Leaders & losers in finance/payroll SEO

Whatever business you’re in, it pays to keep tabs on the main players in your industry. In a highly competitive sector like SaaS, you also need to know what your biggest rivals are doing right. Specifically, what they’re doing right in terms of SEO.

That means finding out who’s getting traffic for relevant keywords, and why.  You can start by visualizing your competitors on a Share of Value graph—but what exactly is share of value and how does it guide your SEO efforts? Let’s find out.

 

Introduction to finance/payroll SaaS

Finance/payroll SaaS is software that helps users manage their business finances. It may include accounting, invoicing, point-of-sale, and HR features. As with other forms of SaaS, the software is sold as a service, via monthly or yearly subscription. It’s owned and maintained by the provider, with no need to install on-premises equipment.

Current state of the market

As SaaS in general continues to grow, there are plenty of vendors offering this type of finance/payroll software. The current market size in this niche is $141.77 billion and is expected to grow to $203.88 billion by 2027. That’s a CAGR of 9.51%.

Some of the key players in the market by revenue are Oracle, Xero, SAP SE, Intuit, Microsoft, and Sage. With increasing demand for all-in-one services, a number of vendors are offering combined accounting and payroll tools. We’re also seeing more integrations with ecommerce solutions.

Other current growth drivers include the continued move to remote and hybrid work, originally initiated by the COVID pandemic. Even smaller businesses have adopted digital technologies that allow remote access to their financial records and systems.

The demand for enhanced customer experiences (CX) is another driver of SaaS adoption. According to a Microsoft Dynamics 365 survey, 86% of financial services firms assign 25% or more of their overall budget to CX, while 45% assign 50% or more.

Looking ahead

To meet those security challenges, we can expect further advances in encryption and secure multi-party computing. With robust data protection in place, finance companies can tap into more behavioral data and even partner with non-financial vendors to enable seamless customer experiences.

Financial services as a feature of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is likely to be a growth driver in SaaS, too, helping businesses to manage day-to-day processes as well as finances. 

In the UK specifically, vendors like Xero, Intuit, and Sage are also getting ready for HMRC’s Making Tax Digital (MTD) initiative with specific tools and guidance for customers. 

Do you know your competitors? 

As a SaaS business in the finance/payroll industry, you may think it’s easy to identify your biggest competitors. But what you really need is hard evidence to show you the true picture for your sector.

This is where a Share of Value Graph comes in. It looks at things from a much broader perspective, and allows you to see exactly who is dominating in the niche. Plus, it’s in an easy-to-understand visual format.

Share of Value

A Share of Value graph reveals the proportional monthly organic search value for a set of keywords, and shows where various domains are ranking for those words.

We refer to this as traffic value. By taking a particular keyword and visualizing it against your top rivals, you’ll be able to identify the opportunities in front of your own domain.

To measure the traffic value of a keyword, we use this calculation:

Total monthly traffic  x  Estimated average cost per click = Monthly traffic value

As an example, let’s say the keyword “Salary Calculator” had 7600 monthly clicks and a CPC of $14:

76 x $14 = traffic value of $106,400.

Next, we divide this figure between the domains in the SERP that are ranking for this keyword, and plot them on a graph. A higher ranking denotes a larger share of traffic value.

However, we’re not only measuring each domain’s position across a number of keywords. The Share of Value graph also ties those positions to actual ROI—revealing the amount you’d otherwise have had to spend on PPC ads. 

Finance/payroll SaaS Share of Value 

 

To create this graph, we took a selection of keywords relating to finance and payroll, such as “salary calculator”, “net vs gross”, and “payroll tax”. The combined monthly organic search value for the top nine competitors was $3,515,330.

We plotted these companies on the graph according to their revenue. Their individual shares can be seen on the right of the image.

But the SoV graph doesn’t tell us everything. To discover why these companies are performing well from an SEO point of view, we need to get into the specifics. For that, we’ll need a Single Page Analysis—so stay tuned to learn what that means.

Who is currently doing well?

As you can see from our SoV graph, the top four players in the finance/payroll sector are ADP, SquareUp, Paychex, and SmartAsset.

ADP is top of the tree with 5.23% of the SERP. The monthly organic value of the keywords captured by ADP is $183,874. These figures put them miles ahead of their rivals—the next nearest challenger, SquareUp, has 1.47% of the SERP. Paychex and Gusto are even further off.

So, why is ADP smashing it? We can get a good idea by looking at their ahrefs data. This shows that the domain has a strong hub and spoke pillar structure to their content, an enormous and authoritative backlink structure, and strong content production and optimization frameworks.

Consistency and momentum are key: ADP continuously produces content, and is able to build huge backlink profiles off the back of this. 

Single Page Analysis 

A Single Page Analysis (SPA) digs deeper into the insights revealed by the SoV graph, in order to understand who’s dominating the industry from an SEO perspective. It’s a visual comparison of a target page Vs. the top SERP competitors from the SoV bubble.

By comparing how the target page’s SEO ranking factors match up to those of domains in the top 10 SERP positions, you can discover the reasons behind your main competitors’ success. You can also measure efficient ROI gains within target keyword lists.

SPA involves a granular dissection of a keyword from the SoV graph, looking at a number of considerations related to content, links, and technical SEO. For instance, our team doesn’t only look at the number of backlinks—we consider the total number of do-follow backlinks from high domain ratings.

The analysis allows SEOs to assess and understand the following:

• The factors influencing ranking potential
• The resources required to make the target page rank competitively (which tells you if there’s ROI to be had in boosting that keyword’s ranking). 

Single Page Analysis of “payroll processing” (finance/payroll)

This Single Page Analysis focuses on one of the keywords from the Share of Value graph. The table contains eight companies currently ranking for “payroll processing”.

From an SEO point of view, the data reveals that ADP, Intuit, and Paylocity are taking the lead. We can see from the average DR (domain rating) of 84 that this is a highly competitive SERP.

All but one of the top pages are informational articles, with an average of 2944 words—so that’s what the target page should be aiming for. The only listicle, in at #9, has more than 7000 words of content (which is bringing up that word count average). So, if you’re going to produce a listicle, you’ll have to write a lot more content.

 

As for total referring domains, the average is 96. ADP is some way higher than that with 146, which suggests that this factor is necessary for your page to rank highly. 

 

So, taking all the SPA data into account, what do you need to do in order to get a new page into the top three results in the USA?

Although several of the competitor pages have lower word counts, ADP’s has 4747—so you should aim for around 5,000 words to get your page up there. You’ll need 10-15 backlinks from sites with a rating of >50DR to beat your competitors for this keyword, too.

Don’t forget internal linking, either—specifically in-content links. While the #1 domain has 45, the others aren’t too hot on this. The average is only 10 in-content links, so you should be able to improve on this quite easily.

Finance/payroll SoV takeaways

Before we take a look at the key metrics we use for Single Page Analysis, let’s recap what we’ve learned from this SoV and SPA.

The Share of Value graph tells us that ADP are the biggest players in this space. Looking at the SPA, we can see why. The domain clearly understands the intent of the keyword, and has a very strong backlink profile. The page is also second highest in the top 10 in terms of content word count.

ADP has some work to do from a technical perspective, but this is a minor point in comparison with the larger content and link-building pieces. 

Key metrics and why they are important

Our SPA looks at a wide range of key metrics for technical, onsite, and offsite SEO, from word count, to page speed, to branded anchor ratio. 

All of these have an impact on rankings. Analysis of the highest-ranking pages shows what they’re doing right, and what you need to do to get ahead.

Let’s define each of the metrics and explain their importance:

SERP rank position

Definition: A page’s ranking based on its appearance on the SERP results.

Importance: The higher a page ranks, the more organic traffic it will receive. Searchers very rarely venture beyond page one, and pages in the top three positions get the lion’s share of clicks. 

DR

Definition: Stands for Domain Rating, and is a ranking score up to 100, determining a site’s authority in the eyes of SEO tools like Ahrefs.

Importance: DR demonstrates the relative strength of a website’s backlink profile. It can be useful for assessing the viability of competing for the same keywords as a rival’s site and in judging domains as potential backlink sources.

Word count

Definition: The number of words in an article/page.

Importance: Word count isn’t a specific ranking factor, but longer-form content does tend to rank better. The more content, the easier it is for search engines to understand what a page is about. Longer-form content (as long as it’s relevant and useful) also provides a better user experience. 

Page type

Definition: Type of page depending on content (e.g., informational, listicle, features).

Importance: Understanding different page types helps you ensure the page is correctly tailored to its audience and their search intent. For instance, a listicle page would suit those looking to compare products but not top-of-funnel searchers wanting general information. 

Page speed score (1-100)

Definition: An automated score showing how fast the page’s contents are displayed.

Importance: Page speed is increasingly crucial to SEO. Slow loading pages provide a poor user experience and typically have high bounce rates (searchers won’t wait long). Both those things negatively impact ranking.

Web Vitals status

Definition: Google’s assessment of a page’s overall technical performance, as measured within Google Search Console.

Importance: Web Vitals status is a quantitative measure of the site’s technical performance and, therefore, its user experience.

Total internal (keyword anchor)

Definition: Determined using Ahrefs, this is the total number of dofollow internal backlinks with the target keyword as the anchor.

Importance: This metric helps you assess your general internal linking strategy. When you link to another page on your site, you give that page link authority. Therefore, your best performing pages should have more links to the pages you most want to rank.

Total in content links

Definition: Total number of internal backlinks inserted in content.

Importance: This metric helps you assess your general internal linking strategy. When you link to another page on your site, you give that page link authority. Therefore, your best performing pages should have more links to the pages you most want to rank.

Internal links

Definition: Total number of internal backlinks.

Importance: Internal links aren’t always found within your pages’ content—they also include navigation links, footer links, and more. These also impact UX and how easy your site is to crawl, so it’s important to track and review these links, too.

Total referring domains

Definition: Total number of domains that are giving backlinks to a specific page.

Importance: This is a critical SEO metric. The more (high-quality) referring domains that link to your site, the greater the signal sent to a search engine that your content is trustworthy, valuable, and relevant.

Total dofollow referring domains

Definition: Total number of domains giving dofollow backlinks to a specific page.

Importance: Dofollow backlinks pass on authority from the referring website, while nofollow links do not. Therefore, it’s important to understand the ratio between those types of links, which this metric makes possible.

Total dofollow links +40DR

Definition: Total number of domains giving dofollow backlinks with a DR of >40.

Importance: A dofollow link from a site with a higher domain rating (DR) is more valuable than one with a lower DR. That makes it important to track your dofollow links from those higher authority domains, as well as the total number of links.

New links acquired in last 6 months (+40DR)

Definition: Total number of dofollow backlinks acquired within the last six months from domains with +40DR.

Importance: This helps you to track the growth rate of your backlink profile, which can be important when assessing and tweaking outreach strategy.

Link velocity p/m

Definition: Average number of dofollow backlinks that a page is acquiring per month.

Importance: In general, a higher and increasing link velocity suggests that a page is more popular and respected. 

Total dofollow backlinks

Definition: Total number of backlinks that are dofollow.

Importance: Very similar to the total dofollow referring domains metric, it’s important to measure the number of dofollow backlinks to understand the authority being passed to your site.

Head term exact match

Definition: Total number of backlinks with the exact head term as anchor.

Importance: Anchor text is a ranking factor, so it’s useful to track the number of backlinks using the exact head term your page is targeting, especially in concert with the “head term exact match ratio” metric (see below).

Head term exact match ratio (%)

Definition: The ratio for how many times the head term has been used as an anchor within the entire backlink profile.

Importance: While exact match anchors are useful, an excessive amount may be viewed negatively by search engines as potentially spammy or manipulated links. It’s useful, therefore, to track the ratio of head term exact match anchors in your backlink profile.  

Branded anchors

Definition: Total number of backlinks with the domain’s brand as anchor.

Importance: Branded anchor text is important for building brand recognition online and ensuring a balanced backlink profile.

Branded anchor ratio (%)

Definition: The ratio for how many times the brand is used as an anchor within the entire backlink profile.

Importance: In a similar vein to the above “head term exact match ratio” metric, this one’s importance lies in how it helps you to assess the overall balance of your backlink profile.   

How key metrics can be measured/which tools can be used

As you can see, there are a lot of metrics you need to measure. The good news is, there are plenty of tools you can use. 

For example, Google Search Console incorporates various SEO tools including PageSpeed Insights, Core Web Vitals, and a Links Report.

One of our favorites is Ahrefs, which provides a host of tools including a domain authority checker and a rank tracker for monitoring your rankings over time and against your competitors. It also measures referring domains and dofollow links.

Other well-known tools include Semrush (which also measures Core Web Vitals, internal linking, and page loading speeds) and Moz, which helps you gather link metrics including page authority and backlink numbers. 

To make life easier, we’ve put together a table of tools that can be used to measure the key metrics:

METRIC	TOOLS
SERP rank position	Ahrefs
DR	Ahrefs
Word Count	https://wordcounter.net/
Page Type	na
Page Speed Score (1-100)	https://pagespeed.web.dev/
Web Vitals Status	https://pagespeed.web.dev/
Total Internal (keyword anchor)	Ahrefs
Total In Content links	Ahrefs
Total Internal Links	Ahrefs
Total referring domains	Ahrefs
Total do follow referring domains	Ahrefs
Total do follow links +40DR	Ahrefs
New links acquired in last 6 months (+40DR)	Ahrefs
Link velocity p/m	na
Total do follow backlinks	Ahrefs
Head term exact match	Ahrefs
Branded anchors	Ahrefs
Head term exact match ratio (%)	na
Branded anchor ratio (%)	na