Yorkshire Building Society
Content loved by people and search engines
Creating a content hub to provide plain, straight-talking guidance for the over 55s to help them make informed decisions about their financial future.
- Digital
- Content
The over-55s certainly aren’t short of advice on pensions. Retirement planning is a noisy, crowded and often confusing space. Yorkshire Building Society could see an opportunity to be a trusted voice offering expert, impartial information.
Digging a little deeper we found that while many over 55’s are staying fitter, working longer, and want the most out of life now, they are also are burying their heads in the sand about the future. Their reluctance to invest time in arranging their finances is little surprise when the majority of financial guidance available is complex, dry and full of jargon.
For YBS to be seen as the leaders in impartial financial guidance and cement their brand proposition ‘Real help for real life’, we needed to give our audience the confidence to take action by offering simple, straightforward advice.
Curating a content hub brimming with jargon-free financial advice
Our solution was a content hub called Our Money Movement. A well-structured, strategically chosen, straight-talking inspirational and educational content hub featuring the key things you need to think about if you’re 55 or over.
Our in-house specialists input into every step of the journey; offering strategic insight, design and build of the website, third party integration, an SEO strategy, content research, copy and content writing and asset design.
Publishing a large volume of content would not only help Yorkshire Building Society rank for a wider set of informational search terms but also equip staff with a tool to fill knowledge gaps.
Content driven by SEO insights
Through extensive keyword research, four key topics emerged that we used as pillars for our content:
- Planning your retirement
- Getting the most from your pension and investments
- Using your home to fund retirement
- Planning longer-term care
With the main topics established, our content and SEO team began generating ideas for cluster pages and articles. These were linked from pillar pages using the key questions we knew people were searching for from our keyword research. Competitor research also provided topics for further pages and guided the length they needed to be.
By creating killer SEO-rich content, we helped YBS to demystify tricky topics like equity release, lifetime mortgages, wills, inheritance tax and how to fund long-term care.
To ensure consistency and a joined-up brand journey, it was important to maintain both the YBS’s friendly, down-to-earth brand voice with copy that was easy to read, authoritative and optimised for web.
Retiring retirement clichés
At the same time, our design and web teams were working on the look and feel for a new area of YBS website to house the content. With a site structure informed by our SEO analysis, users could quickly find the information they are looking for.
The Money Movement was given a fresh look and feel in line with the Yorkshire Building Society brand, including imagery that features ‘real’ people who look like our much more youthful and contemporary minded 55+ target audience, rather than stereotypical retirement images of grey-haired elderly looking people.
The results
A comprehensive content hub of accessible, easy to navigate, reassuringly helpful information on all the big retirement topics, empowering customers to make the right decisions.
In 6 months, the hub accumulated nearly 1,000 ranking keywords and 100 backlinks. 10 of the 24 pages rank on the first page for their focus keyword.
Simple, jargon-free info, not overwhelming
Overall response to the hub from customer research
Previously underperforming topics are now ranking impressively. For example, the site once ranked 68th for ‘can I afford to retire early?’ and is now ranking first – positioning YBS as the go-to brand for ‘Real help for real life’.
Looking to stand out in a crowded financial market? We deliver impactful, humanised messaging, tailored to both B2B and B2C that will set you apart in the competitive financial landscape. With us speed, agility and results are non negotiable. We give you more bang for your marketing buck, bridging the gap between a specialist and above the line agency.