How PensionBee dominates SEO
Search engines are a natural starting point for customers to learn about pensions, as with any financial product.
In the UK, 3.1m pension–related searches are made using Google every month and PensionBee is now the most visible provider, getting 46k clicks from this search demand, which is likely going to increase.
This blog shows how they have achieved this in just two years, outranking more established providers such as Standard Life, Aviva and Royal London.
The truth is PensionBee is just getting started, only employing their first SEO manager in January 2020. With a target to double their £750m AUA (assets under administration) to £1.5bn by the end of the year, we are likely to see their visibility improve further.
It’s not just about quantity, it’s about quality
PensionBee was founded in 2014, but a concerted effort to increase search traffic to the site started in 2018.
At first, 62k visits a month from organic (free) search may not seem impressive, but it is the type of queries driving traffic which is at the root of their success.
Branded traffic, e.g. queries that contain “pensionbee” only make up 25.9% of total search traffic, with the rest being generic.
Generic traffic = SEO success
Branded traffic is great. People searching for your brand is also good for SEO. However, the ultimate goal is appearing on page 1 of Google results for generic searches, before someone has formed a brand preference.
For a business, appearing prominently when a potential customer uses Google to educate themselves through Awareness and Consideration means reaching them when they are most open to influence.
This is how SEO creates brand awareness, trust and preference; content at a time that suits the target customer. Instead of bloated information packs sent in the post, put in a drawer and forgotten, PensionBee is focusing on visibility when people reach for the device that’s always in their pocket.
Search competition
Tracking 1,700 pension-related queries in Google, PensionBee is the most visible provider for generic searches.
Because pensions impact users’ long-term financial health, Google favours impartial sites such as Money Advice Service.
Outside of these, PensionBee is the most visible direct provider. It outranks Scottish Widows, Aviva, Hargreaves Lansdown, Standard Life and Royal London.
Search has been key for PensionBee
Filtering out branded traffic, PensionBee get around 46k clicks a month.
Being a direct-to-consumer brand, there is a positive correlation between their generic traffic and assets under administration (AUA).
While they have experimented with paid search and display, the cornerstone of their acquisition has been organic search.
How have PensionBee done this?
It may not have a rich heritage, unlike more established pension providers, but being untethered to one has allowed the team to create a public site using best-practice SEO from the ground up.
The five most important areas of focus have been:
• Content strategy
• Tools
• Regular and iterative releases
• HTML tags
• Link building and social media
Their content strategy is informed by demand
PensionBee’s public-site content strategy is entirely based on what people are looking for online, e.g. keyword research.
Their homepage is only responsible for 30% of their search traffic. Other content serves as an introduction to the brand.
To PensionBee, every search term is a lead.
Example – Pension encashment
A great example of how this works in practice can be seen with pension encashment.
Tracking the top 100 ‘encashment’ related search terms, PensionBee is on page 1 for 70 of them.
PensionBee is on page 1 for 9 of the top 10 most popular terms people use.
When people land on their encashment page, they learn how it works through copy as well as video.
They are informed of tax implications when cashing in a pension and other things to look out for, which are easily managed with PensionBee.
They then present their pension product, calculator and app as a way to take control of pension savings.
PensionBee makes sure to link to other pages on the site, using anchor text (link text) that corresponds with the most popular search term for that content (e.g. ‘State pension’ for a page about the State Pension). This is classic SEO.
A calculator that people love
Their projection calculator is a big driver of site traffic, appearing prominently for a number of high-volume search queries such as “pension calculator”, “retirement calculator” and ”private pension calculator”.
While the calculator itself does not directly sell PensionBee’s products, the ‘halo effect’ of people using it as an introduction to the brand is real.
Jasper Martens, Chief Marketing Officer at PensionBee is quoted as saying: “A position change from 3 to 1 on our top keyword meant a 15% increase in sales.”
This keyword, or more precisely search query, is “pension calculator”, which PensionBee only ranks behind Gov.UK and the Money Advice Service for in Google results.
Circling back to the infographic stating the importance of generic traffic, “pension calculator” is a high-volume term people tend to use in the Awareness stage. As such, this is known as a ‘head’ or ‘money’ term and is often how most people measure SEO success. If you’re on page 1 for one of these, chances are, your overall SEO is pretty good.
Please Sir, can we have some… releases?
The graphs below indicates how significantly a site’s content changes, with the variation going from low (grey) to high (blue) – effectively a change log.
This is PensionBee’s (as of June 2020):
This is Standard Life’s:
Not only are they creating the content people want, they are doing so at a much higher velocity than the competition.
Being free from ancient back-end systems, cluttered release schedules and other dependencies, they are able to quickly release content that resonates with their target audience of professionals “in the middle of their careers”.
Steady and consistent site growth
Over the last year, PensionBee have slowly added to their site, starting 2019 with 295 pages and ending the year with 354.
This represents an average of five new pages a month, but consistency in releasing content people actually want is how they are winning at SEO.
This is a true Agile approach to content. Release, iterate and discard what doesn’t work. Although 354 pages is nowhere near as much as some of their competitors, every page serves a defined purpose.
HTML tags – Structured markup
Schema.org or structured data is a new set of tags which Googles use to get a richer understanding of content on-page.
While this new language is still relatively immature in finance, PensionBee are using the basic tags.
This includes, Organisation, Breadcrumb and Article. A tag they surprisingly don’t use is VideoObject – though few finance companies have mastered this.
HTML tags – Facebook Open Graph
Facebook Open Graph tags help make your pages more shareable.
This tag is also used by Aviva and Hargreaves Lansdown.
HTML tags – Twitter Cards
In a similar vein, PensionBee use Twitter cards to make their pages more shareable.
Implementing these tags is simple and there is no real benefit for not using them, yet so many pension providers do not.
What about links?
Backlinks is one of the oldest ranking-signals Google uses. More links mean a more trusted site, though the quality of the linking sites matters as well.
PensionBee have had to build links actively, as you would expect for a new site competing against sites that have been around for more than 20 years.
Who’s linking?
PensionBee has acquired links from sites such as FT.com and This Is Money, but they have invested in blogger outreach.
The link targets tend to be key landing pages within their ‘Knowledge’ section – their blog, the ‘Pensions Explained’ folder or their calculators.
Trustpilot Queens?
PensionBee has the highest rating on Trustpilot of any of their peers.
It is front and centre on their site’s homepage, giving them credibility and positively impacting conversions.
This also improves their SEO. Google has called out the use of third-party reviews as a trust-related ranking signal known as ‘Social Proofing’.
They do not shy away from bad reviews
An impressive 81% of PensionBee’s ratings are 5 Star.
However, they reply to negative reviews.
They also use Trustpilot to nurture wavering customers back into their conversion funnel.
How do they compare to others?
PensionBee has the best Trustpilot rating in their peer group, with significantly more reviews than most.
| Site | Trustpilot Rating | Claimed | Reviews | Asking for reviews |
| PensionBee | 4.5 | Yes | 1,710 | Yes |
| Royal London | 4.1 | Yes | 161 | Yes |
| Hargreaves Lansdown | 2.9 | Yes | 573 | Yes |
| Prudential | 2.0 | Yes | 32 | No |
| Standard Life | 1.8 | No | 49 | N/A |
| Aviva | 1.6 | Yes | 1,216 | No |
| Aegon | 1.6 | No | 124 | N/A |
| Scottish Widows | 1.6 | No | 94 | N/A |
Hargreaves, PensionBee and Royal London all encourage customers to review them on Trustpilot and are, accordingly, the best rated.
And they are just getting started…
PensionBee is the most visible pension provider online, but is only getting started, appointing it first SEO manager in January 2020.
Getting 46k clicks from generic searches is good, but there is a realistic chance of increasing it to more than 100k.
SEMRush estimates that they get around 368k visits a month when including direct traffic, with nearly 80% of visitors using mobile devices. The high volume of direct traffic is a testament to their marketing as a whole, but also proof that their SEO strategy has been successful. Clicks lead to customers.
In terms of a direct-to-consumer proposition, it’s easy to see PensionBee’s appeal. With transparency, convenience and great reviews, they instil confidence in ways other pension providers simply do not.