SEO content | SEO strategy | Webpage design | Webflow & Figma

First Circle Homepage SEO

An organic SEO strategy that pushed our business page from 50th to 5th in search results

‍THE BRIEF📖

Rank the First Circle homepage in the top 5 search results for “business loan philippines” through an organic on-page SEO strategy

project background

First Circle is a fintech startup in the Philippines that offers fast, fair, and flexible business credit lines to Filipino small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

To increase their website's relevant organic traffic, the company decided to focus on business loan philippines as their primary SEO keyword. As of March 2023, this keyword has a monthly traffic volume of 900.

the problem

Despite having a domain rating of 40+ and 300+ referring domains, First Circle's homepage was only ranking in the 40th-50th position in June 2022.

This meant that First Circle was appearing on the 4th page of search results, and therefore not receiving any organic clicks. For context, according to Backlinko, only 0.63% of Google searchers clicked on something from the 2nd page of search results.

Furthermore, "business loan philippines" is a highly competitive keyword with a medium keyword difficulty rating from Ahrefs. To rank in the top 10, we would have to compete with nine other business loan pages from Landbank, Security Bank, Unionbank, and other major banks in the Philippines.

Search results for "business loan philippines" in 2022

RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

An SEO audit in the homepage, website, and company competitors resulted in these on-page and off-page issues:

Slow page load and performance in terms of LCP and FCP metrics
The actual keyword does not appear in the content and metadata
The page lacks internal and external links
Higher bounce rate and poor engagement compared to blog pages
A First Circle blog on business loan types ‘cannibalized’ the target keyword,
ranking higher than the homepage at 17th place

the solution

Homepage Redesign

I proposed a homepage redesign that included the following solutions:

Fast-loading design elements to reduce LCP and FCP load time
A rewrite of the homepage content to focus on business loans, while still making it clear that First Circle’s product is a credit line
A punchier header section to capture page visitors’ attention and reduce bounce rate
New sections to boost engagement rate and combine the cannibalizing article’s content with the homepage content
Other optimizations such as use of the target keyword, internal links, and external links

With the help of the Engineering team, I also applied other on-page and off-page SEO techniques for the website to increase the homepage’s chances of success.

V1: Designed in Miro

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V2: Designed in Figma

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FINAL VERSION: DESIGNED IN WEBFLOW

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CONTENT MARKETING EXECUTION

Social Media Teaser

Promo Mechanics

GCat Appearance Announcement & Clue

(GCat will be located in Buy Mobile Data.)

GCat In-App Banners

Moment Marketing

Highlighting social media posts of users who interacted with GCat

Facebook Live Event

To demonstrate game mechanics and further increase interest in the promo in its last 3 days

RESULTS

Since the homepage redesign, First Circle has ranked in the top 5 results for “business loan philippines” — even ranking as high as 3rd place in May 2023.

TRAFFIC & CONVERSIONS

From an average monthly organic traffic of about 7,500+ in June 2022, First Circle's organic traffic had a mostly-continuous increase. By March 2023, its monthly traffic has doubled to 15,000+.

First Circle's loan application form (depicted in the images as Goal 5 Completion) also saw an increase in signups, from 63 applicants in June 2022 to 123 applicants in March 2023.

From a conversion rate of 2.96% in June 2022, signups to First Circle's loan application form increased to 4.72% –
an increase of 59.4% in conversion rate.