Navigating their finances is something that many people find challenging, so there’s plenty of interest in sound financial advice, particularly in today’s uncertain economic climate. Starting a blog on any topic can be challenging, ,but blogging in the financial world is a bit trickier than it is in many other industries. There’s a plethora of niches, each with hundreds to thousands of potential blog post topics related to the central theme, and accuracy and credibility are paramount for financial bloggers. There are also regulations regarding providing “financial advice” to consumers and what can and cannot be said or what disclaimers need to be present to evade potential liability.
Google has also taken steps to elevate financial content that meets quality standards with its E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) search rater guidelines, which are designed to ensure that Google’s search ranking systems provide relevant and helpful information. In other words, if you don’t have or showcase the E-E-A-T factors, it will be much more difficult to generate organic search traffic from Google’s SERPs (search engine results pages).
With these types of concerns weighing on your mind, growing your finance blog might not appear at the top of your priority list. These considerations are certainly important and should never be ignored, but it doesn’t mean you should neglect building an audience for your blog. To be successful, you must balance meeting regulatory requirements, ensuring that your content meets the E-E-A-T criteria, and taking steps to build traffic to your blog. To help you identify the best, most effective strategies you can implement to grow your finance blog, we reached out to a panel of finance bloggers and blogging pros and asked them to answer this question:
“What’s your number 1 tip for growing a finance blog?”
Meet Our Panel of Finance Bloggers & Blogging Experts:
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Keep reading to learn what our panel had to say about the top tactics you can use to start growing your finance blog today.
Adrian Lawrence
Adrian Lawrence is the CFO of FD Capital Recruitment. He has 25 years of experience in the UK, including roles as Chief Financial Officer, MD, FD, and CEO.
“If you’re looking to grow a finance blog, my number one tip would be to focus on creating content that is both informative and engaging. Financial topics can often be complex and dry, so it’s important to find ways to make your content more accessible and interesting for your readers. This could involve using relatable examples, infographics, or other visual aids to break down concepts, or writing in a more conversational style. Ultimately, you want to produce content that will help your readers better understand personal finance and empower them to make smart financial decisions. If you can do this effectively, your blog will soon become a go-to resource for all things money-related.”
Shawn Plummer
Shawn is the Founder and CEO of the financial and insurance agency blog, The Annuity Expert. As a licensed financial professional, Shawn has sold annuities and insurance for over a decade, trained Fortune 500 advisors, and built a platform to help retirees protect their futures.
“Find creative ways to cash in on trending topics. While finance blogs can really shine with evergreen content about investing, budgeting, and more, the content that tends to go viral creatively connects finance to major trends. Since finance and money affect nearly everything in life, it’s easy to connect the dots, like posting a Kim Kardashian wealth timeline or how to budget to save for the new iPhone 14.
Use trend-monitoring software like Hootsuite or Sprout Social to follow hashtags and user searches. Find the right keywords to draw in new users and grow organic traffic quickly!”
Jonathan Merry
Jonathan Merry is the co-founder of Crypto Monday, a small business that provides financial and crypto educational resources online.
“Write high-quality guest posts on other finance blogs within your niche. Guest posting is an effective strategy to widen your reach. Find websites that target similar audiences as you do. This turns what is otherwise competition into an opportunity to grow your website traffic and grow your following.
Guest posting is also one way to establish yourself as an authority. So, be sure to put great effort into producing excellent guest posts because these will make the first impression on your new readers.”
Colin Palfrey
Colin is the CMO of Crediful, a personal finance management company.
“My number #1 tip for growing a finance blog is never to sacrifice accuracy for the sake of SEO. There are lots of financial topics that are based on fearful queries and would likely give us lots of new visitors, but if you want to be an authority in the finance niche you must prioritize accuracy. Good research, unbiased reviews, and continuous updating of information will set your finance blog apart from the irresponsible content farms cashing in on people’s financial woes.”
Mark Stewart
Mark Stewart is the in-house Certified Public Accountant for Step By Step Business and an accomplished author and financial media specialist.
“The key to growing a finance blog is to write about what’s relevant to your readers. You need to understand what information they’ll be looking for at any given time based on what’s happening in the finance world. You need to follow what kinds of topics are trending and cover those topics in a way that is relevant to your readers.”
Mark Chen
Mark Chen is the founder/CEO of BillSmart, a negotiation service. He has been able to grow his blog to over 200K unique visitors over 2 years by focusing on SEO fundamentals. In his free time, he enjoys photography and half marathons.
“My number one tip for growing your finance blog is to master keyword research to figure out what articles to write. With tools like Ahrefs, you can see what people search for as well as estimates of volume and how difficult it is to rank for those keywords.
It’s always important to know what people search for when you’re writing an article on a topic. When you’re starting out, you should go after lower competition keywords so you can start getting some traffic.
Over time, there’s no limit to how big your blog can grow.”
Karl Tippins
Karl Tippins is the Editor in Chief at Interest Rate. He is a finance writer with experience in writing about various aspects of the finance industry, from individual financial matters and planning to private equity and corporate finance.
“Collaborate with other relevant sources. If you want a higher retention rate, open a new source of information to make your content more credible, reach a larger audience, gain recognition, and share new ideas by collaborating with other credible sources that are experts in financial matters. Having them as relevant sources will make your blog more informative and credible, not to mention that their audience will likely read your content because of this collaboration.”
Darlene Gregory
Darlene Gregory is a certified financial advisor at Loan Advisor. They are among the top financial advisory firms on the market, and their platform allows clients to compare various loan and debt offers.
“The world of financing is still filled with confusion. People are still confused about how and what to invest in. Therefore, having a finance blog that opens their eyes in various ways, gives them ideas on how things are done, and provides tips for their future can be successful. Keeping a blog that is informative and gives solutions to people’s common problems can be a successful way to blog and keep it in the public eye. Having a question and answer session where you invite readers to submit questions and then you answer them is the best way to keep your blog active, seek views, and grow its popularity.”
Janine Marsh
Janine is a Blogger at Thrifty Family.
“I think it’s so important to share your own journey with financial trouble when building your finance blog. Readers want to be able to relate to you and know that you’ve been through the same issues as them because this reduces their feelings of isolation and stress! On Thrifty Family, I talk about my £600 bailiff charge (which was actually what inspired me to work on this blog in the first place), and this story sparked a huge level of interest in the site.
Remind your audience that they are not alone and explain how you’ve been through the exact same things they have. This will help you cultivate a finance community who want to fight for the same things as you.”
Michael Diamond
Michael Diamond worked in finance for more than 30 years before retiring in 2020. He is still an active forex trader and blogger, dedicated to using his years of experience to pull back the curtain on the world of finance.
“Honest and distinct articles always eventually get eyeballs. The financial blogosphere is a bit of an echo-chamber. Everyone writes about the same SEO-driven topics, and no one wants to venture too far afield with their opinions. You have to go beyond to grow. That means finding fresh topics, daring to express dissenting opinions, and finding your niche. It’s certainly not easy, and something I struggle to do myself, but invariably it’s my unique articles or my uncommonly honest takes that drive the most traffic to my site.”
Jake Hill
Jake Hill is the CEO of DebtHammer, a top personal finance publication that aims to help people make better financial decisions.
“Finances are at the top of everyone’s list of worries right now, so blogs in this genre have the potential to generate plenty of interest. However, popularity also means stiff competition. To grow your finance blog, you must offer unique tips that your target audience won’t find elsewhere. It’s not enough to simply rehash financial advice that people have been hearing for years — today’s readers want fresh perspectives on how to grow their wealth and manage their debt.”
Sean Gilbert
Sean Gilbert BA (Hons) FPFS, is a Chartered Financial Planner. Sean Gilbert founded Select Wealth Managers after he had worked in the financial services industry, for companies such as Aviva and Prudential, for nearly a decade. He is also a Fellow of the Personal Finance Society.
“Keeping up with the times is an essential part of growing your finance blog. Sharing your personal anecdotes and advice in uncertain times can help your audience to have a better understanding of the current financial scope and how they can keep ahead of changing times. Your personal insight can add an element of personalization to your blog which increases the relatability of your business to customers.
I like to use my blog to discuss the current financial situation to educate and help consumers to be able to make more informed decisions when it comes to their money.”
Scott Nelson
Scott Nelson is the Founder and CEO of MoneyNerd Limited.
“I’ve found that combining written and video content has contributed massively to MoneyNerd’s success. Different platforms are going to have entirely different audiences, which means that there is only so much reach you can get with a finance blog that solely has written content.
When you incorporate graphics and video content into your blog along with the written material, you are able to accommodate more of your audience’s needs to easily understand the information you are sharing. People learn in different ways, and it’s important to work with your finance blog audience in helping them follow everything you’re talking about!”
Allan Stolc
Allan Stolc is the Founder and CEO of Bankly, a finance platform specializing in assisting local clients in finding the best and cheapest personal, car, and consolidation loans.
“Center your blog on finance-related topics applicable to people in your locality. While targeting a wider audience may help increase your following, it has little to no impact on the actual success of your brand if readers can’t apply them in real life. However, if you focus on
providing relevant financial content to people in your area, the engagement level will be off the chart. This will ultimately boost your conversion opportunities, which is a much better measurement for growth.
Your finance blog will make more sense and add value to those clients within your preferred geographic segmentation. You need to concentrate on prospects who really need your services instead of collecting passive viewers who are not even part of your target audience.”
Johannes Larsson
Johannes is the Founder & CEO at Financer.com. He is a personal finance blogger who’s regularly educating his audience on different financial options and money management systems.
“The best piece of advice I can share is to always partner with the best affiliates that complement the information that you’re sharing. Our company is always carefully assessing who we’re partnering with and if their financial product is beneficial for our audience or not.
Finance blogs that create stellar content with factual information always succeed in the financial industry. With the current short-form video content and TikTok videos going viral, I see a lack of fact-checked financial content being put on social media platforms. Therefore, a piece of content that gives proper research, citations, and proof of the statements wins the trust of the readers.
Our writer often takes help from outside expert sources as well through HARO and Terkel. The key is to add authority to your content, and if you’re quoting several certified experts on the topic, your audience will instantly get the answers from a credible source. The more convenient and understandable content we can create for the audience, the better it would be for growing our finance blog.”
Kari Lorz
Kari Lorz is a Certified Financial Education Instructor and founder at Money for the Mamas.
“My #1 tip for growing a finance blog is understanding what people WANT to learn about. You may want to write about budgeting with nickels but trust me, no one is searching on Google for that.
Don’t waste your time writing about what you think people should know; you won’t see any growth. Instead, meet people where they are now and provide the answers to what they want to know about. Your growth 100% depends on doing good keyword research! Everything else comes in a distant second.”
Ilias Tsigkogiannis
Ilias Tsigkogiannis is the founder of EngineerSeekingFIRE.com, where he provides personal finance and career advice to high-tech employees. He has 15+ years of professional experience in retail, consulting, and tech companies, including Google, Amazon, and Microsoft.
“The best way to build a blog with great potential for growth is to position it correctly. So, my number #1 tip for growing a finance blog is to focus on financial advice for a specific subset of people that you also belong to. For example, the White Coat Investor is a doctor, so he focuses his very popular blog on financial advice for doctors. I am an engineer, so my blog, EngineerSeekingFIRE.com, focuses on engineers. There are also various other examples of financial bloggers who focus on millennials or people close to retirement, etc.
There are three main reasons to focus your advice on a subset category that you also belong to instead of creating yet another generic finance blog:
- Google’s E-E-A-T: The first “E” in E-E-A-T stands for Experience. It is much easier to prove Experience by showing that you know your content because your financial advice also applies to you. This is similar to financial advisors with Fiduciary duty. It is widely known that E-E-A-T is very important for the YMYL (Your Money Your Life) category, which includes finance, so this is a crucial factor to rank higher in Google.
- You can transcribe your own research results into blog posts: All people have questions about how to improve their own financial situation. As a person interested in finance, you’ll have to do research for yourself. Then, all you have to do is to use the same problems that you are researching as a source for post ideas. This becomes much simpler than if you had to think about content ideas for a market category that you know little about.
- You can differentiate your blog from all/most other blogs in the market: There is lots of generic financial advice on the internet. People can follow it and get good results. But, every person is different. Athletes have different financial needs than engineers, doctors, musicians, etc. If you belong in any of these categories, then my advice would be to search how many bloggers exist with targeted information for your group. My guess is that the number will be really low.”
Ryan Faber
Ryan Faber is the founder of Copymatic, a cutting-edge AI-powered platform that guides businesses in creating compelling and engaging content.
“Blogs have the potential to engage up to 70% of consumers, which makes them an important part of the strategy for any digital marketer. My number one tip for growing a finance blog is to start producing blogs that target problem-solving situations when it comes to financing.
With the recession, people are struggling with their budgeting and investment. Hence, they are looking for ways to systematize their finances in such a way that can lead to an organized life. This means researching and writing informative articles that offer unique perspectives, insights, and actionable advice on topics related to personal finance, investing, budgeting, saving, and other relevant subjects.
To achieve this, it’s important to stay up-to-date on the latest trends and news in the finance industry and to be knowledgeable about the topics you’re writing about. With problem-solving blogs, you can target 40 – 50% of people who are struggling with finances, which can boost the audience count for your blog. By doing so, you can build a loyal readership.”
Marius Grigoras
Marius Grigoras is the CEO of BHero.
“My number one tip for growing a finance blog would be to stay up to date on industry trends and keep your finger on the pulse of emerging technology. By understanding the latest developments in financial technology, such as blockchain and decentralized finance (DeFi), you can provide valuable insights and analysis to your readers that will keep them coming back for more.
Additionally, finding a niche within the finance world and establishing yourself as an expert in that area is crucial for building a dedicated audience. Finally, leveraging social media and building a strong network of like-minded individuals in the finance community can help you gain exposure and establish yourself as a credible voice in the space. With these tips, any finance blogger can grow their blog and establish themselves as a thought leader in their area of expertise.”
Jamie Irwin
Jamie Irwin is a Digital Marketing Expert at TutorCruncher, a single platform to manage and grow your tutoring business.
“The best way to expand a financial blog is to use content idea generators. If you’re just starting out in the blogging industry, getting your first post up can seem like a lot of work. Yet, there are several easy measures you may take to guarantee the success of your site.
A good place to start is by describing your ideal reader in as much detail as possible. When properly marketed, people can be the ideal customer base. After all, a lot of times, new innovations occur because someone needed to satisfy a personal need. If you can’t find what you’re looking for in a finance blog, you might as well start your own.”
Alex Contes
Alex Contes is the Co-Founder & SaaS Expert at ReviewGrower.
“Posting financial-related questions and answers is the best strategy for expanding a finance blog. If you’re really into money and want to share your knowledge, you may start a personal finance blog and answer readers’ money questions there. Publishing guest posts on related blogs is a fantastic method to increase your site’s visibility and readership. All you have to do is remember to put a link to your own site in every guest post you write. In particular, personal finance bloggers welcome guest posts.
The market for advice on managing one’s own finances is vast and perennial. There is a plethora of options, and the level of competition is modest. Maintain a consistent publishing schedule to attract and retain readers. Budgeting knowledge and tips for cutting costs are two areas you could concentrate on. Repairing credit is another viable approach. People should be able to use the information on your site to make wiser financial choices.”
Tim Doman
Tim Doman is an investment analyst, ex-executive of a private equity investment fund, and the newly appointed CEO of Top Mobile Banks, the largest site dedicated to digital banking.
“The number one tip for growing a finance blog is to focus on providing value to your readers. This means identifying your niche, becoming an expert in that area, and producing content that is informative, actionable, and engaging. By doing this, you can build a loyal readership that trusts and values your expertise, and that will help your blog grow over time.
In the world of finance, there is no shortage of information available to consumers. From news articles to financial advisors, people have many sources to turn to for guidance on managing their money. As a finance blogger, trying to compete with these sources by producing as much content as possible or trying to cover every topic under the sun can be tempting. However, this approach is unlikely to result in long-term success.
Instead, I believe that the key to growing a finance blog is to focus on providing value to your readers in a unique and compelling way. This means identifying your niche and becoming an expert in that area. Maybe you’re an expert in budgeting, retirement planning, or investing. Whatever your area of expertise, it’s essential to focus on producing content that is informative, actionable, and engaging.
One way to provide value to your readers is to focus on answering their questions. Start by identifying the most common questions people have about your area of expertise. Maybe people are wondering how to get started with investing or how to create a budget that works for them. Once you have identified these questions, create content that answers them clearly and concisely. Make sure to provide examples and step-by-step instructions that readers can follow.
Another way to provide value to your readers is to create timely and relevant content. Stay up-to-date on the latest trends and news in your area of expertise and produce content that helps readers understand how these developments may affect their financial situation. For example, if you’re an expert in investing, you might produce content that analyzes the stock market and offers advice on adjusting your portfolio accordingly.
Engaging with your readers and building a community around your blog is key. Encourage readers to leave comments and ask questions, and make sure to respond promptly and thoughtfully. Consider hosting events or webinars where readers can connect with you and other members of your community.”
Rebecca Hey
As the founder of Strategically content writing agency, Rebecca manages a team of 22 writers, editors, and SEOs. Together, they provide premium content to hundreds of companies worldwide. From tech to yoga topics, they’ve proudly delivered more than 8 million words of high-quality content for 300+ clients.
“My number 1 tip for growing a finance blog is to establish yourself as an expert in your industry by building out your blog as thoroughly as possible. This means writing detailed, informative, genuinely helpful articles on as many topics within your niche as you can think of.
Rather than trying to brainstorm your article ideas yourself, I recommend taking a look at what your top competitors are doing. If their websites are taking the first spots on Google, they’ve probably already got established blogs with hundreds of article titles that you can copy. You can use your own system for building out blog content, or if you want a method that’s guaranteed to work, research Hubspot’s pillar pages and topic clusters concept. This is a strategy you can use to categorize your articles into subtopics, making it easier for you to cover all topics thoroughly and establish a good internal linking system (also essential for SEO).
Essentially, the more topics you can cover on your website, the more ranking opportunities you have — and ranking for lots of articles gives you credibility, which further boosts your ranking on the SERPs.”
Milo Cruz
Milo Cruz is the Chief Marketing Officer at Freelance Writing Jobs.
“Social listening is vital to creating relevant and informative finance blog posts. Pay close attention to your prospects’ online conversations.
On Twitter, for instance, you can leverage advanced search features to look for essential subjects relevant to your target audience. This will help you discover financial news from the feeds of influential companies worthy of turning into blog content.
You can also hunt trending topics on social media using advanced monitoring platforms like Semrush and Hootsuite. Doing so lets you get updated on what’s capturing your prospect’s attention and create a blog post about it. As long as you know how to feed your audience’s curiosity with the help of social media, growing your finance blog will be a fun game to play.”
Paul Kim
Paul Kim has been doing SEO for the past 11 years. Most recently, he grew two separate finance blogs from zero to 100k visitors per month in two years. Paul sold both of them last year, and now is working on growing the blog for Ocho, a new fintech startup based in Brooklyn.
“My number one tip for successfully growing a finance blog is that you must build in tiers of very small and specific niches. If you want to rank for more than just a small random group of keywords, you must categorize your content and deliberately publish around a very narrow niche of a niche.
Finance is one of the most competitive, challenging niches in the world. Every keyword is eaten up by SEO giants like Investopedia, NerdWallet, and Bankrate. It takes longer to build authority and domain expertise, and there’s a higher risk of Google penalties since you’re publishing content that could affect people’s important financial decisions. To compete against the giants, you have to work 10x harder than you would in less competitive industries to dominate a smaller piece of the pie at first.
Once you build domain expertise in one specific narrow niche, you can expand to the closest related niche from there. For example, at Ocho, we started by only publishing content around the solo 401k. For anyone who’s unfamiliar with what a solo 401k is, it’s a retirement plan built for self-employed individuals. After targeting every major keyword around the solo 401k, we expanded our topics to other retirement plans. After covering all major keywords for all retirement plans, we expanded to keywords targeting business activity like taxes and investing.
This is the most consistent way to grow organic traffic to a finance blog. It takes more time and effort, but the reward is that the traffic you get can be worth much more than in other industries.”
Ilam Padmanabhan
Ilam Padmanabhan, Founder of IlamPadman.com, has 20 years of experience in the tech/financial services industry.
“Create high-quality, consistent, and authentic content that provides value to your audience. While it sounds like a cliche, it really is the one true reason some blogs survive and thrive, and the rest disappear.
Additionally, optimize your content for search engines as your discoverability matters as much as your content quality. Finally, engage with your audience, and take them along in your journey.”
Grant Polachek
Grant Polachek is the Head of Branding at Squadhelp.
“Interact with users and discuss relevant topics in finance communities. The finance industry has plenty of established names that people turn to for advice, such as Finance Monthly, Entrepreneur, or a finance-related subreddit on Reddit, to name a few. You can take this opportunity to go around these websites and engage with a prospective audience to establish your name and authority on the subject.
This approach is more helpful, organic, and genuine when growing your finance blog. Talking to like-minded people is an excellent way to promote your blog content to your target audience. You can also leverage these communities to expand your professional network in the industry and draw inspiration for your upcoming content to attract more people to your blog.”
Melanie Musson
Melanie Musson is a finance blogger with Clearsurance.com.
“Post content frequently. You can’t reach everyone in one post, but the more you post and the more you address the niche issue your audience searches for, the more your blog will grow.
To find the topics that would be best to blog about, you should research keywords and focus on ones that haven’t been covered as heavily as others. That way, you’ll increase your odds of people coming across your posts through a Google search.
Consistent posting builds the depth of your blog and helps you build your customer base and business success. Remember, sometimes it takes time to see results, so keep posting and improve your processes as you grow and learn.”
Joe Troyer
Joe Troyer CEO & Head of Growth of DigitalTriggers.
“My top tip for growing a finance blog is to promote advertising positions. Companies are eager to compensate bloggers for placing advertisements on their websites. For a fee, lend them space that would otherwise go unused. There are two ways to develop this source of income for your blog:
- Individually barter with businesses. Find companies in your niche and inquire about advertising opportunities on your website. It is more time-consuming and requires excellent negotiation abilities, but if executed well, it can yield the highest profit.
- Utilize a marketing network. Do you like a hands-off approach? Platforms such as Google AdSense, Mediavine, and AdThrive claim advertising space on your blog and bill advertisers. Simply embed their code on your website to be compensated for displaying advertisements.”
Brad Anderson
Brad Anderson is the Executive Director of FRUITION.
“My number one tip for growing a finance blog is to provide services. As a natural consequence of growing your following, more people will associate your name with the blog topics you cover. That is a terrific approach to establishing authority, which is something that people look for when employing individuals to perform a service.
If you are in the B2B industry, as I am, consulting is a significant source of revenue. What type of consulting can you offer them if you have any knowledge and people are actually reading your content? Blogging is a high-revenue, low-commitment way to make money. Although operating a service-based business is time-intensive, it can be a rapid way to earn money online. By showing off your knowledge on your blog, you can charge more per hour and attract high-paying clients.”
These tips and best practices are among the most effective ways to grow a finance blog with staying power in a highly competitive industry. There’s no question that growing a finance blog takes time, but not every tactic has to be high effort. Install social media share buttons on your finance blog and let your readers do some of the promotion for you by sharing your content with their connections on social media.
