Running an alternative lending business already means juggling borrower applications, funding timelines, and compliance requirements. The last thing you want to think about is whether potential clients can find you online, and what it takes to run an SEO audit for alternative lenders.
But if your competitors show up on Google when people search for “small business loan options” or “private lender near me” and you are not, you are missing out on a steady flow of qualified borrowers who are actively looking for funding.
SEO has several moving parts that all need to work together, but when they do, you get stronger online visibility and more borrowers contacting you first. If you are unsure where to start, follow this audit to help your lending website rank higher in search engine results pages.
What Is an SEO Audit for Alternative Lenders?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of making your lending website more visible when people search for funding and financial solutions on Google and other search engines.
When borrowers look for alternative lending options or search for answers about business loans, private lending, or fast financing, your website should appear as the solution to their questions.
When Google sees that your site offers helpful, trustworthy information about alternative lending services, it becomes more confident in showing your website to people who are actively looking for loans.
The benefits of SEO for alternative lenders include:
- Consistent borrower leads: Qualified applicants can find you when they are actively searching for funding instead of relying only on paid ads or social media activity.
- Stronger credibility: Higher rankings help borrowers see your lending company as a trusted and dependable financial provider.
- 24/7 visibility: Your website continues to attract borrowers at all hours, even when your team is offline or not posting on social media.
Alternative lending SEO services have a high ROI. According to research, SEO drives 1,000%+ more traffic than organic social media, and SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate.
Search Engine Optimization Essentials
Getting SEO right for alternative lenders requires focusing on several key areas:
- High-quality, relevant content: General posts about loans or interest rates are not enough. You need content that speaks directly to the funding challenges borrowers face and explains your lending solutions in the simple, clear language they use.
- Technical website health: Slow pages, broken links, and poor mobile performance make it harder for your site to rank. Your backend needs to be clean, fast, and easy for both users and search engines to navigate.
- Local SEO optimization: Your Google Business Profile, local citations, and location-focused pages should be accurate and complete so you show up for searches like “private lender near me” or “business loan in [city].”
- Keyword research: Focus on lending terms and borrower questions you can realistically rank for. This includes niche loan types, industry sectors, and geographic markets with lower competition.
- Trust signals and authority: Borrowers want to feel confident before applying for funding. Reviews, testimonials, lender certifications, transparent rates, and consistent contact information across the web help build that trust with both Google and potential clients.
Learn more about how to get more clients as an alternative lender.
How Do I Do an SEO Audit for Alternative Lenders?
An SEO audit is a systematic review of your website that helps you understand what is working and what is not. The process includes checking your technical setup and evaluating how clear and helpful your published content is for borrowers.
1. Check Your Website Speed
Slow websites hurt conversions and search rankings. If your site takes longer than 3 seconds to load, potential borrowers will leave before they even learn about your lending services. Google also ranks slow sites lower in search results.
Use these free tools to test your speed:
- Google PageSpeed Insights: Shows speed scores and improvement recommendations.
- GTmetrix: Provides detailed performance reports and identifies what’s slowing you down.
- Pingdom: Tests load times from different locations.
Common speed issues for lending websites include oversized images, excessive plugins, and low-quality hosting. Most performance problems can be improved by compressing images, removing unnecessary plugins, and upgrading to a more reliable hosting provider when needed.
2. Identify Relevant Keywords
Keywords are the search terms your potential borrowers type into Google. You need to understand which ones matter for your lending business and whether your website is optimized for them.
Start by brainstorming what borrowers search for when they need fast funding or non-bank loan options. Then use keyword research tools to check search volume and competition levels. Many SEO teams use premium tools like Ahrefs, but you can also use free tools such as UberSuggest.
Avoid broad terms like “loans.”
They are too competitive and will not bring the right borrowers to your site. Focus on long-tail keywords, which are more specific phrases such as “small business loan for startups,” “merchant cash advance lenders,” or “private lender for bad credit.”
3. Analyze Local SEO
A local SEO strategy helps you appear in search results when borrowers look for lending options in their area. Even if your lending services are offered nationwide or virtually, many borrowers still prefer to work with lenders who have a local presence.
Check these key local SEO elements:
- Google Business Profile: Is it claimed, fully completed, and updated with fresh posts, reviews, and accurate details?
- NAP consistency: Are your Name, Address, and Phone number exactly the same across your website, Google, and all directory listings?
- Local citations: Are you listed in relevant directories such as Yelp, Yellow Pages, and local business or finance directories?
- Location pages: If you serve multiple cities, do you have individual pages for each service area?
Search for your main lending services plus your city name to see where you currently rank. If competitors appear above you, your local SEO needs improvement.
4. Check Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
Title tags and meta descriptions are the clickable headlines and preview text that appear in Google search results when someone looks for lending services.
Every important page on your site needs unique, compelling title tags and meta descriptions that include the keywords borrowers are searching for.
For example, your homepage title might be “Prime Funding Solutions | Fast Small Business Loans in Miami.”
Common title tag and meta description mistakes include:
- Missing or duplicate titles: Every page needs its own title tag.
- Too long or too short: Keep titles under 60 characters and descriptions under 160 characters.
- No keywords: Include your target lending term in both the title tag and the description.
- Not compelling: Weak descriptions will not earn clicks even if your page ranks.
Review your top 10 to 15 pages and rewrite any title tags or descriptions that are missing, duplicated, or poorly written. After that, explore more marketing strategies for alternative lenders.
5. Audit Your Content
Content is what attracts potential borrowers to your website and helps them decide if your lending services are the right fit. Your content needs to be helpful, relevant, and easy for borrowers to find and understand.
Review your existing pages and blog posts.
Are they answering the questions borrowers ask? Do they clearly explain your loan products and funding options? Thin, outdated, or unclear content hurts your search rankings and does not build trust with visitors. Focus on the following:
- Service pages: Detailed explanations of each loan type you offer and who the funding is designed for, written with strong copywriting that is easy for borrowers to understand.
- Blog articles: Helpful content that answers common lending questions or explains the borrowing process and can be repurposed for email marketing.
- Local content: Information that speaks to local businesses or borrowers in the areas you serve.
Remove or update any content that is outdated or no longer relevant. Google lowers rankings when a website has too much low-quality or unnecessary content, since it makes the business appear less trustworthy.
6. Analyze Your Competition
Your competitors are trying to reach the same borrowers you want. Understanding what they are doing online helps you find opportunities to outrank them and identify gaps in your own SEO strategy.
Search for your main lending keywords and see which lenders appear at the top of the results. Review their websites and content to see what they are doing well and how you can use their performance to your advantage. For example:
- What keywords they target: Are there valuable lending terms you are not ranking for?
- Their content strategy: What topics are they covering that you have not addressed yet?
- Local SEO: How many reviews do they have, and which directories are they listed in?
- Website quality: Is their site faster, more polished, or easier to navigate than yours?
Do not copy what other lenders are doing. Instead, use their strengths to guide smarter improvements and build a stronger SEO strategy for your own lending business.
7. Check Internal Links
Internal links connect different pages on your website and help both visitors and search engines understand and navigate your content. They also pass authority between pages, which increases the ranking potential of your most important lending pages.
Review how your pages link to one another. Your homepage should link to your main loan product pages, and related content should connect naturally. For example, a blog post about improving cash flow should link to your small business loan or working capital loan page.
Common internal linking mistakes include:
- Orphaned pages: Important pages that are not linked from anywhere else on your site.
- Broken links: Links that point to pages that no longer exist.
- Poor anchor text: Using vague text like “click here” instead of descriptive phrases such as “business loan options.”
- Missing opportunities: Failing to link related lending content together.
A strong internal linking structure helps borrowers find the information they need and also signals to Google which pages matter most on your lending website.
8. Make Sure Your Website Is Mobile-Friendly
About 72.59 percent of Google’s visitors come from mobile devices. If your lending website does not function well on phones or tablets, you are losing potential borrowers and hurting your overall SEO performance.
Mobile problems that affect lending websites include:
- Text that is too small: Borrowers should not have to zoom in to read your content.
- Buttons placed too closely: Contact and application buttons need enough spacing for easy tapping.
- Slow mobile loading: Mobile users are quick to leave pages that take too long to load.
- Hard-to-fill forms: Loan inquiry and contact forms should be simple and easy to use on smaller screens.
If you’re having trouble with a mobile-friendly design, you may need to hire a professional to help you make it work. If you work with us as your SEO expert, we can connect you with a trusted designer!
9. Fix Technical SEO
Technical SEO helps search engines crawl, understand, and index your website. If there are technical problems, Google cannot properly access your pages, and your organic traffic will eventually decline.
Common technical issues include broken links, missing or duplicate title tags, slow loading speeds, and crawl errors. Make sure to check the following:
- SSL certificate: Your website should use HTTPS, which appears as a lock icon in the browser.
- XML sitemap: A file that informs search engines about your most important pages.
- Robots.txt file: Instructions that tell search engines which pages they should crawl or ignore.
- 404 errors: Broken pages that need fixing or proper redirects.
- Duplicate content: Multiple pages with similar information that can confuse search engines.
You can use Google Search Console, which is free, to find many technical issues on your site. However, most lending businesses will need a professional SEO specialist to properly fix these problems and maintain a strong technical foundation.
10. Track Your SEO Progress
Even the best SEO efforts take time to show results, and you need a reliable tracking system in place to measure your progress.
Google Analytics and Google Search Console are free tools that provide essential SEO data for lending businesses, and you can also use a paid tool like Ahrefs if you want deeper insights.
Make sure to monitor these SEO metrics:
- Organic traffic: How many borrowers find you through search engines.
- Keyword rankings: Where your pages appear in search results for the lending terms you want to rank for.
- Click-through rates: How often people click your listing when it appears on Google.
- Lead generation: How many loan inquiries or contact submissions came from organic search.
Search rankings fluctuate naturally, and meaningful SEO improvements typically take 3-6 months to show results. If you’re not sure where to start, follow this FREE SEO Checklist.
Are SEO Audits Worth It?
Yes, SEO audits are worth the investment for alternative lenders that want to attract more borrowers through stronger online visibility. An audit shows you what is holding your website back in search results and gives you a clear roadmap for improvement.
Instead of guessing what might be wrong or testing random fixes, you receive a prioritized list of specific issues that need attention.
This saves time and keeps you focused on the actions that matter. A professional SEO audit also gives your lending business a solid foundation to manage parts of your SEO on your own if you prefer to handle things in house.
SEO Audit Service for Alternative Lenders?
At SJ Digital Solutions, we offer comprehensive SEO audits through our SEO Health Check service.
This audit reviews everything from technical website issues to content gaps that may be costing you qualified borrowers. You will receive a detailed report that explains exactly what is holding your lending website back and a prioritized action plan that shows you how to fix it.
–> Order your SEO Health Check today!
FAQs
How Long Does an SEO Audit Take?
Our SEO Health Check takes 3 business days to complete. We carefully review your website, analyze your lending competitors, and create a detailed report with clear recommendations on what needs to be improved.
How Often Should You Do an SEO Audit?
It depends on who is managing your SEO. If you have a professional handling your strategy, you usually do not need frequent in depth audits because they will send monthly reports that show your progress and highlight any issues that appear.
If you are managing SEO on your own, getting a professional health check once a year is a smart goal. This helps you catch problems early and identify new opportunities, since search engine optimisation best practices often shift when Google releases updates.
Do You Offer Retainer SEO Services for Alternative Lenders?
Yes, we offer ongoing SEO retainer services that include content marketing, local SEO management, keyword research, and other strategies designed to help alternative lenders attract more qualified borrowers.
Learn more about our content + SEO services for alternative lenders and other financial businesses!