‘Tis the Season to Market your Mortgage Website - Effectively marketing your website for the Season.

The design of your website is a very important thing. It can convey many things to your audience about who you are, and what your company does. It can show off your professionalism, or your appeal to a certain niche group.
A good way of picking out a design for your website is to put yourself in your potential client’s shoes – what would you want to see if you were looking for a mortgage? What elements in a website would make you want to learn more about mortgage loan products a company offered?
Another good way to choose a design is to focus on your niche market – with so many designs to choose from, there is certainly a design offered by Lenderhomepage.com that will appeal to the niche of clientele that you are wishing to attract.

Lenderhomepage.com is the right Mortgage Website provider to choose if you want to have the widest variety of choices in how you present your business to the wide market of the Internet
Lenderhomepage.com offers many template designs, from Patriotic to professional; from practical to upscale. Our wide variety of template choices gives you many options for marketing your company’s image and specialties to potential customers.

We even offer seasonal templates, such as a Valentines design, a Halloween design, Thanksgiving theme, a New Year’s design, and a Christmas design so that both you and your clients can get into the holiday spirit. These whimsical designs add some variety to the usual site imagery of homes and families, giving your website a festive flair.

Other Mortgage Website providers just don’t come near offering the same number of choices when it comes to Mortgage website designs.

One of the things that web site designers have to deal with on a daily basis is the issue of usability. In short, usability refers to how easy it is for visitors to get around a web site. Although usability is important for any web site, it becomes especially so for mortgage web sites.

If you are doing things right, your mortgage web site should contain a pretty healthy amount of information. After all, there are only two main reasons that a consumer is going to visit your site…the first is to find out current mortgage rates, and the second is going to be to find information. We’d all like to believe that they’re there so that they can get a mortgage loan on the spot, but as often as not, this isn’t true…certainly not on a consumers first visit.

Unfortunately, even if your site is a virtual encyclopedia of useful mortgage information, if your visitors can’t find that information, it doesn’t do them or you any good. Accessibility is all about making sure that your web site is easy for a consumer to use. You have to assume that your visitors are there because they want to find something specific…if it’s not immediately obvious to them how and where to find whatever they’re looking for, they can very quickly leave. Some general tips to follow:

Be Consistent – Especially with your navigation. Most people are used to seeing the links for your site on the left side of the page, or at the top. You don’t have to follow this rule exactly, but whatever navigation layout you decide on, stick with it throughout all of the pages of your site. Not doing so can be confusing, and it makes information harder for consumers to find.

Focus on Content – The information you have to offer on any web page is always the most important part of that page. Your design should highlight the information by displaying it clearly, in an easy to read font and on an easy to read background. Stick with black print on a white background if you can. Make sure that the area where your content will be displayed is the “focal point” of the page, and that there aren’t any distracting images, movies or audio that take away from it.

Use a Simple Layout – This is similar to the idea in creating a professional look…Often times, it’s best to just stick with what works…navigation on the left, content in the middle and a header image on top. Because internet users are already familiar with web sites that are designed this way, they’re going to be a lot more comfortable using yours. Of course, there’s plenty of room for creativity, just make sure that it doesn’t get in the way of what really matters.

Usability is a much broader topic than I can really go in to in one post, but this should give you a good start. The bottom line is simple though…a web site that is easy to use is a web site that is going to keep visitors coming back. If your web site isn’t usable, consider that it’s very easy for a potential customer to leave and find another resource.

Link Exchange can be like sifting through a haystack to find a needle at times. It’s a great way to increase your website’s presence and influence. You may get a ton of requests to link to your site, but how do you know if it’s worth linking to them?

Having done a lot of Link Exchange for a high ranking popular website, I can enlighten you on 5 link exchange requests you should never accept.

1. Never accept a link exchange request coming from a site whose content has nothing in common with the content on your site. If you have a mortgage website, linking to a site about planting orchids, or fun places to go kayaking will hurt your search engine ranking. It will also decrease the odds of getting relevant referral traffic to your site. Good sites to link to would be real estate companies, home appraisers, home inspectors or home insurance companies.
2. Never accept a link exchange from a page that is nothing but links. This type of link page is called a Link Farm. These pages exist solely to gather links and do not offer any content of relevance or value. These pages often have over 50 links and you wouldn’t be able to find your link on the page even if they claimed they had placed it. Make sure you examine the links or resources page the other party is offering to place your link on. Examine the links on the page to make sure they are quality and not quantity.
3. Never accept a link exchange from someone who sends you multiple requests in one day. This type of request means that you get three emails or more emails that are asking you for the exact same link exchange request, and they continue to arrive in your email box, even after you have politely declined. This is most likely a spam email sent by a program. Even when you send a reply, there’s no guarantee that a real person has read your response or placed your link. If you receive multiple identical requests from one sender, it’s best to ignore and delete these emails.
4. Never accept a link exchange from a site that wants to place your link on a completely unrelated site from their main site. Some sites are more than willing to link back to you – as long as they can place your link on a completely out of the way, non related page to their site. As I mentioned before, having your link on a page which has unrelated content can hurt your ranking in the search engines and your chances of getting good referral traffic. Make sure the page that your link is being placed in is relevant to both the content of your site, and the other site as well. If a website about home appraisals wants to put your link on a page that has links to various shopping outlets, politely decline.
5. Finally, never accept a link exchange from a sender who has already promised to place your link, and then deletes your link the next day. There are unfortunately some linkers out there, who are trying to get a link from your site without giving you anything back in return. These folks send a link request, place your link, and then delete it as soon as you have placed their link. Then, they often have the audacity to email you again months later, saying that you removed THEIR link. It’s a good idea to click through to your link partners’ sites every week or so, and see if your link is still there. If your link gets removed and your request to have it placed back is ignored, its best to just delete their link and make a note of their email address – if you see another link request from that sender, you’ll know to ignore it.

Link Exchange can be a tricky process to navigate, but it is one of the key elements in marketing your web site. Hopefully now you will know some of the pitfalls to look out for, and you’ll have a better idea of how to sort through all the link exchange requests you receive.

7 Tips for Search Engine Optimization

The 7 SEO tips on this post are just a sample of some of the techniques and ideas that you can use to improve your visibility in the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. LenderHomePage.com has a proven track record of successful SEO for our clients, and we’d be happy to share our expertise with you as well, just call us at 888-377-1265, and ask to speak with an SEO consultant.

Tip #1 – Build A Niche

As much as we might want to, it’s not possible, or even wise to rank highly in the search engines for every single keyword we can think of. Instead, try to focus on one or two key areas that you’d really like to bring traffic for. The more focused you become, the more likely the traffic you bring to your site is to turn in to a lead.

Tip #2 – Use Keywords Wisely

The keywords that you select for your website will be based upon the niche that you choose. Once you know what the best keywords for your niche are, it’s important that you use them in the right place. Key areas are your “title” tag, your “description” tag, and your “keywords” tag, not to mention your content itself.

Tip #3 – Create Good Content

There’s nothing more frustrating to someone surfing the internet than to go to a site expecting to get specific information, only to find that the information that they thought would be there is not. Whatever you optimize your title, description and keywords for should match the content of the page. If it doesn’t, you’ll find that the search engines won’t pick up your site at all, and more importantly, you’ll drive away any traffic that you do manage to attract to your site. Don’t over use your keywords in your content, as search engines might view this as spam.

Tip #4 – Create A Site Map

If you want to make your web site easier for search engines to see, include a site map. A site map will provide links to all of the important internal pages on your site in a text format that search engines find easier to read than the graphic-heavy links that are common on most web sites. By making your site easier to index, you’re helping to increase the chances that it will be listed highly in search results.

Tip #5 – Use Descriptive Anchor Text

When you’re creating content and/or navigation for your web site, be sure to use descriptive names for the anchor text of any links that link to your site. The “anchor text” of a link is the part that web surfers click on to visit a link. From the perspective of search engines, the anchor text describes what is behind the link, and adds to the value of that page. You should use your keywords in the anchor text of any link that leads to your web site, both for internal links, (from your own site to your own site), and external links (from other sites to your site).

Tip #6 – Start a Link Exchange Campaign

By trading links with other web sites related to the mortgage industry, you are helping to increase your importance in the eyes of the search engines. The more web sites you have linking to you, the more “popular” you become, as long as those web sites have related content of high quality. When trading links, make sure that you seek out link partners that are in a non-competitive but complimentary industry. For instance, as a mortgage company, you might be interested in trading links with appraisal companies, home improvement firms, real estate agents, etc. If you only lend in a particular area, trading links with non-competitive loan companies might be a good idea as well.

Tip #7 – Have a Clean Site

Having a clean, easy to navigate and understand web site is a critical part of making sure that the traffic you get on your web site turns in to a lead. You want to make sure that all of the important areas of your site are easy for your visitors to find, and that they don’t have to go to a lot of trouble to get the information that they came for. You also want to keep things as simple as possible for the search engines.

Technology such as Flash and JavaScript create some very pleasant interactive features for your visitors, but over use of this technology can lead to a site that is nearly impossible for a search engine to index properly. You should use plain HTML for your navigation in particular, and JavaScript should be kept to a minimum as well. A search engine only reads so much of your web page before deciding where to index it, and you want to give it as much quality content to read as possible. If you have a lot of JavaScript or object code on your web page, you’re taking away room for your content to be read by the search engines.

Why Link Swap?

Link Exchange is an important part of any SEO or Internet Marketing Campaign. Linking to other sites and asking other sites to link to you is very valuable – here is why:

When someone goes to a website, they are looking for specific information. Let’s say they don’t find everything they are looking for on one site. So, they will look to see who that website recommends for further information on the topic. By having links to sites that refer back to you, you are creating a give and take of referral traffic.

It’s very important that you link to sites that have similar content in order to get the best results.

By initiating a link exchange, you are getting the word out about your website – making your presence known as a company. In initiating link exchange, it is more of a numbers game. The more requests you send out, the more your company or website’s name gets put out there – and the more chance there is that someone will respond with a reciprocal link.

On the other side of the coin, accepting link exchanges helps you to form relationships with other webmasters – to form mutually beneficial referral traffic campaigns. This can come in handy if you have more than one site, or if they have more than one site. You will have an already established partner to go to for another exchange.

Also, to some extent Search Engines look to see what sites you are linking to, and what sites are linking to you. This in part helps the Search Engine determine how popular your site is, thus increasing your chances of ranking higher in the Search Engine. The higher you’re ranking in the Search Engine, the more traffic you’ll most likely get.

Make sure that the site you link to has similar content to your website. Search Engines will get confused if you are linking to a bunch of sites that have nothing to do with the topic of your site. Also make sure that the site you are linking to have links that are meaningful as well. It is best to link to sites of similar page rank. Linking to a site of lesser page rank will help that site, but it might hurt your ranking. Of course linking to a site of higher page rank than your site is great, but in general it is best to do an even trade.

Link Exchange may be a bit time consuming, but it can pay off in a big way. If you are not doing Link Exchange, you are missing out on an opportunity to get your company name out there, create avenues of referral traffic, and increase your site’s popularity and search engine placement. If you put the time in to an effective Link swap campaign, you will giving your website a huge marketing boost.

Up to this point we’ve discussed creating a strong web presence. I’ve said before that the entire point of having a web presence in the first place is to generate traffic to your web site. I should mention now though, that having a strong web presence does not mean that you have a strong web site, and the fact is that it is your web site, not your web presence that turns traffic in to a lead for your company. Having exposure all over the internet does not in any way guarantee the quality of your web site itself, and although you may have thousands of unique visitors on your web site every day, none of it counts for anything if you can’t convert that traffic in to a lead. So, how do you capitalize on the traffic that your web presence generates? We’ll be addressing that in this section.

Consistency

One of the first tips I can offer about your web site is to keep it consistent with your advertising. If on your web banners and print advertising, you indicate that you’ve got insider information about reverse mortgage loans, be sure that you do have that information, and most importantly, that it is easy to access. You have to assume that it was the promotion of your web site on various mediums that has brought traffic to your site, and if they don’t get what they expect based upon your advertising, they can very quickly leave. In general, you want to make sure you’re presenting a message that stays the same across all mediums; otherwise, your visitors may end up feeling deceived.

Accessibility

Accessibility is the idea that the most important or valuable areas of your web site are both easy to get to, and easy to understand. Your site design should be visually appealing and clean, and navigating through different pages should be simple. You want to make sure that you don’t overload any single page, especially your home page, with too much information, and the information should be easy to read. Areas that are designed to generate leads for you, such as contact forms, online applications, etc. should be especially easy to find and use.

Content Value

I cannot stress enough that if a visitor to your web site is not able to quickly find what they are looking for, they will leave. When a consumer visits your web site, they are looking for something. It may be information…it may be a product or service. Your content…in particular your home page content should immediately provide something of value. It should not just be empty words, because empty words don’t give your visitors anything. It should be information… or otherwise, (and sometimes most helpfully), and immediate service or product for their use. A mortgage web site can offer both; it’s just a matter of presenting it in a way that will appeal the most to your target audience.

Although you want to ask a visitor for their information, (which makes them a lead), your site content should all be phrased in the form of an offer. They are visiting you because they want something, not because they want to give you something. Your content should open up “offer mode” immediately. In the case of a mortgage website:

Offer Information

It’s never a good idea to overload your home page with too much information. Too much information right off the bat tends to make your site inaccessible. Instead, use your home page to link to other pages on your site, which may include all the information you want. Make it clear that you are offering the information as a free, no obligation benefit to them, for visiting your site…Again, offer, don’t ask.

Immediate Services or Products

It is important to make the visitor feel like they can obtain something by utilizing your site…in the case of a mortgage web site, other than the opportunity to apply for a loan, it may seem difficult to find things to “offer” your visitors. Mortgage calculators, informational articles, free consultations and the like are, however perfect examples of things that can be offered. Keep in mind that the less strings you attach to your offers, the better. I don’t even recommend requiring any information from your visitor at all in order for them to take advantage of the things you offer them, unless that information is required in order to actually render the service. If all they want is some kind of information, or access to a particular tool, give it to them… They’ll volunteer their information soon enough if they feel like they got enough out of their experience on your site.

Call to Action

As much as you must bear very closely in mind the above information about “offer, don’t ask”, you still want to turn visitors in to leads, and you must make this action both a priority for them, as well as easy to do. Keep in mind, first of all, that most of the traffic you receive, even if you have done an excellent job of generated targeted traffic, will be more inclined towards a “low pressure sale”. They may be interested in your product, but you should assume that it is a vague interest at best, and make sure that any suggestions you make that they get in touch with you be in the most low impact manner possible. Don’t force them to fill out an application or give you their information for something as simple as finding basic information, but do encourage them to contact you, with the offer of additional benefits if they were to do so.

You are aiming to give your visitors something they need, and something they want, in the most hassle-free way possible. Combining the above concepts in to the design of your site and your content is a sure way to do this, and in combination with a strong overall web presence, a well-designed site is the final component that will generate leads for you, and create the online success that you’re seeking by starting a web site in the first place.

In Conclusion

I truly hope that this guide has been useful for you, and that you now have some ideas as to how you would like to proceed with your own web site. Even after reading this, you should realize that there is a wealth of additional information about each of the topics I’ve discussed here, and further research on your part could be quite beneficial to you.

In my last post, I spent some time going over the first aspect of creating a web presence…namely…targeting your web presence to the appropriate audience. Once you’ve selected the appropriate target though, it’s time to start thinking about what you plan to do in order to actually create your web presence. In this continuation of my original post, we’ll be discussing that very topic.

Once you’ve made a solid decision about your target audience, it’s time to consider just how you intend to target them. I’ll state again that
simply having a web site is not enough to attract visitors to that site, or to give it any exposure at all, so there has to be another way to create it. Once more, for the sake of clarity – web presence is the overall exposure of your company to consumers on the internet. Web presence is designed to bring targeted traffic to your web site. There are many ways to create and strengthen web presence, and in this section, we’ll go over a few of the key points.

Creating a Web Presence – Offline

It is a mistake to believe that the only way to create an online presence is through the internet itself. It is possible, and even very intelligent to increase your exposure to consumers on the internet, by focusing on consumers that aren’t on the internet. Consider that the consumer you’re talking face to face with now is likely to go home and become an internet consumer. It’s only common sense to make sure that those you meet “offline” are guided towards discovering you on the web. Regardless of whether the traffic is generated through some online venue, or through your own offline efforts, it all adds to your overall web presence.

Some potential avenues to explore offline are:

Business Cards

Business cards have been a staple of business culture for centuries. Traditionally, a business card prominently features your name and company name, along with your contact information. However, a business card can greatly increase your web presence by simply prominently listing your web address as well. You have made that customer aware of your web site, by handing the information to them on a card.

Print Advertising

Just about every business in the world that has a web site will print their web address along with their other information on all of their marketing material. In fact, it doesn’t stop there…You’ll find web addresses on soda cans, shampoo bottles, newspapers, product packaging…the list goes on…print advertising is simply one of the most widely used methods for “publishing” a web address. However – therein lies the problem. Consumers have seen web addresses printed all over the products they see and buy for so long now that they’ve become desensitized to them. It’s not big news any more for a company to have a web site, so without a compelling reason to pay attention to a web address, most consumers won’t.

For that reason, it is vital that in your print advertising you make a point to advertise and promote your web site. As I mentioned earlier, a web site is far more interactive, and far more useful and informative to a consumer than a flier or mailer could ever possibly hope to be. By using your print advertising to help emphasize your web site, you are increasing your web presence, and your value to potential customers.

Referral Business

You already know that referrals are a fantastic way to generate business, so why not let them generate interest in your web site as well? When you are sitting across the table with a borrower, make a point of mentioning your web site, and pointing it out as a resource for further information, for themselves or others. For one thing, the person you tell is more likely to pass along a web address than they are to try to talk their friends in to obtaining a mortgage loan, so you’ve got a pretty good chance of gaining exposure in this way.

Ultimately, the key point to understand here is that generating a strong web presence is accomplished hand in hand with generating a strong business presence in general. Your efforts in promoting your internet presence should not supplant your traditional marketing, or vice versa. Rather, you can and should use traditional marketing techniques to supplement the methods you have for online promotion of your web presence, which we will discuss next.

Creating a Web Presence – Online

The cornerstone of your online web presence is your actual web site, but there are many other avenues to increasing your exposure, and if you are serious about creating a solid web presence, you will almost certainly need to explore these other avenues. Below are some of the main areas worth consideration, but bear in mind that it is not a complete list, and a little bit of creativity will give you plenty of other ideas.

Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is typically the foundation of any internet marketing campaign. Earlier, when reading about targeting your web presence, you may have asked yourself, “How do I know what people are looking for?” Search Engines exist precisely to help people find what they are looking for, and the answers that a search engine provides are not “answers” in the traditional sense, but web sites. A search engine is designed to present web sites to its users that relate most closely to the things they want and need. Search Engine Marketing is nearly identical to the overall concept of “Internet Marketing” except that it is based upon the understanding that since 99% of people use search engines to find what they are looking for, a perfect place to increase your exposure is through the search engines. Going in to detail about how Search Engine Marketing works is beyond the scope of this guide, but to put it briefly, understanding how to market your web site in the search engines is vital.

Banner Advertisement

Although banner ads are typically used as a major component of the above mentioned Search Engine Marketing, they should not be underestimated as a form of impression advertising. That is, if your company name is simply seen on the internet in a place other than your own web site, it increases the exposure of your company on the web. Partnering with other web sites to display your banner on the site is an excellent way to increase web exposure, and you’ll see examples of it everywhere. Banner advertisement can be tricky, because it can take considerable convincing to persuade another business to advertise for you on their site. However, when you can make it work, it becomes and invaluable source of exposure.

Forums, Newsletters, and Blogs

One ideal method for promoting your web site online is to wrap references to it inside content that is intrinsically valuable. If you are an expert in your field, and you are willing to offer advice or information in the form of articles or pages present on the web sites, blogs, newsletters or forums of other related companies or industries, you’ll open up a method of web site exposure that is likely more valuable than any other kind. People trust an expert opinion, and they’re more willing to follow the advice, (visit my web site, for instance), of someone who has provided them with something valuable up front. By making your knowledge and expertise available to an audience through an external source, you will increase the exposure of your own business and web site. Even better, you’ll have instantly given yourself credibility, not only by providing good information, but by providing good information that someone else was willing to display.

These are only a few ideas, and I should stress that you may find others. Search Engine Marketing is, for the reasons I discussed above, the most widely used, and it is an avenue that must be taken if you want a chance of being successful, however, the last two suggestions are relatively new or unexplored, and the potential for increasing overall exposure and traffic via these methods could be quite considerable.

By now, I hope that you can appreciate that no matter how you look at it, creating a strong web presence is not a simple task, or one that can be accomplished by simply maintaining a web site. It is truthfully the difference between success or failure in the online marketplace though, and you should also appreciate that it is worth it to invest the time and energy in to developing a solid web presence.

In large corporate cultures that utilize the internet as part of their marketing strategy, you’ll hear the expression “web presence” used quite a bit. To the average person, the term “web presence” translates directly to “web site”, but this is only part of the picture. Whether you run a large corporation or a small business though, understanding precisely what “web presence” is will help you tremendously.

Web presence refers generally to your company’s overall exposure to consumers on the internet. Exposure on the internet translates directly to traffic to your web site. Web presence does not directly refer to your web site’s ability to be seen or found by consumers, although this is of course a huge part of it. Other forms of exposure tend to vary, and not all of them are actually found online. It is by understanding how to target, create, and utilize a web presence that you will bring traffic to your web site, which is the first step in creating leads from your site.

And that my friends, is what I intend to share with you over the course of my next few posts. If you want to turn your mortgage web site in to more than just a business card on the web, you’ll want to read these articles. Today, I’d like to talk about actually targeting your web presence.

Before you can begin to create a web presence, it’s important that you know who you are creating it for. As a business owner, there is no value in trying to target each and every human being that uses the internet. If you are engaged in the business of selling mortgage loans, for instance, you have very little need to pursue the interest of 12 year old children, thus, targeting your web presence to that group of individuals would be pointless. So, the question becomes…who should see you? The more clearly you define a target for your web presence, the easier it is to reach that target. Thus, a targeted web presence is one that aims to attract a particular type of traffic.

Targeting your web presence is really just a matter of understanding your audience – the people you want to attract. What type of person is most likely to have a need or desire for the product or service you’re offering? In the case of a mortgage company, you’re obviously looking for adults who have an interest in obtaining a mortgage loan. Unfortunately, that’s far too general to really yield answers as to how you should target that audience.

If you find yourself with a long list of unanswerable questions about your target audience, then you’ve not narrowed your target down enough. The truth is, you should know everything critical about your target audience. “Adults who want a mortgage loan” could mean just about anything…they could want a first or a second mortgage, a purchase loan or a refinance…this might be the first time they’ve ever bought a home or made any major purchase on credit…they might not even have any credit…You may feel like you could get the answers to those questions once they contact you, but unless you give your audience a reason to feel that you can and will provide them with their specific need or desire, they’ll never ask you the questions. The only way to convince someone that you can assist them with a need or a desire is to target it adequately.

So…even if you provide every mortgage loan under the sun…even if you can get a loan in any state, and in all the third-world countries on the planet, recognize that no single person is going to want all of those things all at once. By focusing…targeting, you are ensuring that when the person that does want that specific thing comes along, you are in a position to offer it to them, and they will recognize that. Targeted traffic – traffic you designed your web presence for, is the most likely to convert in to a lead.

Before I get started here, I want to warn all of you that I’m about to shamelessly plug for the company that I work for. The simple truth is that LenderHomePage.com makes owning and maintaining a mortgage web site about as easy as it can possibly be. I say this from the perspective of someone who’s career revolves around knowing what’s going on “under the hood”, so to speak. I know what makes it all so complicated, which is why I’m better able to appreciate how easy it is to use a LenderHomePage.com web site.

I’m not saying this to convince you to go out and purchase one of our web sites, (honest!). In fact, I’m writing this article with the assumption that you’re already one of our customers. The only reason I’m going on about how easy our sites are to use is that I’m stunned at how few people actually use them. Eric touched on this a little bit in his last post, but I’m going to mention it again…You simply cannot expect to get any results out of your web site if you just set it up, and let it sit.

Whether you’re currently one of our customers or not, you can take that to the bank…If you own a business, and put no effort in to it, you’ll see no return. The same applies to a web site. Of course, telling someone that they need to work on the engine in order to make their car as fast as possible does absolutely no good if you’re not going to show them how to do the work. That’s where I come in. I’m hoping that, along with being able to impress upon you the importance of marketing your mortgage web site, I’ll also be able to show you a lot of the ways that you, yourself with just a little bit of effort, can maximize the potential of your web site.

Of course, you are most likely a mortgage professional, not a computer tech, so I sympathize if you don’t have any desire to spend all day in front of your computer working on your web site, when you could be processing a loan. Consider though, that a little bit of effort working at your web site can equal a lot more loan processing, if you follow me…Still, I don’t want you to think that you’ve got a novel’s worth of information to absorb, so rather than throw a bunch of information at you all at once, I’m just going to leave you with the following observations…If you think about them in light of your own web site, I think you’ll be in the right frame of mind to appreciate the information that we’ll be covering later…

1. The internet is huge, and the number of businesses online, competing for customers makes up a large part of that size.
2. 80% of people utilize the internet to research or purchase products or services, which explains point #1.
3. When searching the internet, people naturally use Search Engines to do it. The goal of a search engine is to provide the most useful result to the consumer.
4. The company that appears to be a valuable resource, both to the Search Engines, and to consumers, will be successful online.

So, before we start getting in to the “nuts and bolts” of marketing your web site online, let’s take stock of where things stand now…ask yourself:

1. Who am I competing with? What makes me different from them, and are my differences something that I can capitalize on?
2. Who am I trying to attract? What sort of person do I think would need or want my product or service?
3. Keeping in mind #2, does my website provide useful and compelling information or services to that person?
4. Have I thought about what I need to do in order to make my site “friendly” to search engines and consumers? Am I placing too much emphasis on one or the other?

Don’t worry if you’re not able to answer all of the above…we’ll be talking in more detail about it later, but for now, just give it some thought, and you’ll be well on your way to understanding how to make your web site work at it’s highest potential for you. In coming articles, I’ll be sharing with you some very specific insights that I hope will take you a long way towards making your web site, and your business a success.

If for some reason you’ve been living in a shell for the past 10 years, here’s the most significant change that you’ve missed in the past decade - THE INTERNET. There is a staggering statistic that says that about 8 out of every 10 people will begin their research or shopping at home on their own PC. It’s a lot more convenient than going out to the store, there’s no sales rep bugging you, and since everyone chooses their own path on the web, you get a custom tailored shopping experience…As a business, if you don’t have a web site to represent yourself or your product, you are way behind the times.

Let me give you an example of how quickly things can become outdated…just a few years ago, all research was done using encyclopedias, (20 volumes that weighed about a ton, and took 5 trips to move from one place to the other so you could use them). But now, these books, (and the backaches that come with them), are a thing of the past, a mere artifact of what research used to be. Now, I have wireless internet on my Palm Treo that I use to access the entire internet so that I can find any information, anywhere. The web is a powerful tool, and if you don’t know how to harness it’s power, you need to catch up with the times. You have a choice…stick with the encyclopedias, or hop on board with the advancement of technology.

So how does a website benefit you, the mortgage professional…

1. Presence

These days, every company needs a website for validation. One of the first things a consumer will do to determine if your business is “legit” is to try to find you on the internet. Creating a presence on the web gives you a greater sense of legitimacy. It’s become one of those things like the business card that is almost a requirement for doing business these days. In a sense, a website is an “online business card”. Even if all it does is match your company name to a dot com address on the web, it does wonders for your image. Having a mortgage web site that looks and feels professional is a huge bonus in this department.

2. A website works when you aren’t

This is the #1 most common thing that people overlook when they’re deciding whether or not a web site is a good idea. A website is going to work for you even after you’ve gone to sleep! I assume that you work 8:30 AM - 5:30 PM, give or take. if you’re highly motivated and/or insane, we’ll say anywhere from 7:00 AM -7:00 PM. At best, (or worst, depending on your perspective), you’re putting in about 40-60 hours in a week. Your web site, on the other hand, puts in 168 work hours a week, without missing a single day of work. If you’ve set your web site up properly, and you’re using the right web site marketing, you can keep your business up and running for potential customers 24 hours a day. From this point of view, you can see how having a web site is a huge advantage that you can’t afford to pass up.

When do you personally get to surf the web looking for things that are of interest to you? My guess is between 5:30 PM - 1:00 AM when you leave work and are at home. So don’t you think this is also when most people start their research for a new mortgage or refi - when they have some free time after work to sit down and find out more info? Hey, I’m just throwing this out there…

3. Exclusive Lead Generation

I’ll get into more detail on this topic later since it will take a few posts to completely explain. But the idea of a mortgage website is that it should also be generating new business for you. If your website isn’t doing this for you or you want more new business (duh!), keep checking back and I’ll give you my insight.

4. Automation

A website should also automate what you do on a daily basis. For instance, if you are constantly faxing 1003’s, deciphering handwriting, and doing data entry into your LOS, think of all the time that could be saved if your website can collect the 1003 info and drop it right into your LOS for you.

The reality of websites…

1. Be realistic

A website is a great idea, but you aren’t the only person to have this idea. You will not be the first person to try and generate leads with a website. Just like everything else in life, what your website does for you is 100% dependent on YOU - how you market the site, how you integrate it into your daily operations, etc. Just know, that the internet is just as competitive, if not more, than the real world.

2. Marketing is VERY important

Throwing a website together and putting it on the web does not equal instant leads. If it were so, everyone and their mom would have a mortgage website and be selling mortgages, living in mansions, and driving Ferrari’s. Marketing is just as important on the web as it is in the real world. A first page Google listing for a highly searched keyword is like a store on main street where everyone that drives into town passes by it. A great looking and functional website, is like a huge neon sign that grabs everyone’s attention as they drive by on main street. Catch my drift? It’s very important to realize this - there is no “get rich scheme” with online marketing, it is VERY close to marketing in the real world, in the sense that it takes 1) TIME 2) MONEY and 3) PATIENCE to succeed.

3. Know exactly why you want a website

If you are getting a website because you heard that’s what you need to do, then think again. Have an idea of what you want the site to do. Generally this will be along the lines of, “I want it to generate leads,” or “I want a professional looking site so clients can look me up on the web to be reassured my brokerage/company is legit.” The #1 reason people cancel their service with LenderHomePage is because they don’t know what to do with the website. If you want the web to work for you, then YOU need to invest time into learning how the web works, what you want the website to do, and how to use it to your benefit. OR if you don’t have the time, pay someone to do it for you. But NOT having a website these days, is like unleashing termites on your house’s foundation. While you may not see anything in the near future, in the long run, not having a website that works for you will only cripple your business.

4. Keep things in scale

Everyone would also like a site like LendingTree.com or Bankrate.com to generate tons of leads. However, these are both Fortune 500 companies with multi-million dollar advertising budgets and they will bankroll you every time in terms of marketing. Even with their huge pockets, its still NOT possible for them to monopolize the search engines. The search engines don’t care about brand names…they care about serving the best information related to what you are searching for. This lets you, THE SMALL BUSINESS, compete with the CORPORATE GIANT. So while you may not come up for every keyword on the search engines, you can find a niche that you can turn into a cash cow for generating new business. This is the most important part of internet marketing (SEO)! You need to find a niche! I’ll show you how this can be done in upcoming posts.