As a mortgage provider, you know how important SEO lead generation is for your business. Leads represent potential clients who can consistently support your sales goals and perhaps provide referrals down the road. The right search engine optimization tools can improve mortgage lead generation and improve your real estate marketing plan.

However, with all the options out there, how do you choose which ones to implement? Here are ten of the top SEO tools that can help your mortgage company generate high-quality leads.

Which SEO Strategies Are Best for Mortgage Lead Generation?

It’s hard to overstate the importance of SEO mortgage lead generation. According to HubSpot, over 60% of marketing professionals list improving traffic and leads as their biggest challenge. And why is that? There are hundreds of websites competing for the attention of interested users. As a mortgage provider, you’re not only trying to get on the front page of Google, but you want visitors to convert into clients.

More than ever, mortgage providers face fierce competition in the online marketplace. The increasing number of millennials looking for mortgages makes it vital to ensure your business is able to compete in the online sphere where most younger consumers research and shop. Having an online presence has never been more necessary.

You may initially think of website banners and paid ads as the online marketing options for mortgage lead generation, but SEO tactics for mortgage sales leads go far beyond those. In fact, most organic traffic can come without burning a hole through your advertising budget.

Creating a stunning website, engaging with your target audience on numerous platforms, and improving your written content are all solid ways to generate interest that can lead to sales. Ready to learn more about these mortgage marketing hacks? Here we go.

1. Start With Optimizing Your Home Page

Inbound marketing can be more effective than external paid advertising. The difference between the two is where you put most of your effort. Inbound marketing deals closely with the posts and media within your website, which can be even more noticeable in the mortgage industry. Most visitors come to your website because they are actively researching their borrowing options, making mortgage lead generation easier than ever. They just have to find you first.

As such, it’s essential to make sure your company’s website is eye-catching, professional and easy to navigate. Eyeviewdigital found that if a page has even a 1-second delay, lead conversions decrease a stunning 7%. If just a one-second delay can change the minds of 7% of your quality SEO sales leads, what does the rest of your website do?

It’s important to start with a page that most users will visit first. Having an SEO-focused landing page with strong copy and sleek graphics can encourage visitors to spend time on your site and perhaps fill out a contact form. Give your homepage a good makeover with improved widgets, better graphics and a first-rate design.

Once you like the design of your homepage and other pages, you need to focus on the content. The words on your website are crucial to mortgage lead generation because they tell your readers what you can offer them. If you don’t have the time or desire to write your website content in-house, you can choose to outsource by hiring experts. That way you can get top-notch customized content without spending internal resources or pulling any of your employees away from their normal tasks.

2. Utilize Local SEO Strategies

The next step to better mortgage leads is to focus on your local area where most of your potential clients will come from. What is local search? It’s comparable to a filter, where Google results are restricted by a geographical location. As a mortgage provider, you want local leads to find you both in person and on the internet.

Improving your site’s performance in local search results can be a key to SEO lead generation. A potential client will likely choose to work with a mortgage provider or loan office in his or her local area (or in the area of the new home) due to the proximity of the business, which naturally brings many benefits.

There are several essential strategies for improving your local search ranking, such as updating your company’s online directory listings. Make sure your company’s name, address, and phone number are correct in all online locations so that people can find you. Many real estate businesses keep their contact information easily viewable on their website, making readers a click away from contacting them.

An effective SEO strategy for mortgage lead generation is to customize your site’s content for users in your geographic area. This means including location keywords and highlighting local events or news. These elements help Google recognize your website as a relevant choice for local searches. Along with optimization, improve your website’s mobile experience and build up online reviews to increase your local search rank.

3. Strengthen Your Mortgage Site’s Headlines

Getting traffic to your site is often the first step toward finding leads. However, you can improve mortgage lead generation with strong, engaging text on your site’s pages. This is especially true for the headlines.

If you want your visitors to engage with your site and learn more about your available options, you need to grab their attention. Concise, catchy headlines can increase the time users spend on your site. Here are a few ways to modernize headlines on your blog posts and landing pages:

Simplify Your Word Choice

A heading is a short phrase that describes the content beneath. It sticks out to readers, meaning it has to leave an impression to catch the interest of potential SEO mortgage leads. Condense wordy headings and use vocabulary that visitors can relate to and understand.

Be Powerful

Shortening the heading has its perks, but you can enrich it even more by adding powerful vocabulary. Action words engage your audience, especially if they have a lot of meaning or power behind them. Use the word “you” to personally reach visitors.

Offer Something Useful

Are you offering incredible mortgage advice? Let your readers know in the headline that you offer something they just can’t miss. Headers such as “Ultimate Mortgage Guide for Beginners” or “3 Things You Should Know About Your Budget” can get a lot of attention, especially when you include keywords. Look at these catchy headers from these top three results from the search query “what to know about a mortgage.”

When visitors spend more time on your site instead of clicking away immediately, it’s one step closer to higher mortgage lead generation. Give readers digestible content that leaves them wanting more.

4. Stand Out With Graphics and Videos

The visuals on your website can speak louder than the words you post. Is your website sleek and engaging? Does it run smoothly? You might want to make a few tweaks to enhance your website’s design.

Adding color, graphics and/or videos to your site can help you stand out from your competitors. Doing so is also a good way to follow up on those eye-catching headlines you worked on earlier. There are numerous studies that show that viewers process images faster than text. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then it’s important to use them as much as you can. Most people also remember content better when it includes video or graphic elements.

Along with media, put some time into the design of your website. Colors should be enticing, and fonts should be legible. Because you have an online presence, it is your responsibility to make your website as user-friendly as possible. Organic SEO lead generation improves only if potential clients have a reason to be interested.

If you are putting graphics or videos on your website, make sure your hosting service can handle this sort of content. Slow load times can frustrate visitors and drastically lower your search engine ranking.

In the digital world, readers appreciate smaller paragraphs, white space and bullet points. They also care about website appearance. Create a style guide for your mortgage content to keep the design consistent, no matter who is writing.

Once you augment the aspects of both visuals and writing, you can have a website that is interesting to read and not cluttered by sloppy design.

5. Perform Keyword Research to Find Great Mortgage Keywords

Improving mortgage lead generation and the SEO optimization of your site is all about incorporating keywords effectively. Keywords help Google determine whether your content will be a good fit for a user’s search query. Depending on the mortgage keywords and optimization of your website, you can have higher organic search ranks.

Before you can start creating keyword-optimized mortgage content, you need to understand which keywords to use. As you research terms, remember to incorporate a variety of different terms that relate to your mortgage products and services, your audience and your brand. Don’t forget about complementary terms, such as those related to real estate, house hunting, and personal finance.

Once you find mortgage keywords that apply to your services, use them wisely. Focus articles around them and include them naturally throughout each article. This will help Google understand your post and rank it accordingly. Don’t forget to use keywords in headings, as well as in technical parts of your writing like meta descriptions and title tags.

6. Provide Useful Information

If you improve your company’s image in the eyes of your target audience, you have a bigger chance of increasing mortgage lead generation. Obtaining a mortgage is a significant financial commitment, so potential clients want to work with a provider that is trustworthy and knowledgeable.

So how do you improve your brand image? With a few simple additions, you can show off your company’s expertise and position your brand as a caring partner. Useful mortgage content is a great first step. The more you post, the more your voice gets heard. Here are a few things you should post as much as you can:

• Blog posts
• Infographics
• Videos
• Social media posts

Include well-written and genuinely helpful content, not merely sales pitches. Within your content, add a bit of personality to make your business seem more human. Whether that’s through personal stories, humorous writing or employee interviews, it doesn’t matter. What really matters is making the effort to provide mortgage-related content that both satisfies and stimulates.

7. Create an Email Campaign

Many of your potential clients will spend time researching all their options before finally signing mortgage papers. One of the best ways to maintain a connection throughout their process is to use email.

Almost everyone, including interested SEO sales leads, checks their emails every day. For those potential clients, mortgage advice and convenient reminders can be useful assets. Email helps you reach them in a natural way.

Well-executed mortgage email campaigns can help improve your brand recognition and remind customers to return to your company when they are ready to make a decision. As you increase mortgage lead generation, you will have more opportunities to reach out. Remember that your email text should be just like the content on your site and social media platforms: error-free, sincere, easy to read, and useful.

8. Engage Quality SEO Leads Through Social Media

If you want to make your brand appear relevant, innovative and in touch with a younger demographic, get social.  Social media is a significant element of SEO and mortgage lead generation strategies because it helps you get in contact with potential clients. This is especially true when you think about all those millennials who may be getting ready to commit to a mortgage. By engaging them there, you can bypass the initial step of hoping they find your company through a search engine.

Social media can improve your search ranking as well. High-quality mortgage content writing can get a lot of awareness on your media platforms, which leads to more shares, links and clicks to your website. The more links and traffic you receive, the higher your ranking will be.

Having a strong social media presence sounds great, but how do you get started? It takes strategy to create a presence that is effective in mortgage lead generation. We can show you how to start generating SEO leads.

Set Goals

To see the best results, you want to be intentional about what you post and how you market to your followers. First off, choose which social media platforms you are focusing on. From there, determine what objectives you have and how they affect your marketing strategy in the long run.

A great mortgage marketing move is to create a calendar of when you will post. This will help you be consistent with and not overwhelmed by your objectives. It also keeps most of your posts in one place, so you can tweak and edit with ease.

Get Personal

Social media platforms are unique because they allow you to be more human with your followers. Sounding “human” helps followers to trust your mortgage services. Instead of becoming intimidated by a robotic system, they see the people behind the company who live actual lives and want to help others with their real estate needs.

Although being casual can have its perks, know where to walk the line between informal and formal posting. Be consistent with your brand voice, as stability can increase the trust of followers. That trust can encourage followers to share your services with their friends and help you with your mortgage lead generation strategy.

Maintain Your Online Presence

Although tools such as calendars and strategic planning are extremely useful, never ignore your presence online. Social media can help you build relationships with potential clients. Reach out to your followers often and watch for related news that can put your available mortgage services in good lighting.

9. Interact With Your Audience

Once you have a site with optimized content and some active social media accounts, you might be wondering how to generate mortgage leads in SEO more consistently. Interaction is the ultimate key. People need to get involved with you, learn from you and work with you.

This can mean answering questions in your blog comments or social media posts. You can also use your email campaign to address FAQs or provide helpful tips for choosing a real estate agent or mortgage provider. Anything that reaches out to your audience can encourage them to reach out to you.

As you increase engagement with readers, work with other local businesses or related companies to expand your mortgage marketing reach even further. Write a few guest articles or business shoutouts to increase SEO sales leads on both sides. Each additional interaction can create a connection that can benefit you in the future.

10. Maintain an Active Blog

One of the easiest ways to interact with your audience, improve your search engine ranking, and increase mortgage lead generation is to maintain a high-quality blog. A mortgage blog is much more than an opportunity to write about real estate topics, it can become one of the main sources of traffic. With keyword-optimized blog posts and links to social media, interested readers will access your website through your content.

You can host it on your website and create simple social media posts to link to new content. A real estate blog is also a great place to provide potential clients with helpful, relevant advice that improves your company’s reputation and provides backlinks. You can also incorporate SEO keywords into your blog posts, further optimizing your site for high search engine rankings.

Taking the Next Step in Mortgage Lead Generation

These top mortgage marketing hacks can be essential keys to better mortgage lead generation. A little optimization leads to more traffic, which can ultimately lead to more exposure to potential clients. Fortunately, most of these methods are fairly simple to implement and can start getting attention quickly.

Because success requires both quality and consistency, you can make the process even easier by leaving the writing to SEO experts. We create engaging, high-quality content for landing pages, blogs and other lead generation writing so that you can focus on providing your clients with exceptional mortgage service.