How to Choose an SEO & AEO Partner for Financial Services

Finance, fintech, and forex companies face a demanding SEO and AEO environment. Their content can influence financial decisions, factual errors carry greater consequences, and buyers often need substantial evidence before contacting a provider. Choosing an SEO and AEO partner for financial services therefore requires closer attention to expertise, technical execution, and reporting.

What to look for in a partner

A track record with regulated or trust-sensitive industries

Financial services content has to be accurate, well-sourced, and clearly attributed. Google describes E-E-A-T, experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trust, as a way to assess whether content appears helpful and reliable. Its automated systems use a mix of signals aligned with these qualities, with greater sensitivity around YMYL topics that can affect financial stability. E-E-A-T itself is not a standalone ranking factor, according to Google’s guidance on helpful, reliable content. A partner who has worked in this space understands the difference between writing for reach and writing for credibility.

Structured data that supports the content

Structured data can make company details, authorship, and page purpose more explicit to machines. It should support information that is already visible and credible on the page: markup can clarify a claim, but it cannot prove that the claim is true. Organization schema, author credentials, and FAQPage markup (where real FAQ content exists) all help make clear who is behind the content, not just what it says. See our schema markup checklist for what this looks like in practice.

Both SEO and AEO, working together

SEO and AEO share many foundations: crawlability, clear site architecture, useful content, identifiable entities, and reliable authorship. The difference is in how visibility gets measured. SEO focuses largely on search rankings and organic traffic; AEO also looks at whether content gets retrieved, cited, or used in AI-generated answers. A capable partner should understand how these disciplines reinforce each other while measuring their results separately.

Evidence and transparent reporting

Ask for results from a comparable engagement. The partner should explain what each number measures, its source, the period covered, and the work completed during that period.

What this looks like in practice: CurrentDesk

We rebuilt CurrentDesk’s site from the ground up: technical SEO, content structured around buyer questions, identifiable entities, and clear answers, and schema working together from day one. Per Google Search Console, comparing site-wide performance during the three months after the rebuild with the previous three months:

• Average position improved from 32.1 to 21.9
• Total impressions grew from roughly 25,600 to 30,900 (+21%)
• Total clicks grew from 126 to 143 (+13%)

Read the full CurrentDesk case study for the detail behind those numbers.

Why CM Marketing

CM Marketing is a Copenhagen-based SEO and AEO agency working with companies in finance, tech, and professional services, including clients across Switzerland, Germany, Liechtenstein, Andorra, and the United Kingdom. Design and development sit in-house alongside strategy, so technical fixes, content, and schema stay connected instead of getting handed off between vendors.

FAQ

How is AEO different from SEO for financial services companies specifically?
The technical foundations overlap, but financial content requires stronger evidence, clear authorship, transparent sourcing, and careful review of claims. AEO also considers whether that information can be retrieved and cited accurately in AI-generated answers.

How long does it take to see results?
Most engagements in this category run for 3 to 6 months. The timing depends on the site’s starting point, competition, crawl frequency, and how quickly recommendations are implemented. We define the measurement period at the beginning and report after each phase.

Curious where your own site stands? Get a free audit from CM Marketing, or get in touch to talk through your situation.

Last reviewed: July 2026.