about getting cash outperforms all different pages, together with their monetary product comparisons.

It generates extra site visitors than the nifty value of dwelling calculator with all of its static pages listed.

NerdWallet virtually doesn’t want to the touch that weblog publish. They’ve accomplished one content material overhaul and two main adjustments since 2021.

It simply sits there and retains the door open for searchers. That’s an epic win and and perfect case of the worth of search engine optimization – free, passive, constant site visitors. May this be the GOAT weblog publish?

There are extra weblog posts on that checklist; about 65% of all pages. The remainder of the site visitors comes from on-line instruments such because the auto mortgage calculator and product critiques, like the most effective bank cards.

And nearly 1 / 4 of them have been created this yr. This occurs even to the professionals.

It might sound counterintuitive, however these pages will at all times be the very last thing they need to fear about. Specializing in enhancing their greatest site visitors mills — if there’s nonetheless room for progress — will probably yield higher total outcomes. Energy regulation distribution works in search engine optimization, too.

Right here’s an fascinating thought for content material localization — purchase the content material that already works nicely.

In 2020, NerdWallet acquired Know Your Cash. Together with the corporate, they acquired a longtime area on the UK market with all of its backlinks, traffic-generating content material, and final however not least, a counterpart of their bank card comparability device.

And it labored. On the chart you possibly can see the second the place area grew to become nerdwallet.com/uk and an increase in site visitors that adopted. The site visitors is now 40X in PPC cash.

Three years after the acquisition they pruned half the pages, and site visitors went up. Whereas counterintuitive, deleting poorly performing pages or “sacrificing” them to provide one other web page a hyperlink fairness increase usually works. 

Yearly, 1.6k to 3k pages fall from the highest 100.

I requested AI to jot down just a little script that checks if the ultimate URL was completely different from the unique to catch all forms of redirects. I discovered that from the 2343 pages they misplaced between 10 Jun and 13 July 2023, round 75% have been redirects — one other case of content pruning.

With any such pruning (redirects), typically you possibly can see outcomes shortly after. For instance, in 2023, the outcomes got here instantly (1). The following time that they had the identical variety of pages as earlier than the reduce, their site visitors was up by 4 million (2).

In case you’re doing search engine optimization for a web site like NerdWallet, it’s essential to know your redirects in and out. That’s how they cut up 14k weblog posts with 7M site visitors into completely different matter clusters. One of many AIs drew me this implausible visualization of how they cut up it. Redirects at NerdWallet deserves its personal article.

In case you’re not aware of programmatic SEO, it’s a technique of routinely producing giant volumes of content material at scale.

Diminishing returns is a standard phenomenon in content material advertising and marketing. It’s when the incremental advantages of making and publishing new content material lower over time regardless of the identical or elevated effort and sources being invested.

Right here’s how diminishing returns in programmatic search engine optimization look on a chart. Web page rely (blue line) goes dramatically up with no impact on the site visitors (orange line).

Programmatic search engine optimization is a great tactic but additionally flawed by design. It treats key phrases with the identical construction in the identical manner. However in actuality, every key phrase can have a distinct issue. And with that sometimes comes somebody’s effort in content material and hyperlinks that you just’d have to beat.

We noticed this with one in all our makes an attempt at templated content material. It labored for low-difficulty key phrases (see chart under), however for different key phrases, we would have liked to develop distinctive content material.

Key phrases you’d be attempting to focus on this manner might even have completely different intent. As an example, “phoenix vs the big apple” has the price of dwelling as the first intent, whereas a basic metropolis comparability is final. NerdWallet ranks #1.

Conversely, “portland vs austin” is dominated by metropolis comparability pages, and the price of dwelling is final. NerdWallet ranks #7 with the identical programmatic tactic that gave it the highest spot earlier than.

Over 100 authors hyperlink to NerdWallet from a minimum of 30 completely different domains every. The highest contributor hyperlinks to NerdWallet from a formidable 303 distinctive domains.

Shocked? I was.

When you’ve got these sorts of numbers in your web site, it most likely implies that somebody is working very onerous at scraping your content material.

However should you’re utilizing a PR company to syndicate your content material — like NerdWallet — you possibly can examine which content material goes the place and whether or not the canonical tag is in place.

Last ideas

Opponents, companions making bolder strikes, and Google which typically occurs to assist them… though the interval examined on this article might not appear too brilliant for the corporate, NerdWallet earned over $150 million in Q2 2024. In your entire 2023, they made $599.4 million. All with the assistance of search engine optimization.

Obtained questions or feedback? Ping me on LinkedIn.