Zignals - Content, SEO and Media Campaign
This was the job that transferred me from a career in Science to one in Fintech. Zignals was a financial services startup, born at the start of the financial crisis, to provide a marketplace for time-rich/cash-poor users to sell automated trading strategies, built on the platform, to time-poor/cash-rich clients. I was employee number two and so filled many roles at the company.
Zignals | ActivateClients was acquired by KX Systems | First Derivatives in 2015 for €4.75m.
Task
I took responsibility for content, community development, web-traffic analytics, client support, marketing and design for Zignals.com; effectively any role that wouldn’t take up valuable front- or back-end developer time. In this particular task, I was responsible for building Zignals’ online presence and it was one of my first tasks at the company.
Collaboration
I worked with a marketer who managed the Adwords campaign and finance. I was responsible for all research and content generation.
Keyword Research
In addition to brand-centric messaging, I reviewed financial search terms that offered good traffic, low advertising competition, cheap PPC costs, and/or good potential to rank high in organic search results (for Google). This was mapped out in a spreadsheet.
SEO
We built out the Title and Meta data for each page of the site, using search words and phrases identified as important to the brand, and opportunistic to occupy.
Outreach
With the website launched and a PPC campaign in place, I worked on building Zignals organic presence with social media promotion on a dedicated blog, and via third party financial sites and forums, employing back-linking and original content to build reputation and boost organic search rankings. I also encouraged members to leave site reviews; Investimonials.com reviewed financial products and services, and was prominent site at the time.
Outcomes
The keyword research quickly paid dividends as Zignals became the No. 1 ranked search result in the world for “Stock Alerts” on Google in less than a year. Search rankings were tracked on a spreadsheet.
Over time, organic traffic from search and referral traffic quickly supplanted the paid traffic, which was scaled down.
Together, this boosted new registrations.
There was also increase in the number of search phrases containing core search terms that ranked high in Google, for Zignals.
Executives were regularly briefed on search performance.
The Numbers
At the point of time when Zignals was acquired by First Derivatives in 2015...
Organic Search Rankings
No. 1 for (Free) Stock Alerts
Top 5 for Forex Alerts
Top 5 for Free Portfolio Manager
Top 10 for Free Stock Charts
Top 10 for Free Stock Screener
Traffic from Search
42% of Zignals site visitors came from Search Results
Keyword traffic
57,000 search keywords drove traffic to Zignals
Total Number of Visitors
1 million
Registered Members
80,461
Number of new members registering a month
1,240
Total Active Alert Users
11,623
Number of Active Alerts
88,824
Number of Alerts Delivered Daily
4,200 (throttled for costs)
See the Research
"What really sets this site apart from others is the strategies section. It is a market place where you can view different types of trading strategies, subscribe to ones you like, and even create and sell your own. Many of the strategies are dirt cheap ($10/month and up) and have a good history of returns...
At such a low price they are worth a look instead putting down thousands of dollars to follow some "guru" promising incredible returns."
At such a low price they are worth a look instead putting down thousands of dollars to follow some "guru" promising incredible returns."
Customer
– BrokeInvestor
– BrokeInvestor
"I have followed Zignals for quite a while, but just recently kicked the tires on the new dashboard. This product has tremendous potential. The strategy manager is a remarkable tool which not only back-tests your trading strategy (as far back as 2001), but it creates a transaction based portfolio which tracks your P&L. Not only does it create a strategy, but it will notify you when it's time to act on your portfolio.
The stock alerts manager is exceptional also, giving real time alerts on a number of criteria as they happen. I have many of these tools with my current broker; however, they are in many cases either too cumbersome to use or they just plain don't work.
Kudos to Declan and Zignals.”
Customer
– TopReview
"Fantastic set of FREE financial tools with great UX!
A setup like Zignals is going to be the future of the trading-meets-web 2.0 movement”
Customer
- Tommy Kurtz
- Tommy Kurtz
Bonus Content
Tradercast was a new financial broadcast service for traders and investors, launched in 2014, built on a platform similar to Zignals. I put together an Adword marketing document for the promotion of this service.
