Blog SEO Checklist for Mortgage Professionals

Blog SEO is optimizing a blog’s content, site architecture, and HTML code for search engines. It is referred to as on-page SEO. People who are great at this practice are called search engine optimization experts. 

What is  ChatGPT?

BNTouch Mortgage CRM’s Maia Mortgage AI Assistant with ChatGPT integration lets her generate a blog post for your target keyword. You’ve probably heard the new buzz in the software industry about ChatGPT.

Chat GPT is an AI Chatbot developed by Open AI. The chatbot has a language-based model that the developer fine-tunes for human interaction in a conversational manner.

Effectively it’s a simulated chatbot primarily designed for customer service; people use it for various other purposes, too—these range from writing blog posts to drafting business plans to generating code. Yes, folks, the future is here.

BNTouch’s Blog SEO checklist will work for your business no matter how you create your content or what industry you’re in. This SEO checklist will guide you to higher Google rankings, more traffic, and generate more leads.

Blog SEO Like A Boss

You’ve got your content, but are you ready to hit publish? Hold your horses there, Sea Biscuit; first, you need to run a quick search for the keywords you want to rank for and then optimize your content so that the search engines can crawl it and index it accordingly…then you’ll be able to publish your content, right? You’d be wrong, as you’d have to optimize your content for SEO.  The team at BNTouch has made it simple and easy for mortgage industry professionals to become Blog SEO experts. Just follow these golden rules for Blog SEO and reap the rewards. 

Install Yoast 

Yoast is one of the best SEO plugins for WordPress websites.

You may already have the plugin installed on your site. But if not, it’s time to install it and enjoy the benefits of Blog SEO with this checklist. 

Work Smarter, not Harder! Yoast can be used for creating SEO-friendly blog posts and optimizing your entire website.

Write Your Title Tag

Your post’s title tag is essential to your page because it appears on the search engine results page.

If you use a reasonable title tag, people will likely click through to read your post, even if it ranks.

It helps to follow Google’s best practices for creating title tags. These practices include using your core keyword in the title tag and making it as descriptive as possible.

You can use SERPsim to run a simulation and see how your title tag would appear on the results page.

For optimization purposes, your blog post should have only one H1 header tag and include your target keyword. Most times, the H1 is also the title tag.

Aside from your H1, it would help if you also used other header tags, like H2s, H3s, which follow a hierarchy of importance.

H1 Title Tag should be 55-60 Characters – (one per post)

Use SEO Tools

Type your target keyword into free SEO tools like Ubersuggest or Google Keyword Planner to get valuable metrics like search volume, difficulty, and relevant related keywords.

BNTouch’s Maia AI Chatbot ChatGPT cranked out your excellent content, but let’s see what Yoast says about the readability. 

Here’s how to make your content easy to read:

• Use headers and subheaders that make your post easy to scan.
• Write in an active voice.
• Make your sentences at most 25 words.
• Keep your paragraphs under three sentences and avoid large chunks of text.
• Replace industry jargon and buzzwords with simple and everyday language.
• Use lists, bullet points, italics, and bolded text to make your post easy on the eye.

Include Primary Keyword in the Introduction and Throughout the Content

Your keyword should be in the first 100 words of your article. It would be best if you also used it in your headings. Be careful to keep your keyword private and make your content unreadable.

Yoast helps you track whether you’ve used your main keyword in your introduction.

Optimize Your Meta Description

The meta description is the blurb of text under the title tag that shows people what to expect when they open your blog post.

Although meta descriptions have no direct bearing on SEO rankings, they affect your click-through rates.

You can optimize your meta description by making it short (less than 200 words) and including the target keyword.

Optimize Your URL Slug

Like your meta description and title tag, your URL should give people an idea of what they will find when they click on your page. To optimize your URL slug, ensure it contains your target keyword.

It also helps shorten your URL slug and remove unnecessary stop words wrong www.the-mortgage-and-bad-credit.com – correct www.mortgage-bad-credit.com. Separate the words in the URL instead of an underscore or other symbol. We do this simply because search engines are designed to read only hyphens.

Include External Links to Authoritative Sources

You must link to external authoritative sources to make your blog content more valuable and trustworthy.

These external links could include expert research, industry statistics, and other official resources.

Include Blog Posts Under One Single Category

Keep all your posts about a particular topic under a single category or hub.

Consider Including Relevant Video, Images, or Embedded Slide Decks

Media elements like videos, images, slides, and graphs make your content more engaging.

These media elements help to break up large blocks of text and improve your reader’s experience. They also increase visitors’ time on your page and help readers understand your content better.

Include Descriptive Image Alt Text

Search engine crawlers can’t yet read images. Therefore, whenever you use images in your content, it’s vital to use alternative texts (popularly known as alt texts).

An okay alt text would be :<img src=”roses.png” alt=”roses”>

Although this is a picture of roses, the alt text isn’t descriptive enough.

Here’s a better alt text: <img src=”flowers.png” alt=”A bouquet of beautiful flowers”>

This alt text is better because it describes the image better.

Include Internal Links to Relevant Content on Your Site

Internal links are links from one page on a website to another page on the same website. These links are vital for SEO optimization because they help web crawlers discover more content on your website.

Always end with a call to action in your copy. Mortgage Professionals create a clickable contact icon or use contact form plugins. Here are some of the best free ones free contact form plugins Name, email address, and phone number should be included. Studies show that when placed at the bottom of the page, you’ll get more qualified leads if your goal is lead generation. 

Blog SEO Checklist

There you have it. A complete Blog SEO checklist Mortgage Brokers don’t have to be an expert to follow. Keep to these best practices, let Maia Mortgage Assistant crank out some boss-level content, optimize for SEO, and you’ll see an increase in traffic and leads in no time. 

• Start with keyword research.

• Use the main keyword in your title tag, meta description, and URL slug

• Structure your blog post with header tags

• Include the main keyword in your image’s file and alt text

• Keep the title at 55-60 characters 

• Remove all unnecessary words from the slug 

• Add internal links within your post

• Link to external authoritative sources

• Create a content calendar and group your blog posts into categories 

• Make your content easy to read

• Include rich media elements like videos, slides, and graphs

• Use Alt Text in all non-decorative images 

• Include a call to action with a clickable button or contact/lead capture form.

• Install Free Yoast Plugin 

BNTouch has integrated with ChatGPT.  Let Maia BNTouch’s Mortgage Assistant create the content, and now with this Blog SEO Checklist, you can drive more traffic and generate more leads in record time.

Check out Maia and all the features BNTouch offers mortgage brokers and loan officers by scheduling a demo today!

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