Learn the Internet marketing techniques big mortgage
companies don’t want you to know about.
It’s hard to communicate everything I want to in this blog. Blog entries are great for segmented ideas, but when it comes to piecing large concepts together blogs seem to fall short. For this reason I have decided to compile a short book – a mortgage marketing book including an introduction to Internet marketing.
So, be patient with me over the next couple of weeks as I will be writing a book as well as articles for this blog. Stay tuned thought, because I have some exciting things to share with you.
It is interesting to note the lack of consistency between the two systems. A keyword priced insanely high in Google, may be much more affordable in overture when looking at the data comparatively.
Also, in developing your PPC campaigns you may want to start monitoring a sample of keywords such as this, only instead of monitoring PPC prices, you will monitor the companies in the top 3 positions. Many mortgage companies come and go in PPC. Inexperienced companies show up and try to compete with the big boys – only thing is, their site is not fine tuned to generate high conversions like the big boys are. They soon burn through their marketing budgets and disappear.
In my opinion, the best way to run a usability review is to do it yourself. There’s actually a great little book named, “Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability” written by Steve Krug. Steve walks you through the process of doing an in-house usability review. He shows you exactly how to do a review (in about a week) that will catch up to 80% of the usability errors that currently exist on your site.
Alternatively, you can hire a firm to do your testing for you – but then you’ll be out $10,000. icon_sad
I have done usability reviews for a long time now, so if you have any questions feel free to shoot me an email. I’d be happy to help where I can.
Mortgage SEO – Part 1
The road to search engine marketing success is paved with many misconceptions. Through my freelance work I encounter many different individuals, all with preconceived notions about how to succeed with their online marketing efforts.
Most of the companies that I work with are small – as such they believe that the only way to “catch up” to their competitors is to hire someone to:
1) Get them ranked top 10 in the search engines.
2) Spend the least amount of money possible.
First off, let me say that if this is your definition of search engine marketing success, you’ve got a long way to go. Allow me to play out what will most likely happen.
First, being the savvy Internet user that you are, you’ll go to Google and start shopping around for SEO companies. You’ll find a list of 3-5 companies that look like they know what they are talking about. You’ll narrow it down to two companies – one is $500 for a complete package guaranteeing top ten placement in Google for 100 keywords. The second site which is much more appealing offers testimonials and a load of benefits including a guaranteed top ten placement for 100 keywords and even a money back guarantee – all for only $1500.00.
You think to yourself, there has to be a reason why the second site costs $1000.00 more than the first. So you decide to go with the second site. You pay this company the full amount up front and you are assigned a project manager. Your new SEO Company sends you a list of keywords that they are going to get you placed in the top 10 results for.
A couple of weeks pass by and you decide to check on your SEO firm. They explain to you that the whole process could take 3-5 months as it takes that long for search engines to index your site. So… you wait.
Three months pass and you begin to wonder if you wasted your money with your SEO firm as you have not heard anything from them and have tried to contact them countless times. You send an email to your account manager saying that if you do not see results in one week that you want your money back.
Five days later you receive an email with an excel spreadsheet from the company showing you that they have done their job. You go to Google to verify – and its true – in fact you check all 100 keywords just to calm your anxiety. They have actually done what they said they would do.
Now you wait for the hits to start pouring in. You are in fact ranked top 10 in Google for 100 keywords! Every day you look at your traffic tool – and every day you see the same amount of traffic.
By the time you actually figure out what has happened, your SEO Company has gone out of business or relocated. You discover that the keywords that you are ranked so high for are all 3-5 word keyword phrases – all of which anyone could rank high for – all of which hardly anyone searches for. On top of that one week later you discover that Google has banned your domain name from their listings because of all of the invisible text the SEO Company placed on your site.
Please don’t let this happen to you. In part two on this topic, I’ll show you how to successfully launch a small business SEO campaign. It’s really not as hard as everyone makes it out to be.
Mortgage Keyword Research
Keyword research is the first ingredient to a successful Internet marketing campaign. Without it, you will most likely waste time and money because you will be marketing to the wrong audience. Keyword research helps you define who your target market is and discover which keywords they will use to find your website.
Once you know the keywords people use to find your website, you can target those keywords with pay per click ads and search engine optimization. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First – the basics.
A keyword is a single word or group of words that people type into search engines hoping to find more information about a given subject. For instance, a keyword could simply be “mortgage” or it could be as complex as “Las Vegas Nevada Home loan for people with bad credit”.
Your job in doing keyword research is to determine which keywords people are using. Once you have determined which keyword people use, you will optimize your website for those keywords to drive additional traffic to your website.
There are many tools that currently exist, both free and paid – that will help your keyword research. I will show you a few options below.
Motivations behind Mortgage SEO
Most people who visit this blog for the first time have a common suspicion. That is, “If you really know how to compete with big mortgage companies – why the heck are you telling us?”
There are a couple of reasons:
1) I saw the need – The mortgage industry is a tough gig to get into – let alone do well at. After some research I discovered that about 90% of all mortgage websites lack even a basic Internet marketing strategy. In an industry where leads are everything, this was hard for me to believe.
2) I like meeting new people – One of the best ways to meet new people is to share what you know. I happen to know a lot about Internet marketing, so that’s what I enjoy sharing.
3) You deserve a chance – In Internet marketing small mortgage companies are up against great odds – unless they know what they are doing. Sure, there is work involved – but if an Internet marketing campaign is done correctly you’ll find rewards where they really matter – in the bank.
4) Internet marketing is simple – Despite what many people want you to think, Internet marketing is actually fairly straightforward.
5) Internet marketing is misunderstood – The objective in Internet marketing as in any marketing is one thing and one thing only – to make money. People get too caught up in things like search engine rankings and keyword density and forget about what’s really important – making money.
My goal is to help you understand how to run a successful Internet marketing campaign – whether you take action or not is then up to you.