A new report by Linkdex has revealed that Nerd­Wal­let, a per­son­al finance infor­ma­tion web­site, out­per­forms all major finan­cial insti­tu­tions and pub­lish­ers when it comes to answer­ing con­sumer queries in organ­ic search results. Here’s a clos­er look at what makes them such a great suc­cess.

Accord­ing to Linkdex’s report Mar­ket Analy­sis: US Per­son­al Finance, 2016, Nerd­Wal­let cap­tured a 22.3 per­cent share of all per­son­al finance relat­ed queries in the US, with long-tail blog con­tent mak­ing a con­sid­er­able con­tri­bu­tion (81.5 per­cent of their media val­ue from all organ­ic search con­tent) to their over­all suc­cess. As the report iden­ti­fies, long-tail con­sumer search­es have proved incred­i­bly valu­able for Nerd­Wal­let, and has been one of the most impor­tant fac­tors in help­ing them gain a mar­ket-lead­ing share of search in their indus­try. So why haven’t more brands lever­aged long-tail oppor­tu­ni­ties to win much cov­et­ed organ­ic search share? The like­ly answer is that it is no easy feat to iden­ti­fy, resource for, and then cre­ate and scale the qual­i­ty con­tent which can sat­is­fy demand for large num­ber of low vol­ume key­words, while man­ag­ing all the nec­es­sary oper­a­tions to form a sus­tained rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing chan­nel. When it comes to resources, how­ev­er, Nerd­Wal­let are well posi­tioned. In 2015, they raised an incred­i­ble $64 mil­lion in their first round of fund­ing – just the ninth U.S. start­up to raise more than $50 mil­lion at the ini­tial round since 2014. As revealed on Inc.com, the com­pa­ny have also man­aged to attract an impres­sive selec­tion of Sil­i­con Val­ley tal­ent, recruit­ing prod­uct man­agers and engi­neers from the likes of LinkedIn and Twit­ter. Per­son­al finance is a high­ly lucra­tive indus­try, with high vol­ume search terms around “cred­it” often demand­ing noto­ri­ous­ly high CPC val­ues, and as a result there has nat­u­ral­ly been pres­sure mount­ing for brands to seek a more cost-effec­tive way to reach con­sumers. Nerd­Wal­let have clear­ly cap­i­tal­ized most effec­tive­ly on the organ­ic search oppor­tu­ni­ties, and are reap­ing the ben­e­fits as a result. Here are six rea­sons why Nerd­Wal­let have risen above their com­peti­tors and rules the U.S. per­son­al finance mar­ket.

1. They Capitalize On Small Opportunities At Scale

Nerd­Wal­let’s long tail includes all man­ner of keyphras­es, terms such as “high­est inter­est rate sav­ings account”, “best mon­ey back cred­it cards” or “top online sav­ings accounts”. Sin­gu­lar­ly, these terms may not elic­it the high­est search vol­umes, but togeth­er they rep­re­sent a num­ber of moments at which con­sumers are search­ing for answers. As the fol­low­ing chart shows, the cumu­la­tive val­ue of all these small oppor­tu­ni­ties can have a huge impact on a domains over­all media val­ue. In total pages cater­ing for long-tail search­es have an esti­mat­ed val­ue of $2.45 mil­lion; 65.7 per­cent of the total esti­mat­ed val­ue of pages serv­ing Nerd­Wal­let’s entire key­word set ($3.73 mil­lion).

(From Linkdex’s Mar­ket Analy­sis: US Per­son­al Finance, 2016)

2. Focusing On & Understanding Consumer Intent

Nerd­Wal­let have an extreme­ly suc­cess­ful USP in which they allow con­sumers to freely com­pare finan­cial prod­ucts, and in many cas­es end up direct­ly con­nect­ing them with a cho­sen finan­cial provider. Where Nerd­Wal­let real­ly excels is in inter­pret­ing intent. When a con­sumer search­es for “best cred­it cards” it rep­re­sents a desire to research and com­pare dif­fer­ent prod­ucts, and Nerd­Wal­let pages are opti­mized to ful­fill this need.

Nerd­Wal­let’s pages allows users to com­pare both types of, and ranges of cred­it cards with­in a par­tic­u­lar cat­e­go­ry.

Under­stand­ing and inter­pret­ing the nuance in search lan­guage is impor­tant. It allows brands to tune into and pro­vide for these needs. Con­sumers’ needs can vary and often require spe­cif­ic answers. For exam­ple, a search for “no for­eign trans­ac­tion fee cred­it cards” may indi­cate a desire to learn about the ben­e­fits and poten­tial charges that can be incurred by those cards. Ulti­mate­ly, pro­vid­ing the best con­tent and answers for these queries will be reward­ed by high vis­i­bil­i­ty in the search engines.

3. Amazing Author Network Of Capable Writers

One of the most impres­sive things about the Nerd­Wal­let oper­a­tion is their incred­i­ble author net­work, which enables them to scale their con­tent mar­ket­ing so well. Often com­pa­nies who attempt to scale their con­tent strat­e­gy are unable to main­tain a high stan­dard of qual­i­ty through­out all con­tent. Invari­able, to do so requires a large net­work of capa­ble writ­ers. How many? Well, here is a visu­al­iza­tion of Nerd­Wal­let’s writ­ers from Linkdex Enti­ty Search:

Nerd­Wal­let’s writer net­work, where the size of each bub­ble rep­re­sents esti­mat­ed traf­fic for each author.

Build­ing such a net­work is no easy feat – it requires con­sid­er­able invest­ment. It’s a tes­ta­ment to Nerd­Wal­let’s com­mit­ment and belief in organ­ic con­tent to have man­aged to build such a com­mu­ni­ty. Many of these writ­ers con­tribute to the Nerd­Wal­let blog, home of the long tail con­tent, and a cur­so­ry look at the blog shows the con­sis­tent high lev­el of qual­i­ty that the authors cre­ate.

4. Grasp Of Technology & SEO Tactics

Nerd­Wal­let clear­ly has a great com­mand of organ­ic search, but and there are exam­ples of where they have real­ly opti­mized their pres­ence in the search engine. For exam­ple, there are a num­ber of queries in which Nerd­Wal­let con­tent appears promi­nent­ly in Google “quick answer-box­es”. In these cas­es the search engine rec­og­nizes that the con­tent is going to be the most infor­ma­tive for users, and increas­es the vis­i­bil­i­ty sig­nif­i­cant­ly so users can find it eas­i­er. The search “bal­ance trans­fer cred­it card” (a high­ly valu­able term!) returns the fol­low­ing result: That’s an awful lot of above the fold vis­i­bil­i­ty afford­ed by that quick answer-box. Inci­den­tal­ly, for the same search, a lit­tle fur­ther down the page: Nerd­Wal­let win the quick answer-box for the pop­u­lar search term, and also hap­pen to be the cur­rent fea­tured news sto­ry at time of writ­ing — all in all a pret­ty impres­sive first page pres­ence. This in par­tic­u­lar is a great exam­ple of how Nerd­Wal­let sim­ply oblit­er­ate the com­pe­ti­tion for an indi­vid­ual term.

5. Talent & Recruiting

Excelling in the above areas nat­u­ral­ly requires some seri­ous dig­i­tal tal­ent. This is one area where Nerd­Wal­let has com­mit­ted siz­able invest­ment. “I real­ly think that win­ning in this mar­ket is about attract­ing the best tal­ent out there,” CEO Tim Chen told Inc. “The more tal­ent, the bet­ter.” As with their author net­work, invest­ing in capa­ble dig­i­tal teams is cru­cial to win­ning the mar­ket.

6. Authenticity & Reputation

On a sim­ple lev­el, there is one notable dif­fer­ence between the gen­er­al expe­ri­ence a user has on Nerd­Wal­let, and that which they might have on the site of a finan­cial insti­tu­tion. As Linkdex’s report high­lights:

“Any cur­so­ry look at the web­site of any major finan­cial brand reveals high­ly util­i­tar­i­an, func­tion­al pages, copy and con­tent. In con­trast, the affil­i­ate pages are much more ‘human’ – full of con­tent that is emo­tive, respon­sive, sup­port­ive, in-depth and com­pre­hen­sive in it’s cov­er­age, and also exud­ing trust and authen­tic­i­ty sig­nals that users are seek­ing.”

Authen­tic­i­ty is the key word here, and Nerd­Wal­let score much high­er than banks may do: User-gen­er­at­ed reviews, for exam­ple, which are eas­i­ly nav­i­ga­ble through­out the site for all the prod­ucts fea­tured are a great authen­tic­i­ty sig­nal, and add mas­sive­ly to the over­all con­tent val­ue of the site.

Final Thoughts

Undoubt­ed­ly, there are many rea­sons why Nerd­Wal­let per­forms so well. This arti­cle cov­ers just a few of them. Over­all, Nerd­Wal­let serves as a great exam­ple of the pow­er of cap­tur­ing indi­vid­ual moments. Long-tail search queries are essen­tial­ly an exam­ple of such a moment. Equal­ly, reviews rep­re­sent and ful­fill a moment in which con­sumers are seek­ing reas­sur­ance about a prod­uct. What Nerd­Wal­let shows us is that under­stand­ing and meet­ing the needs of con­sumers at these moments can be a high­ly suc­cess­ful strat­e­gy for brands.