Building and growing a mortgage business requires a lot of effort. Not only are you focusing on individual client loans, but also ensuring a smooth transaction process. Alongside the operations, you have to allocate your focus and resources to marketing. Building brand awareness isn’t easy, especially when you need homeowners to recall your brand the minute they think about their home-financing needs. So you’re using your creative juices to build online content to educate people about the home buying and financing process. At the same time, your biggest challenge as a mortgage broker involves dealing with a consistent new client stream each month.
Keeping this in mind, it’s very frustrating to watch your competitors thrive online, generating more leads and reviews, even when you’re doing everything right. So what are you missing? The key ingredient in establishing an online presence: Search Engine Optimization (SEO). In the case of mortgage companies, local SEO strategies and tracking campaign results are the most effective method.
What is Local SEO for Mortgages?
Local Search Engine Optimization also called local search engine marketing, is optimizing your website to make sure that people can visit you in real life. It is specifically designed for local businesses that do not profit off of establishing a widespread online presence. Rather it targets people in the same geographical area, which is why the rule of thumb is that it’s always easier if you have a physical address in the city or region. However, if you are not physically present in the area your business is serving, you can optimize by creating content specific to the region. While these may be seemingly irrelevant to your business, they greatly help in improving your local SEO.
How Can SEO Help Your Mortgage, Loan Officer, or Small Business?
With emerging trends in online search and consumer behavior, SEO is becoming increasingly essential for the growth of your business. Customers have evolved in their preference of online and offline shopping experience, and therefore your online marketing strategy should adapt to the changing customer buyer journey.
The bonus point that local SEO offers is that it helps your mortgage services at the exact time that local customers are searching for them online. Through a combination of the most up-to-date on-page and off-page strategies, we can produce the best results for your mortgage business. If you’re confused about how crucial this ranking is, think about the billions of searches processed by Google every day. How often to users go beyond the first few pages? That means that if you’re not on the first 2 pages of Google, your business or website virtually doesn’t exist. That’s millions of potential customers looking for mortgage companies lost every day just because they don’t get a chance to see your business, while your competition is getting all the leads because their website has a good ranking on Google.
The bottom line is that no matter how many things you’re doing right in your business, and how unique your value proposition is as compared to your competitor if it’s hidden from the sight of consumers, there’s no point. Therefore, it’s important that you get the help your website needs to push through the competition and show consumers what your business has to offer
Top 4 SEO Techniques to Help Your Mortgage Business
1. Google My Business Profile
Regardless of whether you’re a local mortgage broker company or multiple locations, your Google My Business profile is a key aspect of your SEO strategy. Having a Google My Business Profile is a must-have for every business. This is because then your business profile is optimized and displayed on Google Maps during online searches in which Google deems local businesses to be the best results. If a user clicks on your business name, they will get a complete profile of your business including address, contact number, and reviews, which is ample information to get a customer to visit your store, or contact you.
It’s very simple to set up and claim your business profile. In some cases, if you search your business, Google gives you the option of claiming it. It’s very important to make sure that all the information is accurate, as nearly $10.3 million are lost each year by businesses due to incorrect or missing information. Its also important to update your profile on a regular basis, whether they are special hours on holidays or customer reviews.
2. Keyword and Website Optimization
Keyword research and optimization are critical in boosting the SEO of your website. Your prime focus should be your core landing pages, including the homepage. Since you want to focus on capturing local traffic, your keywords will be localized based on the search intent of potential customers.
It is advised that you should optimize a website page with a theme of keywords. For example, the refinance page should have all the local queries about home refinance. The home page can be optimized for general keywords such as mortgage companies and mortgage brokers.
Here are some of the keywords to consider:
Mortgage + area
Mortgage broker + area
Mortgage companies in + area
Mortgage lender + area
Home loans + area
Home refinance + area
Va loan + area
First time home buyer + area
Your website should be on top of Google when someone searches for these queries in your area
3. Having Positive Reviews Online
Online reviews are important for SEO, but also from a consumer perspective. This is because reputation is a huge influence on buying decisions. While some businesses rely on families and friends for reviews, authentic customer reviews have a greater impact on your business. These reviews need to be updated throughout the year, as the algorithm recognizes this. Good customer reviews are a product of diligence and excellent and consistent customer service. This includes Google reviews and reviews on Yelp!
4. Citations and links
Links that direct people to your website from other authoritative websites are a strong ranking factor for Google and are called “inbound links”. This essentially means that third party websites are giving a vote of confidence for your website, which consumers consider more authentic and unbiased. In the care of local SEO, links from local websites indicate to Google that your business is relevant for a particular geographical area.
Citation is also a key ingredient that you want to include on your website, particularly on the Contact Us page as well as in the footer. You can then build citations across the web through listings in relevant directories of three broad categories. These citations include your business name, address, and phone number.
Key metrics to use to analyze your Mortgage Company’s Local SEO improvement
1. Check Rankings On Search Engines
Search out keywords in all the cities where your mortgage company is located. So if there are branches in New York, Texas, or Chicago it is important to search for Mortgage companies in New York, Mortgage companies in Texas, and Mortgage companies in Chicago. Carry out the same practice with synonyms for the keywords and phrases as well. It is important to maintain a record of these and check up on them on a regular basis. Frequently reviewing the performance of keywords, and managing the local SEO plan accordingly will offer good feedback in terms of your optimized website’s performance.
2. Ranking On Third-Party Search
While keeping track of how your website performs in organic searches is significant, it is important to dive into the finer details. Searching for keywords on third party websites is important to assess how your mortgage company ranks across various websites like Yelp. Google tracks links, engagement, and references on third-party websites or Facebook, so optimizing your performance on third party sites also improves local SEO performance.
3. Citation Consistency Across The Board
Any online mention of the name, address, and contact number of your mortgage company is referred to as a local citation. These citations occur on local business websites, apps, and social platforms. They help internet users find out about your mortgage business and improve local search engine rankings. It is important to maintain the accuracy of data across all citations. Multiple online tools are available to discover and review online citations of your business.
If the business information is inaccurate or is not updated across search engines and data aggregators, the user experience will greatly get affected. Unpleasant user experiences can result in bad reviews of your mortgage business and really affect the success of your local SEO efforts.
4. Number of Reviews per Location And Average Review Ratings
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Reviews build trust among consumers and affect how they perceive your business. They also have a direct impact on rankings. It is important to secure positive reviews.
Evaluating the reviews and ratings on a regular basis can boost overall search rankings.