Together with Payt's team, SmartRanking is working to improve findability and obtain leads in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Spain and the United Kingdom.
Payt is one of the fastest growing fintech companies from the Netherlands, founded in 2013 based on the belief that debtor management can be made much more efficient. In 2017, Payt became known to the public as the main sponsor of the Dutch football club FC Groningen, and as of 2020, Payt is also active in Belgium, the United Kingdom and Ireland. Germany and Spain were then added in 2021, with which Payt continues to grow rapidly, helping thousands of companies to automate their accounts receivable management.
Most marketers and entrepreneurs do not consider the fact that a company’s administration is performed in different ways in each country and users search in different ways. As a result, the information needs of Payt’s target audience vary greatly from country to country. In the United Kingdom, “cash allocation” (automatically matching payments with outstanding invoices) is a widely used concept, while in the Netherlands it is a concept that is hardly ever used.
Payt was founded in Groningen and originally focused primarily on the Dutch market. Due to the expansion abroad, in 2020, the website payt.nl also had to be given a different look and moved to paytsoftware.com. In doing so, a different website was also chosen, to enable the international ambitions. A combination between a change of CMS (and thus the URL structure) and the migration to a new domain, is always an exciting migration.
Setting up a successful SEO strategy in the financial market is always a challenge, partly because of Google E-E-A-T and YMYL and local regulations by country. In Spain, for example, digital invoicing is mandatory for every company from 2022, but invoices are still sent by fax in Germany.
As of January 2020, SmartRanking is Payt’s permanent SEO partner, focusing on increasing findability in all countries where Payt operates. In January 2020, we started with the optimizations in the Netherlands, but because of Payt’s expansion abroad we now support Payt in all countries where they operate.
Payt asked to ensure that more leads are obtained from Organic Search. This way, Payt is not dependent on one marketing channel to obtain new customers. Top positions must be achieved on relevant search terms, and the investment in Organic Search must yield a positive ROI.
Within SmartRanking, we believe that search engine optimization is not about performing a few tricks. SEO is about improving websites, with the goal of providing better answers to the questions the target audience has. In doing so, the user of the website is the focus.
To achieve this for Payt as well, we started the project with a technical audit (focusing on loading speed, among other things), an international keyword research and content planning. The keyword research identified the ways in which the target audience searches. Then, based on data such as the market share Payt has, the priorities for on-page optimizations on Payt’s website were identified.
For the on-page optimizations, we continuously look at the market share on the different groups of search terms, which is used to set monthly priorities for optimizations and content creation. Central to this is radiating reliability, due to Google E-E-A-T and YMYL. To build this and radiate it to the target audience, various optimizations have been implemented in each language. For example, Payt’s team added author bios, set up a proper about us page and made it visible who all work at Payt.
Although the main focus is on improving the website itself, some time is also spent on link building. In doing so, we do not want to obtain low-quality backlinks (such as directories), but relevant placements from websites that matter. This has resulted in articles on such sites as marketbusinessnews.com (427,000 organic visitors p.m.), digitalconnectmag.com (1.7 million organic visitors per month) and consultancy.co.uk (68,000 organic visitors p.m.).
Thanks to monthly optimizations in the areas of technology, UX, content and authority, together with the Payt team, we ensure that the findability of the website continues to grow.
By focusing on the user, we manage to achieve great results together with the Payt team. The updates that Google regularly rolls out usually have a positive impact on findability, so we are always making good strides. The Payt team is enthusiastic and involved, which makes it a fine collaboration and which is the basis of our long-term cooperation.