seo
The Google Battle for Lending and SMB Finance Keywords
September 14, 2017The online lending battle is at least in part being fought online. Below is a chart of organic page 1 rankings in Google for some of the industry’s biggest players, banks, and the SBA. (Hat tip to Fundera and NerdWallet):
Keywords | OnDeck | Kabbage | Fundera | Lending Club | NerdWallet | National Funding | Traditional Banks | SBA.gov |
business loan | 1 | 9 | 3 | 5 | 4,7 | 6 | ||
merchant cash advance | 2 | 3 | 4 | 8 | ||||
working capital | 9 | 4 | ||||||
commercial loan | 3 | 2,7 | ||||||
small business loans | 2 | 3 | 5 | 7 | 1 | |||
business line of credit | 3 | 2 | 11 | 1,4 | 6,7,8,9,10 | 5 | ||
fast business loan | 1 | 4 | 2 | 5,6 | ||||
business loan with bad credit | 7 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
The Top 10 Google Search Results for Merchant Cash Advance in February 2012 compared to now:
February 2012 | September 2017 |
MerchantCashinAdvance.com | Wikipedia |
Yellowstone Capital | OnDeck |
Entrust Cash Advance | Fundera |
Merchants Capital Access | NerdWallet |
Merchant Resources International | Businessloans.com |
American Finance Solutions | Bond Street |
Nations Advance | Capify |
Bankcard Funding | National Funding |
Rapid Capital Funding | CNN |
Paramount Merchant Funding | CAN Capital |
The top result in 2012 is a great example of how much easier it was to game Google’s system back then. After achieving rank #1 for MCA and 300 other related keywords, MerchantCashInAdvance.com, which was just a lead generation site, sold for $75,000 in December 2011. The site was later clobbered by Google Penguin for black hat SEO and banished from visibility.
A major shift has obviously taken place over the last 5 and a half years. Is the search results game rigged to advance Google’s own interests? Three years ago I put forth my theory on that.
One thing that’s different between then and now is that Google now has 4 paid links above the organic search results as opposed to 3 and the paid links blend in more with the organic results. With the organic results pushed further down the page, they’re not as visible as they were five years ago.
Read my previous analyses on the industry’s search war over the years:
December 2015 Google Serves Low Blow to Merchant Cash Advance Seekers
March 2015 Google Culls Online Lenders – Pay or Else?
October 2014 Merchant Cash Advance SEO War Still Raging
August 2014 Six Signs Alternative Lending is Rigged: Do Lending Club and OnDeck have a helping hand?
October 2013 Google Penguin 2.1 takes swing at the MCA industry
August 2013 Your merchant cash advance press release may be hurting you
December 2012 Is Google your only web strategy?
July 2012 The other 93% [of leads]
April 2012 The SEO war continues
February 2012 The SEO War for Merchant Cash Advance: The first story on this topic
Revenue Advance Searches Up, Small Business Loan Searches Down
September 8, 2015Back in early 2013, I explored the popularity of Google search phrases related to the industry. At the time, keyword phrases such as merchant cash advance were on a downswing after reaching their peak back in September 2008. Oddly, the keyword hasn’t been able to match the popularity it had seven years ago, but it is on the way back up.
Other keywords are just about dead, but perhaps most interesting of all is that small business loans has been declining consistently for about ten years straight, though it appears to have tapered off a bit.
Take a look:
three additional terms: merchant loans, ach loan, merchant financing
Hanna Kassis of Oarex Capital Markets noticed that the term Revenue Advance is at an all-time high. You can read his thoughts about that here:
Search Engine Lead Generation Is Probably Rigged
March 21, 2015Hoping to do some nifty SEO to boost your site to the top of search results for valuable keywords? Don’t bother. In August, 2014, I presented six signs that alternative lending is rigged, at least as far as search was concerned.
Two days ago, the Wall Street Journal ran a story that exposed a confidential FTC report on Google. The article opens with, “Officials at the Federal Trade Commission concluded in 2012 that Google Inc. used anticompetitive tactics and abused its monopoly power in ways that harmed Internet users and rivals, a far harsher analysis of Google’s business than was previously known.”
The conclusion? Google indeed skewed search results to favor its own services.
The 160 page report that the WSJ draws its analysis from was not supposed to be made public. Only a handful of pages are presented on the WSJ’s website in their entirety. Below are two of them:
Though I cannot find the specific comment anymore on LinkedIn, one of the responses I received on my August post regarding Google’s search results came from a former Google employee. They informed me that my suspicion was preposterous and that Google would never ever manipulate results.
While I made no effort to assert my evidence as anything more than circumstantial, the outright dominance of Google-owned lending companies for high value lending keywords was impossible to ignore. The WSJ story adds fuel to this fire.
Admittedly, the WSJ story doesn’t mention lending, nor do I think lending keywords were a subject of the FTC report (There are 156 pages the WSJ didn’t share). What I think is compelling here is a conclusion that Google did indeed manipulate results and penalized competitors to favor its own financial goals.
Despite the findings, the FTC ultimately did not bring any action against Google.
Is the game rigged? I feel a little bit better about saying, yes. Don’t put all your eggs in the SEO basket.
Did Google Penguin Hurt Your MCA Website?
October 22, 2014Google struck again late on Friday the 17th with a refresh of the Penguin Algorithm. As posted on Search Engine Roundtable, the algorithm is still rolling out and will continue to do so over the next few weeks.
Those familiar with Penguin know that it targets backlinks, specifically: paid links, spam links, bad links, the whole gamut. Hit the trigger and your site can virtually disappear from search.
I monitor several keywords in our niche and I haven’t noticed much of a change between what I see now and what I saw prior to the 17th. Truthfully, some of the companies I see popping up now in the first 2 pages are exactly the type of companies I’d expect to see on a list offline. That’s a good indicator that something is going right.
The exact search results are different for everyone but amongst the top 20 results for the search term merchant cash advance, I get:
- OnDeck
- Kabbage
- AmeriMerchant
- Business Financial Services
- Capital for Merchants
- CAN Capital
- Merchant Cash and Capital
- Retail Capital
Years ago through spam manipulation, the first few results were dominated by random lead generation sites like fastcashfunding4unow.com. I see very few sites like that these days ranking well.
If you were wondering where your organic site traffic went in the last week, there’s a good chance you got Penguined. Good luck getting out of that!