Making Local SEO Work to Establish Your Mortgage Business’s Success

You’ve spent blood, sweat, and tears growing your mortgage company. You’ve worked hard to ensure your clients benefit from the smoothest transaction possible. Marketing costs have been incurred, building your brand, and ensuring that you’re the first business homeowner in need of home financing assistance. You’ve done all of these, but here’s a question: do potential clients know about you?

Your company could offer the best home mortgage rates in the area, but if your target market is unaware of your existence, all of your efforts will be in vain.

As more home buyers need loans to secure their dream house, they rely on mortgage lenders to help finance their homes. And since we live in modern times, these buyers will go to one place to find lenders: search engines.

This is where you’ll need a local SEO strategy that works. If you don’t invest in search engine optimization, your website’s rankings will drop, which means homeowners won’t find you on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Instead of missing out on opportunities, use local SEO to build brand awareness and drive traffic to your website so your business can thrive in your local area.

If you’re new to the idea of local SEO for mortgage companies, here’s what you need to know.

What Is Local SEO?

Local search engine optimization, also known as search engine marketing, is an effective way to promote your products and services to local customers at the exact time they’re searching for them. For example, a homeowner who types “mortgage lenders near me” will be presented with search results of businesses within their area.

Local SEO is a marketing approach where you optimize your website so that clients in your location or nearby areas can visit your business. It’s an effective marketing tactic for mortgage lenders who want to reach audiences from different geographic locations.

What Is “Local Search” and How Does It Apply to Your Mortgage Business?

According to Google, 46 percent of all searches are seeking local information. So, if a user living in Long Island, New York types in “FHA loans broker near me,” they’ll receive results from mortgage lenders in Long Island, NY. Google will serve them with results that are local to them.

If you haven’t stepped up with your local SEO strategy, your competitors have most likely done it, and they’ll stop the local SERPs. Even if you ranked first on the standard results for a certain keyword, Google would prioritize local searches first.

Based on Google’s priority of the local results, it’s important for your mortgage company to employ different local SEO strategies to ensure you’re getting more web traffic.

What Local SEO Techniques Can You Do To Grow Your Business?

Complete Your Profile on Google My Business

Whether you’re a mortgage broker in a small city or are doing business in different locations, it’s important to have all your business information on your Google My Business profile. This can significantly improve your local SEO strategy.

By optimizing your website, you improve your chances of attracting new clients. Homeowners are looking for a service in your industry. If they come across your business, they’ll look for your basic information: name, address, phone number, and email. Make sure that your GMB profile has your business name, contact information, physical address, and a short description of how to reach your brick-and-mortar business.

Respond to Reviews

Another excellent local SEO strategy is managing and responding to customer reviews, both negative and positive. Clients respond to authenticity. So, when you acknowledge other people’s feedback on your business – whether good or bad – people will see that you take reviews seriously.

However, you may be tempted to screen the reviews before you let them on your page. This is a big no-no since people know that all businesses should have both negative and positive reviews. If you find a negative review, don’t delete it. Instead, address it privately. Get in touch with the reviewer, apologize and address their concern.

Improve Your Social Media Efforts

Strengthen your local SEO efforts by staying active and relevant on social media. Establish a solid social media presence by posting quality content regularly. Your content should engage with your target audience. When you do this, more people will discuss your business, recommend you to their friends and share your posts. Google considers your social media efforts when it analyzes your local rankings.

Remember to add your geolocation when you post social media content, especially if you are posting photos or videos.

The Bottom Line

You don’t need to specialize in marketing major jobs to perfect local optimization. Local SEO is easier to do compared to a wide-scale SEO campaign. Still, you need to pour effort when by developing local SEO strategies that work. If you need help, get in touch with a local SEO expert for your strategy.