Mortgage Seo - Search Engine Optimization For Mortgage Brokers

Mortgage SEO, or search engine optimization, is the act of improving your mortgage marketing website for better search engine visibility and ranking. This leads directly to increases in website traffic, which (if you have a lead generation strategy in place) translates to an increase in web-based mortgage leads.



All good things, yes?



So here are quick tips for mortgage SEO that will help you improve your mortgage website's search engine ranking:



1.



Add 10 pages of content to your website.

Do some key phrase research and come up with 10 phrases relevant to your products and services. Write a page of content (or pay somebody to) on each of those phrases. Incorporate this new content within your site. You've just increases your potential search engine visibility for those phrases. Not too hard, was it?



Increasing a website's size by adding quality content is one of the easiest, most low-cost strategies for mortgage SEO.



The volume of content on your mortgage website is the one thing you have total control over, so why not take advantage of that for mortgage SEO purposes?



2. Submit a press release online.

When you publish a press release online through a service like PRWeb.com, you have the opportunity to include hyperlinks within your release that link back to your mortgage website. This helps increase your "link popularity," which has a direct influence on your search engine visibility.



You'll also get plenty of exposure through the press release itself. Double benefits!



3. Start a mortgage blog.

If you're serious about mortgage marketing online, you really should launch a mortgage blog. The benefits of blogging are many. It helps you grow your website, acquire inbound links, build your reputation, inform your readers, reinforce your brand … the list goes on. Best of all, blogs are easy to use, even for web novices. If you can type an email, you can publish a mortgage blog.



Conclusion

Do all of the things on this list require an effort on your part? Absolutely. But when it comes to mortgage SEO and search engine ranking, effort is what separates the front-runners from the "also ran" contenders.



* You may republish this article online if you retain the author's byline active hyperlinks below.

Mortgage Seo Is Not Mortgage Lead Generation

Advanced Summary: In this article, I'll explain an important distinction that is often "blurred" in the minds of many mortgage professionals who use the Internet for mortgage marketing purposes. As the title suggests, that distinction is between mortgage SEO (search engine optimization) and mortgage lead generation.



About once a week, I receive a phone call from a potential client asking about my search engine optimization (SEO) services.



At some point, the caller will say something like, "I need search engine optimization because my website does not generate leads."



This is usually when I pause for a brief "lecture" on the difference between SEO and lead generation. The purpose of mortgage SEO is to generate web traffic. That's it. If you were under the impression that mortgage SEO generated leads as well, then I'm sorry to disappoint you



Of course, this doesn't mean that a good mortgage SEO program cannot help you generate leads.



It can surely help you with the lead-generation cause, but only by providing you with traffic from which to generate those leads. In order to realize the full lead-producing potential of your mortgage website, you have to combine SEO with an effective lead-generation program.



If you increase the amount of traffic to a mortgage website with no lead-generation techniques in use, you will more traffic but still no leads. On the other hand, if you increase the amount of traffic to a mortgage website with effective lead generation, the increased traffic will directly correspond to increased leads and inquiries.



Or to state it mathematically:



* False: Web traffic = web leads



* True: Web traffic + lead generation = web leads



Web Traffic is Only an Opportunity



To further clarify the distinction between mortgage SEO, website traffic and lead generation, I often use the analogy of a lemonade stand.



For the sake of this analogy, let's pretend you have set up a lemonade stand beside a busy highway. The problem is, your lemonade stand is situated on a narrow shoulder of the road where cars cannot pull over.



You can imagine the result. Cars whiz by you all day long, but none of them stop. So here you have an endless supply of traffic that you are not capitalizing on. As a result, your lemonade stand is a failure. The traffic is right in front of you, but it might as well be a million miles away.



Now convert that lemonade stand to your mortgage website, and convert the vehicle traffic into web traffic, and you will see my point. Opportunity only favors those who capitalize on it. If your mortgage website has plenty of traffic but does poorly in the lead-generation department, then most of your web traffic will pass right by .



.. like those cars passing the lemonade stand.



Mortgage SEO is a traffic generator. Mortgage lead generation is a lead generator. Though they work together, they are two separate things.



* You may republish this article online if you keep the author's note and the active hyperlinks below. Copyright 2007, Brandon Cornett.