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Article's Content
Most marketers still think content is just about cranking out articles. But the brands that are truly winning at SEO? They’re thinking differently.
Take SoFi, whose calculator subfolder has quickly become one of their most successful traffic-generating assets. Since launching in early 2024, this collection of 26 financial tools has netted them over 70,000 monthly organic visits and 232 top 3 keyword positions.
That’s not a typo — 70,000 visits from calculators alone.
The truth is that interactive tools solve immediate problems for users in ways that traditional content simply can’t. And in the ultra-competitive FinTech space, where keyword difficulty scores regularly exceed 70, SoFi has found a way to stand out.
In this analysis, we’ll explore why calculators are essential to modern content strategy, how SoFi executes its approach with impressive results and the tactics behind its two most successful calculator pages that drive 78% of the subfolder’s traffic.
Why SoFi Joined the FinTech Calculator Battle
So, why is SoFi creating calculator tools anyway?
The answer is simple: finance calculator tools have massive search volume and represent high-value traffic. Despite being highly competitive (many keywords have a KD over 70), the potential rewards are too significant to ignore:
- Compound interest calculator = 536k monthly search volume
- Investment calculator = 301k monthly search volume
- Retirement calculator = 193k monthly search volume
- Interest calculator = 177k monthly search volume
SoFi isn’t alone in recognizing the opportunity. Other major FinTech players like NerdWallet and Bankrate have heavily invested in this strategy. NerdWallet maintains nearly 2,000 pages containing “calculator” in the URL, while Bankrate offers over 135 calculator tools.
Free tools like calculators are critical components for major online brands because they address specific user pain points and deliver immediate value.
While blog posts inform readers, tools actually solve problems — transforming content marketing from passive information delivery into active problem-solving that builds trust, demonstrates expertise, and can even nudge users toward core offerings.
Industry leader Shopify demonstrates the power of this approach. Their collection of free tools generates over 2 million annual visits and has earned 188,029 backlinks — a testament to the effectiveness of interactive content in building a sustainable traffic engine.
A Closer Look at SoFi’s Growing Calculator Subfolder
Since launching in early 2024, SoFi’s calculator subfolder has quickly become one of their most successful content initiatives. The subfolder consists of 26 tools that help users quickly complete different financial calculations, and the results are impressive:
- 70,000+ organic monthly visits
- 232 top 3 keyword positions
- $55,000 in monthly traffic value
What makes SoFi’s calculator strategy particularly interesting is its diversified approach. The subfolder consists of two calculator tools, each serving a distinct strategic purpose.
Financial Calculation Tools
The first category comprises broad financial calculation tools covering high-yield savings, APY, and compounding interest.
These pages contain calculators related to various financial situations and provide multiple benefits for both SoFi and its site visitors:
- They make it easy for people to complete complex financial calculations
- They educate users by breaking down the different variables involved in the calculations
- They attract visitors who are more likely to be interested in SoFi’s core offerings (banking, investing, budgeting, loans)
Salary Conversion Tools
The second category focuses on salary converters — tools that simply convert an hourly rate to an annual salary and vice versa.
For example:
- “$25 an hour is how much a year?”
- “$60,000 a year is how much an hour?”
These pages are primarily an SEO play that helps SoFi rank for numerous low-competition search terms about converting between hourly rates and annual salaries. While each financial calculator page requires a unique tool, the conversion pages can smartly reuse the same two calculators with just different input variables:
- Hourly rate to salary converter
- Salary to hourly rate converter
This efficiency allows SoFi to create dozens of targeted pages with minimal development resources — a brilliant optimization of their content production process.
While both calculator types serve strategic purposes, financial calculators are significantly outperforming their salary conversion counterparts.
The top-performing tools in the SoFi calculator arsenal both fall into the financial service-related category, with the High Yield Savings Calculator leading the pack by attracting nearly 30,000 visitors every month — representing approximately $30,000 in monthly traffic value.
The high search volume and number of visits to this tool are great signs for SoFi. These metrics signal that plenty of rate-conscious consumers are interested in seeing the impact that high-yield savings accounts offer.
How SoFi Selects Which Calculators to Create
Both calculator types serve important roles in SoFi’s content strategy, but they target different stages of the customer journey and keyword landscapes.
Financial calculators let users quickly solve problems across banking, investing, and debt consolidation while positioning SoFi to pitch relevant services. These tools help them rank for various “calculator” SERPs, placing them in direct competition with other established financial content powerhouses.
Salary conversions, on the other hand, give users quick answers to common salary questions and allow SoFi to rank for high search volume but low keyword difficulty terms. Unlike the financial calculator keywords, salary conversions are much less competitive, with monthly search volumes in the 10k-20k range.
The initial investment in this subfolder appears to have focused on financial service calculation pages, but in the second half of 2024, SoFi diversified their content marketing mix to capture the low-hanging fruit of salary conversion queries.
The strategic shift helps them build up the subfolder while avoiding direct competition with big FinTech and financial service teams for the more saturated calculator terms.
As the strategy continues to unfold, it will be interesting to track how these different calculator categories perform over time.
How the Top 2 Calculator Pages Drive 78% of the Subfolder Traffic
The two top-performing pages in SoFi’s calculator subfolder are the High Yield Savings Account calculator and the Annual Percentage Yield calculator, which bring in a combined 58,000 organic visits per month — an impressive 78% of all the organic traffic for SoFi’s calculator pages.
For perspective, the remaining 24 pages only bring in 14,000 monthly visits.
Interestingly, the top keywords for these pages have high search volume (APY calculator = 63k, HYSA calculator = 28k), but aren’t as popular as other terms like compound interest calculator (536k).
So, what makes these two pages so successful?
The HYSA and APY calculators employ several powerful on-page SEO tactics that set them apart:
1) Calculator Tool
The calculators are positioned at the top of the page, just under the main header and a short introduction. This prime placement ensures that the main attraction — the tool itself — is easy to find and has a simple, user-friendly design.
The calculators are pre-populated with example figures (e.g., $10,000 initial deposit, time to grow = 3 years), so visitors can immediately see the impact of having a high-yield savings account with a high APY — coincidentally, a financial service that SoFi offers.
2) Dropdown Calculator Definitions
Directly below the calculators is a glossary-style section explaining each of the equation’s primary variables (inputs and outputs).
This section makes it easy for readers to learn more about financial products and how they work while helping SoFi include relevant secondary keywords on the page (e.g., initial deposit, monthly contribution, time to grow, annual percentage yield).
3) Related Questions Section
After the definitions section, SoFi includes multiple sections with H2s and explanatory text that answer “How to” and “What is”-type questions. For the High Yield Savings calculator page, this section covers topics like:
- “How To Use the High-Yield Savings Calculator”
- “What is APY?”
- “How to Compare Savings Accounts”
Similar to the calculator definitions, these sections provide additional context that helps users understand the importance of their calculations.
4) Frequently Asked Questions
Finally, the SoFi team doubles down on search optimization by adding an FAQ section below the Related Questions. While this might seem redundant at first glance, it’s another opportunity to optimize calculator pages by answering questions people commonly search for on Google.
The concise answers also make these FAQs ideal for featured snippets or AI Overviews, positioning SoFi to maintain visibility as search results continue to evolve.
Now, all that’s left is for the SoFi team to apply this formula to all the existing pages in their calculator subfolder and any future pages they add to it.
Learning from SoFi’s Calculator Content Strategy
The quick success of SoFi’s new calculator subfolder is a great example of the traffic-building power of creating free tools. Their example offers several valuable lessons for brands in any industry:
- Target high-value, high-intent keywords: Calculators naturally align with specific user needs, positioning your brand as a solution at the moment of consideration.
- Diversify your approach: SoFi maximizes its keyword coverage by creating both highly competitive, core-service calculators and more accessible, tangentially related tools.
- Optimize for user experience: The best-performing calculators are easy to use, prominently positioned, and deliver immediate value.
- Support tools with education: Comprehensive explanations and related content improve SEO and build trust with users who need help understanding financial concepts.
- Scale efficiently: Finding ways to reuse calculator functionality (as with the salary conversion tools) allows for greater keyword coverage with minimal additional development.
As search evolves toward more interactive experiences, calculators and other free tools will likely become even more valuable in content marketing strategies. Brands that invest in these assets, now following SoFi’s proven approach, will position themselves to capitalize on this trend for years ahead.
If you’re ready to operationalize your content marketing efforts, get in touch with us today.
