Looking for advice on mortgage SEO and lead generation? I get questions all the time about how to get a mortgage website to show up on page 1 of Google.
In this article, I’m going to run through some thigns that you might not know about Google’s search algorithms and give you advice on steps to take that will boost your ranking on Google.
1) The Keyword You Want to Rank For Must Appear on Your Website.
What I mean by this is that, if I search on Google for “USDA loans” and your website doesn’t have the words “USDA loans” on it, then you won’t show up. This sounds obvious, but there are a lot of businesses that forget to include a complete list of products on their website. I discussed this in a another article on my blog.
It’s also extremely important to use words that are similar to the keywords throughout your site. When I build campaigns in AdWords, I usually start by looking at the websites drop-down menu so I can build campaigns out by pages, particularly product pages.
2) Create Unique Pages for Each of Your Products
Search engines list sites that are entirely about a keyword above web pages that just mention the keyword. If you want to dramatically increase the number of people who find your website on Google, you will have to create individual pages for each of your products or services— rather than having one page that lists them all. I create separate product pages for each and every one of my clients, unless they come to me and already have it built out. Using this technique has gotten every one of my clients on Page 1 of Google for one or more keywords from their list.
3) Search Results Are Not the Same Everywhere. Localize.
Do you want to show up locally? Or, do you want to show up nationally? Of course this depends on the states you’re licensed in, where your strengths are, where your weaknesses are, and a thousand other factors, but it’s important that you understand that. Google brings up different search results based on your location. So, it can sometimes be easier to show up when local consumers search, but more difficult if you want to show up nationally. A big reason for that is that when you’re running a campaign nationally, you’re going to run into Wells Fargo and Quicken Loans and they each spend well over $20 million a year on AdWords, you can’t really compete.
Let’s say you’ve decided you want to focus on your local market. Next, you have to optimize your website so that you’re positioned as knowledgeable in your market, you have the keywords on your website and your meta data. To show up locally, list the areas you serve on your website. You can’t beat Quicken Loans for “mortgage loans New York”, but you can beat them for “mortgage loans Westchester county” if your website is plastered with phrases like “Westcheter’s #1 Mortgage Lender” or “#1 in Westchester, NY”.
4) Include Keywords in the Headings and Sub-Headings on Each of Your Web Pages.
Search engines typically will give more weight to the words in the headings on your web pages than to the words in the rest of the text. So, you should use headings with keywords in them, rather than generic headings like “welcome to our website.”
5) Utilize Every Internet Property You Own
Google doesn’t only list websites. There a lot of other things that show up when you search.
For example, maps? Those addresses are from the Google My Business directory. Listing your business on this directory is extremely important. You are losing business if you do not have this set up.
When you do set up a Google My Business account, which I do for a lot of my clients, it’s important you don’t skip out on the details. If you’re a loan originator use that category. If you’re a credit union, that’s the category you should be listed in. You can go on Google Maps and search for your competitors, look at what category they’re listed as and select the same.
Google search results can also contain videos uploaded to YouTube. One search engine strategy to consider to create a series of videos where you answer frequently asked questions about your industry. You can them upload these videos to YouTube and post them on your social pages and website.
If you follow these instructions, your search engine ranking will improve. Of course, there are some factors that I did not go over here in this article, but are covered in depth on other articles on this website. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions about improving your ranking, whether you want to do paid or organic search.