Santander looks to boost online presence through natural search

London – Leading international bank, Santander, has decided to boost its online presence by engaging award winning search marketing agency Greenlight. The agency has been appointed to develop and manage Santander’s natural search (SEO) activity in the UK. The bank has tasked Greenlight with increasing traffic to its website while raising awareness of its products and services through dramatically improving its Google rankings.

Greenlight had worked with Alliance & Leicester for over three years until it was taken over by the Santander Group. Santander has made the decision to retain Greenlight’s SEO expertise; thus transferring the success produced for Alliance & Leicester to the newly formed, Santander UK plc. Santander carefully selected Greenlight following a four way procurement process, in which the search firm was chosen over other agencies such as Tamar, Carat and Bigmouthmedia.

Santander’s Senior eMarketing Manager, Amanda Mayes, comments: “I have no doubt that Greenlight’s dedication and enthusiasm for our business will lead to continued campaign success. Greenlight has proven its expertise through the incredible results its SEO campaign delivered for Alliance & Leicester. Over the pitching process, it has demonstrated its experience, strength and ability to resolve complex issues, underpinning our decision to continue to work with Greenlight as we move to improve Santander’s online visibility and sales. We are delighted with the new strategy and Greenlight’s ingenious solutions to maximise our search rankings”

Aprofile - Banco Santander (SAN.MC, STD.N, BNC.LN) is a retail and commercial bank, based in Spain, with presence in 10 main markets. At the end of 2009, Santander was the largest bank in the euro zone by market capitalization and third in the world by profit. Founded in 1857, Santander had EUR 1,245 billion in managed funds at the end of 2009. Following the acquisition of Sovereign Bancorp. of the U.S. in January 2009, Santander has 90 million customers, 13,660 branches – more than any other international bank – and 170,000 employees. It is the largest financial group in Spain and Latin America, with leading positions in the United Kingdom and Portugal and a broad presence in Europe through its Santander Consumer Finance arm. In 2009, Santander registered €8,943 million in net attributable profit.

In the UK, Santander operates two retail businesses – Santander, which was formed out of the Abbey and Bradford & Bingley retail network, and Alliance & Leicester. Together they have over 1300 branches, around 4,500 cash machines and they provide a full range of retail and corporate banking services to 25 million customers.

Alliance & Leicester will become known as Santander by the end of 2010.

Profile - Greenlight is an independent specialist SEO and PPC consulting and technology firm, the largest of its kind in Europe and the fastest growing. With over 100 blue-chip clients including Vodafone UK, Thomas Cook, Interflora, Co-operative Financial Services and ghd, and a multitude of awards to its name, Greenlight is a leader in the search marketing space, and is recognised worldwide for its commitment to delivering record ROI for its clients and investing in the future of search.

In addition, Greenlight is considered the premier thought leader in the sector, publishing widely read industry reports, original research, speaking at most trade events, and delivering a highly respected search training programme in conjunction with the IDM. Greenlight was founded in 2001 and is headquartered in London, with offices in New York. [www.greenlightsearch.com].