Personal Loan Market Search Competition in Australia

“Personal Loan/s” keyword considered as one of the most competitive keywords in Google. From reputed banks and financial institutions to small businesses and licensed money lenders are trying to be visible on Google SERP in many different ways. Most of the small money lenders use black hat SEO techniques to beat the SEO competition.  Some of them are paying high $$ values per click in Google Ads.

In a project with one of our big financial client, we decide to conduct an analysis to see how competitive is the “Personal Loan” keyword in the Google SERP in Australia.

The search volume for this keyword and average CPC are shown below,

Organic Search                                                                  

Paid Search

It shows that in the organic search, there are nearly over 12K searches per month and over 31 Million search results. By typing the “Personal Loan” keyword in Google you will be able to see how many indexed ( Saved ) web pages in Google.

The number of search results can be different each time, due to the varying competitiveness of this keyword in Google.Paid Search competition is at 0.9 which is a high competition rate and average CPC will be around $20+.

Paid Search competition is at 0.9 which is a high competition rate and average CPC will be around $20+.

The Average Financial Industry CTR is around 2.3  ( Source:wordstream) . If we calculate the amount of the estimated budget spent on this “Personal Loan” keyword, it would be 12K X 2.3  = 276, 276 x $20 = $5520. The estimated budget requirement calculated here is just for one keyword.

How much do you think the industry big players are spending on this high competition keyword in Google? Below is a  rough estimation based on triparty tools we used to track the amount being spent.

According to the diagram, it’s clear that the ANZ bank spending heavily on Google AdWords, followed by the Commonwealth Bank.
It’s apparent that the leading banks in Australia spend a minimum of 50K per month in Google. As per other financial institutions, they need to be very specific on what they offer and also in the keywords selection criteria to stop the AdWords Waste.

Another concern is, you can spend as much you want if you have a budget, but the question is, how many visitors are converting to prospects and eventually toward sales (ROI) ?. Moreover, apart from the other services, creating a better value for your customer itself can independently lead to an increase in the conversion rate in Financial Industry.

Organic Search – Competitive Positioning Map of Main Financial Institution on Google Australia 

( Compare against the NAB) 

This map gives an indication of each institution stands on Google Organic search results. How many keywords ranked and estimated organic traffic. It shows that the NAB and Westpack.com.au are overlapping with each other.

Paid Search – Competitive Positioning Map of Main Financial Institution on Google Australia

( Compare against the NAB) 

This map gives an indication of each institution stands on Google Paid search results. There are financial institutions that we have not seen in the Organic Results map. Simple because they heavily rely on paid search.And also looking for short term goals. In a well executed digital marketing plan, there should be both short term and long term strategies to reach your targets.

What are the most expensive related keywords?

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The majority of highest paid keywords are related to “personal loans Online” and “Quick Approval.”
This indicates that the competition is really high on “Short term personal loans” that can give a quick approval. If you are a small financial institution that cannot compete with big players, think how you can add a value to these potential customers than paying big $$$ to Google.

Popular search keywords.

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Most of the financial institutions’ primary keywords set could be the above keywords. High Search volume = High Competition. But most of them are missing the big picture because most of the banks or agencies who work on their behalf do not analyze the customer buying journey. Ideally, your brand should be visible in each stage of the buying journey.
This initial analysis helps us to understand what strategy we should implement on our clients even in the highest competitive market.