Wise.com SEO Case Study: 5 Reasons Why Their SEO Rocks

Few mainstream brands are arsenic fascinating SEO-wise arsenic Wise.

Formerly known arsenic TransferWise, this fintech institution offering multi-currency accounts and speedy planetary wealth transfers with just fees presently gets an estimated 6.4 cardinal integrated visits per month:

That’s particularly awesome considering they moved domains successful aboriginal 2021—a migration truthful well-executed that it made waves successful the SEO community. Add to this that they person a customized CMS to standard their SEO efforts, and you person a marque whose SEO strategy deserves investigation.

In this one-of-a-kind lawsuit study, we’ll research 5 reasons wherefore Wise’s SEO strategy rocks:

1. Landing leafage templates that tin beryllium scaled up
2. A customized CMS built astir their SEO needs
3. Content optimized for featured snippets
4. Multiple ways of attracting and acquiring links
5. Flawlessly migrating millions of pages with a batch of risk

Conducting keyword research is usually the easier portion of creating a content strategy, truthful it’s nary astonishment that Wise reflects what their (potential) customers hunt for with the contented they produce.

The situation comes erstwhile your keyword probe tells you to marque tens of thousands of landing pages. How bash you make and optimize truthful overmuch contented to fertile precocious successful Google? 

Wise tries to beryllium contiguous successful the hunt results passim the full lawsuit journey, and there’s a batch of contented to cover—especially astatine the apical of the funnel.

For example, they person astir 12,000 landing pages astir swift codification combinations targeting US visitors alone:

And it’s not conscionable the swift codes subfolder that has truthful galore landing pages. There are different subfolders with thousands of pages astir things similar currency converters and routing numbers:

These alternatively top-of-the-funnel pages lend to a immense bulk of their integrated postulation crossed aggregate countries and languages. Here’s an illustration from their German traffic:

The instrumentality to creating truthful galore optimized landing pages similar this is to usage templates—and this is what Wise did. They realized that radical searching for circumstantial SWIFT/BIC codes oregon routing numbers wanted precise akin information. The main adaptable was conscionable the codification itself.

From a contented perspective, each they needed was 1 perfectly crafted landing leafage for a circumstantial bank. From there, they could usage the template implicit and implicit for antithetic banks. 

Creating specified a perfectly crafted landing leafage requires large copy, design, UX, and alignment with the search intent—providing each the accusation the visitant mightiness need. An illustration of what searchers are looking for tin beryllium recovered successful their FAQ sections (which besides maximize SEO opportunities via FAQ rich snippets):

All successful all, Wise nailed scaling up their content creation with a absorption connected SEO. Their integrated postulation grows with the fig of indexed pages:

Scaling up contented instauration to specified a grade requires developer resources. You can’t successfully nutrient truthful overmuch contented successful aggregate languages utilizing your modular CMS options.

In this presentation, Fabrizio Ballarini, the idiosyncratic successful complaint of Wise’s integrated growth, outlines immoderate of the astir important SEO features of their customized CMS, Lienzo: 

• Using templates and boilerplates to make thousands of caller landing pages quickly
• Managing due internal linking
• Generating and updating meta tags and structured data at scale
• Handling hreflang attributes and canonical tags generation and updates
• Cloning, updating, oregon deleting existing pages at scale
• Testing changes successful a section situation earlier pushing them to production
• Built-in level monitoring to observe and hole issues ASAP
• Built-in divided investigating capabilities for SEO experiments
• Seamless integration with databases and APIs
• Assigning idiosyncratic roles, truthful squad members person entree to each the tools they need

That mightiness beryllium a batch to ingest, truthful here’s an illustration from its UI:

While it whitethorn look risky to propulsion truthful overmuch contented from the method constituent of view, Wise managed to prime up much and much involvement from Googlebot over time:

Getting Google connected their broadside present mightiness person been a spot challenging. First, each azygous leafage had to beryllium unique, valuable, and align with the hunt intent. Then they had to update interior links and sitemaps to guarantee bully crawlability and timely indexing.

Lienzo seemingly does each of this overmuch amended than immoderate out-of-the-box CMS.

One happening that amazed maine astir Wise’s SEO show is however galore featured snippets they own. But it wasn’t wide whether this is due to the fact that they bash a overmuch amended occupation than their competitors oregon whether it’s conscionable the quality of concern SERPs. 

So, I looked astatine their competing domains:

Then I chose a fewer of them with mostly precocious integrated postulation and tons of overlapping keywords. I wanted to cognize however galore “featured snippet triggering” keywords they fertile for successful the apical 10 and however galore of those they own.

Here’s however I did this successful Ahrefs’ Site Explorer for each website that I wanted to investigate:

1. Entered the domain
2. Navigated to the Organic Keywords 2.0 report
3. Filtered for keywords successful positions 1–10
4. Filtered for keywords that trigger featured snippets, wrote down the fig of results
5. Filtered for keywords that trigger featured snippets the domain owns, wrote down the fig of results (this measurement is pictured below)

And present are the results. Wise dominates successful some implicit and comparative numbers:

It’s wide that Wise does featured snippet optimization really well, and it drives them rather a batch of traffic. I’m alternatively amazed that their integrated competitors don’t bash a amended occupation with specified straightforward opportunities similar this one, for example:

You mightiness beryllium wondering however you tin marque a array basal out. It indispensable beryllium a lottery which array Google chooses for the featured snippet, right? Well, here’s what the array looks similar connected Chase’s website:

They placed it wrong a collapsible artifact that’s collapsed by default. It’s not the main contented connected the page. Plus, the array could person amended file names, and it wouldn’t wounded mentioning that those are so Chase routing numbers determination successful the discourse of the table.

Wise does each of this better, annotates the array with a wide title, and interlinks each enactment with its respective landing page:

I’m not saying specified optimization would guarantee getting a featured snippet, but Wise deserves it here.

Recommended reading: How to Optimize for Google’s Featured Snippets

Even the champion on-page and method SEO setup, processes, and execution doesn’t guarantee occurrence successful the SERPs if your contented lacks a coagulated backlink profile. Link building is the portion of SEO that you tin power the least, truthful it’s ever a bully thought to employment aggregate link-building approaches and tactics. Wise besides does an fantabulous occupation at this.

Product-led companies people pull links

Your champion link-building plus is arguably thing you don’t power overmuch arsenic an SEO: a genuinely invaluable and fashionable product. This often comes with a beardown brand. I, myself, americium a satisfied Wise customer, and I knew astir them agelong earlier I converted.

Having the champion merchandise successful the manufacture allows you to people physique a beardown backlink illustration without actively gathering links via outreach. In fact, Wise didn’t person an SEO squad until 2015 and they’ve managed to people large links with conscionable immoderate PR activities and advertising.

Reaching a Domain Rating (DR) of 75 with nary SEO successful the squad is truly impressive:

Use of originative PR campaigns

When researching however Wise grew into the institution it is today, I encountered galore examples of them utilizing great PR campaigns to get large sum and links.

Wise PR campaigns scope from advocating what they basal for successful a reasonably modular way:

To axenic PR stunts that besides fortify their positioning:

These PR stunts got them immoderate fantabulous links early on:

It’s wide that PR and advertizing helped them physique a beardown marque and nexus illustration earlier they started taking SEO seriously:

Referral & affiliate programs arsenic main acquisition channels

Wise’s incentivizes their users to invitation friends with a monetary bonus, and this became 1 of their main acquisition channels early on:

Wise besides has an affiliate programme that incentivizes website owners to gain commissions by sharing their affiliate links with their audience.

Sure, the SEO worth of referral oregon affiliate links is questionable astatine best. Wise presently has adjacent to 9,000 affiliate-related backlinks with nary nexus attributes, which should technically walk PageRank:

If we (Ahrefs) tin easy place specified links, I’m definite Google tin too. They apt devalue oregon wholly disqualify these links successful presumption of PageRank.

But the constituent present is different. A by-product of radical sharing referral and affiliate links is much modular links and coverage. The bigger your referral and affiliate programs are, the much you reap the benefits. There’s a snowball effect to it.

Migrating a ample website to a caller domain is simply a daunting task connected its own. Add to that a immense lawsuit basal that relies connected your work 24/7 to grip their money, and you’ve got a situation that would accent retired any SEO.

Wise presently has implicit 4 cardinal indexed URLs successful Google, and the fig volition inactive beryllium apt going up arsenic they migrated from transferwise.com not truthful agelong agone (March 2021):

They managed to successfully transportation their integrated postulation without immoderate noticeable losses to their caller domain wrong 4 months of the migration. If you’re caller to website migrations, this is an fantabulous effect due to the fact that galore migrations extremity up losing a coagulated chunk of integrated traffic.

Here’s the integrated postulation graph for transferwise.com:

And here’s however that translated to wise.com:

Migrating millions of pages, keeping your work up during the process, and not losing postulation due to the fact that of it is simply a success. But adjacent if you get everything right, you tin inactive brushwood issues that are hard to explicate and fix:

2 months since the @Wise domain migration, Google decided to scale and fertile a URL that is: 1) canonicalised 2) parameterised, 3) 301 redirects to the caller domain and 4) meant for different marketplace (en-US erstwhile we person en-GB available)🤯 Any ideas what could beryllium incorrect @JohnMu? 🙏 pic.twitter.com/uIOWuwNN4d

— Lucia Lecesne (@LumiSionnain) May 4, 2021

Fabrizio provided further insights astir their migration mentation successful this Twitter thread:

As immoderate mightiness person noticed we didn’t redirect the full domain connected time 1 but we enactment https://t.co/sWmD3ONZzx unrecorded adjacent to https://t.co/jZmGpMuK2e

During the past week oregon truthful we past performed a clump of tests to support our existing customers moving to https://t.co/sWmD3ONZzx https://t.co/9Oto7KmQHC pic.twitter.com/INSrjufD44

— Fabrizio Ballarini — Hiring wise.jobs (@Pechnet) March 2, 2021

Two bits of proposal stood retired to me:

1. Properly pass your users and assemblage astir an upcoming domain migration. This was particularly important for Wise owed to the quality of their business. Suddenly landing connected a caller blog domain is not comparable to logging into your wealth relationship connected a antithetic domain without knowing astir that successful advance.
2. Test your redirects connected a smaller portion of your domain and show server logs to recognize however crawlers behave. This is decidedly bully signifier earlier you 301 (redirect) the whole thing. 

Final thoughts

Wise stands retired successful presumption of however invested they are successful SEO crossed teams. This highlights the value of brushed skills successful SEO. You request to properly pass the worth of SEO and your needs with others successful the enactment to succeed.

I encountered a fewer much aspects I could person discussed here, but the 5 supra were the astir absorbing and inspiring for me. If you person immoderate questions, ideas, oregon possibly adjacent requests to analyse the SEO of different companies, consciousness escaped to ping maine connected Twitter.