While it’s not entirely clear whether social media signals directly impact Google’s ranking algorithm, what’s certain is that social media can indirectly improve your website’s ranking.

Loan officers who tap into the power of social media are more likely to see an improvement in their overall search engine rankings and, as a result, increase mortgage lead generation. In this post, we’ll break down how social media can boost your website’s local search ranking and share some loan officer marketing ideas for boosting SEO that you can start using immediately. 

The Connection Between Social Media and SEO 

Before getting into strategies, let’s clarify how social media impacts SEO. It’s a common misconception that simply being active on social media directly improves your Google search rankings. In reality, the relationship between social media and SEO is more nuanced. 

Google has openly stated that social media signals such as likes, shares, and followers aren’t direct ranking factors. However, that doesn’t mean social media isn’t valuable for SEO.  

Done-For-You Social Media for Loan Officers

Here are a few ways social media indirectly impacts SEO for mortgage websites: 

1. Increased Website Traffic: Sharing your content on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X, and LinkedIn brings more eyes to your site. Increased traffic signals to Google that your site is valuable.
2. Content Resharing Leads to Backlinks: When your content gets shared, it increases the chances of earning backlinks from reputable sites, building your site’s authority. Backlinks remain one of the most important ranking factors.
3. Brand Visibility and Engagement: The more people engage with your content, the more your brand gets recognized. High engagement can enhance your authority and credibility, factors that Google considers for ranking.

The Role of Social Media in Local SEO 

For loan officers, Local SEO is critical. Unlike national SEO strategies, Local SEO focuses on optimizing your online presence to attract clients within your geo-targeted area. When done effectively, local SEO can position your business at the top of search results –even above nationally recognized mega lenders –when potential clients are searching for mortgage services in a geographic area. 

Marketing Tip: When people search on mobile devices, the results are automatically tailored to their location. Even desktop searches tend to prioritize local businesses. This means loan officers can outrank big lenders in local search results by focusing on location-based SEO strategies. 

Using Social Media to Drive Local SEO and Generate Leads 

1. Geo-Targeted Posts: Creating location-specific content on social media helps establish your relevance to a particular area. For example, when you publish a Facebook post discussing housing trends in your city or neighborhood, you increase your chances of being found by local users.
2. Local Hashtags and Tags: Incorporating local hashtags in your social media posts makes your content more discoverable to people searching for services in your area. For instance, hashtags like #SanAntonioRealEstate or #SanDiegoMortgage will help you show up in local searches.
3. Collaboration with Local Agents and Influencers: Partnering with local real estate agents and referral partners can boost your online presence by reaching their audience, thereby increasing the visibility of your content in local searches.

Marketing Tip: Consistently include location-specific keywords in your social media bios and posts. For instance, adding “San Antonio loan originator” to your LinkedIn profile will help with local visibility. 

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Leveraging Social Media for Mortgage Lead Generation 

Now that we’ve covered the SEO benefits let’s focus on how social media can be a powerful tool for mortgage lead generation. You can attract potential clients organically by consistently posting relevant, engaging content on platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, X, and Instagram. 

Here are some actionable social media strategies to generate more mortgage leads through social media marketing: 

1. Post Educational Content: People searching for mortgages often look for reliable information. Posting educational content, like blog posts explaining the differences between FHA and VA loans or tips for first-time homebuyers, positions you as an expert in the field. Drive traffic back to your site by sharing snippets of this content with links in your social posts.
2. Share Financial Wellness and Homeownership Tips: Go beyond just talking about mortgages by offering broader financial advice, such as budgeting tips, saving for a down payment, or improving credit scores. Content that supports overall financial wellness can provide extra value to your audience and position you as a helpful resource in their homeownership journey, not just a loan officer. This builds trust and keeps your audience engaged with your brand.

3. Share Local Market Insights: As a loan officer, providing updates on local housing market trends is a great way to engage your audience. Share data, infographics, or insights about home values, interest rates, or real estate opportunities in your area. This hyper-local content boosts your credibility and enhances your local SEO efforts, driving more traffic to your website.

4. Collaborate with Real Estate Agents and Referral Partners: Use social media to collaborate with them by sharing each other’s content, creating co-branded posts, or other types of content. This strengthens your relationship and exposes your business to their audience.

5. Share Client Testimonials and Success Stories: Highlighting positive client experiences is a powerful way to build trust and credibility. Share testimonials and success stories of past clients who found their dream homes with your help. A branded graphic with a direct-quote review, video testimonials, or before-and-after stories can make an even bigger impact. Don’t forget to include a link to your site for prospects to learn more about your services.

6. Engage with Your Audience: Interaction is key to driving leads. Engage with your followers by answering questions, responding to comments, and creating polls or surveys. The more you engage, the more trust you build with your audience, making them more likely to reach out when they need mortgage services.

7. Share Community-Focused Content: Go beyond self-promotion by highlighting local events, businesses, or causes that matter to your community. Whether it’s supporting a charity, promoting a neighborhood event, or featuring a local business, this type of content shows that you’re invested in the community. It helps build goodwill and keeps your brand top of mind without being overly promotional.

BONUS: Practical Tips for Loan Officers to Improve SEO 

With all this in mind, here are some practical tips to help you get started with social media marketing to improve your SEO: 

1. Link Back to Your Website: Make sure every social media post that shares a blog, article, or resource links directly back to your website. Whether it’s a call to action at the end of a post or a direct link in the content, driving traffic from your social channels to your site helps boost your website’s SEO performance over time.
2. Post Consistently: Consistency is key when it comes to social media marketing. Create a content calendar to ensure you’re regularly posting valuable content, such as mortgage tips, client success stories, or local housing market updates.
3. Incorporate Eye-Catching Graphics: Visual content like branded images catch more attention than text alone. Well-designed graphics not only drive engagement but are also more likely to be shared, expanding your reach and boosting SEO.
4. Optimize Your Profiles: Your social media profiles should be optimized for SEO for mortgage websites, meaning they include keywords that support your website’s SEO. Include relevant keywords like “loan originator,” “mortgage broker,” and your local area in your bio and profile descriptions. This will make it easier for search engines to index your profiles, increasing your visibility.
5. Repurpose Your Best Content: Don’t let your best-performing content go to waste. Repurpose them into shorter snippets or videos to reshare on social media and continually drive traffic back to your site.

How LHP-3 AI-Powered Website Builder Simplifies Social Media Management 

Managing your social media presence doesn’t have to be time-consuming or complicated. With LenderHomePage’s LHP-3 AI-powered website builder, you can easily maintain a professional, engaging presence across all your social platforms—without the hassle.  

Here’s how the LHP-3 social media feature can help you elevate your marketing efforts: 

1. Ready-to-Go, Branded Content: LHP-3 delivers professional, branded content that’s ready to post. It’s designed to engage your audience and keep your name top of mind. Whether it’s market insights, mortgage tips, or client success stories, the platform provides high-quality, relevant content that aligns with your business.

2. Create Custom, Branded Content in Minutes: Even if you’re not a content expert, LHP-3 makes it easy to create custom posts that speak directly to your audience’s needs. The platform’s streamlined content creation tools allow you to personalize posts for your market in just a few clicks. Whether you want to share local housing trends or promote your mortgage services, LHP-3 ensures your content hits the mark.

3. Publish Across All Platforms with a Few Clicks: LHP-3 allows you to publish your content across multiple social media platforms with minimal effort. This ensures your brand stays visible and consistent without spending hours creating and posting.

By using the LHP-3 AI-powered platform, you can keep your social media efforts on track, maintain a steady stream of content, and ensure your online presence is both professional and engaging. It’s the perfect solution for loan officers looking to grow their brand while saving time. 

Mastering Social Media Marketing to Boost Local SEO  

While social media may not directly influence Google’s ranking algorithm, it plays a crucial role in driving traffic, building backlinks, and improving brand visibility—all of which can indirectly boost your website’s SEO. By leveraging social media for Local SEO and mortgage lead generation, loan officers and mortgage brokers can stay ahead of the competition and attract more clients. 

Want an easier way to manage your social media and improve your online presence? Discover how LHP-3’s AI-powered social media tools can help you automate posts, engage with your audience, and drive more leads. Click below to see it in action! 

Discover Our Loan Officer Solutions: On-Demand Demo

Securing a steady flow of top-tier leads for your pipeline is already a daunting task –but you knew this when you got into this industry. But when you factor in the current formidable market conditions with the already fierce competition, the pursuit of prospective borrowers seems like an even greater Herculean endeavor.

We get it.

That’s why we put together this list of the top 10 mortgage marketing strategies specifically chosen because of their proven effectiveness at helping you stand out from the crowd and uniquely position your services as one that goes above and beyond –making for a powerful and persuasive offer that organically feeds your pipeline with leads.

Make no mistake –while these strategies may appear straightforward (and several are quite manageable to implement), they possess the remarkable power to grant you a necessary competitive edge.

Drive Marketing Success –Demo Website Templates

Craft a Captivating Website: Your Secret to Converting Prospects

Your first impression is a primary determinant of whether a prospect will convert or not, and nowadays, these impressions happen online. Chances are, a prospect will land on your website as the final destination before reaching out to you, so you need to strategize a way to effectively make them fall in love (or at least be curious) right from the start.

Your site also needs to entice them to explore further; whether that means learning more about the company, consuming information, or starting the application process. 

In other words, you don’t want to be ‘just another website’ that the prospect will likely forget. You need to create a memorable visitor experience. 

Creating one doesn’t require a lot of time or know-how if you begin with high-converting website templates like one from LenderHomePage.

Speed Matters: Turbocharge Your Mortgage Website for More Leads

A fast-loading website propels visitors through the lead funnel. If your website is using a poor hosting service, has too many plugins, and/or has excessive lines of HTML, CSS, and Javascript code, your audience will abandon your website before it fully loads. 

Search engines are very strict about this and are quick to push down your website to the bottom of results, so you want to make sure to keep user experience at the top of your priority list.

Mobile Optimization: Your Ticket to Mortgage Marketing Success

Mobile devices drive 62% of web traffic, making it absolutely essential that your site is mobile-friendly. Furthermore, Google favors mobile-friendly sites over sites that are not optimized for hand-held devices. No need to hire a developer to overhaul your site –LenderHomePage sites are already mobile-optimized. 

Optimize Your Marketing with an AI-Driven Website

From Click to Client: The Art of Boosting Conversions on Your Website

To encourage prospects to share their information, you may need to offer something in exchange. For example, an ebook or a quick quote could be offered in exchange for their name and email address. 

You also need to have a dedicated ‘Contact Us’ page to include more detailed information, such as directions to your office, map, address, email, and anything else that would encourage prospects to reach out.

Rise Above the Competition: Mortgage Marketing with Strategic Automation

While your competitors are mainly focusing on getting their name out there to get leads, you can do the same, but with a focus on the consumer’s value in working with you.

The combination of consumer-facing software + automation is a great way to delight your audience. In the mortgage environment, all your audience needs is a simple and fast homebuying experience where they are properly guided through the entire process. Mortgage software that automates the intake process also allows you to scale profits.

If you want to simplify the home-buying experience for your customers, look no further than Loanzify. Loanzify provides an easy-to-follow timeline to help guide clients every step of the way. 

Some useful features include an interview-style questionnaire for the initial intake process, the ability to track all communications between your company and the client all in a single platform and mobile app, and much more.

Out-Perform the Competition – Get a Demo

There are also numerous branding features within the software, such as the ability to customize colors, add a logo and profile picture, etc., to better strengthen the relationship between your clients and your brand.

Timing is Everything: Navigating Mortgage Marketing in the Digital Age

Today’s audience is not easy to market to. With attention spans decreasing due to short-form content apps such as TikTok, you need to be smart about how you approach your target market. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to churn out content every day. In fact, the pressure to post daily content may reduce the quality of the content and make you feel burnt out. 

Sure, there are benefits, such as the opportunity to put out various types of posts and see which ones your audience interacts with most. Posting daily can give you some good insights but does not always benefit you in the long run. 

Instead, start noticing when your audience is most receptive. For example, many businesses like to send out newsletters on Fridays when the work day is not as busy, and everyone is getting ready for the weekend vs. on a busy Monday. 

In the case of your target audience, which is potential homebuyers, notice changes in homebuying patterns and market accordingly. A good time to hit your audience with powerful and convincing messaging to buy a new home is when the market is good for buyers.

Solving the Mortgage Puzzle: Focus on Solutions, Not Just Loans

The only way your marketing messaging can resonate with your crowd is if you provide a solution to an existing problem they are experiencing. This message can be as simple as loans for homebuyers with poor credit, but oftentimes, prospects are looking for much more than that. 

Here are some other pain points you can resolve for clients:

• Simple Application Process: This requires a shift in your way of thinking. Mortgage software, like an LOS, streamlines the application process, but it does so for the originator –not the borrower. So when considering how you can beat out your competition with your application process, meditate on what the borrower experiences with the application. 

Once you’ve pinpointed the precise messaging about how you make applying for a loan stress-free and transparent, it should be clearly addressed in your marketing messaging.

• Personalized Guidance: If your messaging revolves around how you guide homebuyers along every step of the home-buying process, you’ll win hearts instantly. After all, it’s not easy for clients to navigate technology that potentially confuses them and sometimes, they need a human to explain the technicals, such as terms and requirements. Excellent, personalized support combined with easy-to-use technology is a powerful way to stand out above the noise.

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Lights, Camera, Action! Leveraging Videos for Mortgage Marketing

Video content is dominating today’s world. We can see this with current social media trends, and how people view videos is presented quite clearly in these trends. For example, short-form video content is preferred over a 20-minute video explaining the same concept. 

Next time you think about writing a whitepaper or other long-form content, ask yourself whether you can effectively communicate the same content in a video. If the video becomes too long, you can easily break it down into smaller digestible videos or even upload a crash course on YouTube. 

Popular types of video content tell an intriguing story, are testimonials, informational or tutorial, or lighthearted for entertainment.

Know Your Competition: A Winning Strategy for Mortgage Professionals

Mega banks aren’t your only competition. Local lenders and originators are too, so it’s worth checking out what they’re up to –where they’re winning and losing. 

You can see your competitors’ strongest and weakest points by reading online reviews. You can check out their social profiles and get content inspiration. You can also see what types of content they produce are getting the most views, which will give you an insight into the hottest topics in real estate. 

A good strategy is viewing your competitors’ content and asking yourself how to make it 10x better.

SWOT Analysis: Your Blueprint for Mortgage Marketing Mastery

A SWOT analysis is a report you can create that lists your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This helps you steer your marketing strategy to focus on growing your strengths, recognize your weaknesses so you can act accordingly, take advantage of opportunities, and become more aware of threats, whether they are in your control or not. 

• Strengths: This involves a comprehensive evaluation of your unique selling points, such as specialized expertise, exceptional customer service, or a vast network of real estate referral partners. By understanding and highlighting these strengths, you can emphasize your competitive advantages and effectively communicate them to potential clients to set you apart from competitors.
• Weaknesses: Assess any areas where you may fall short, such as limited product offerings, inadequate technology infrastructure, or a lack of brand recognition. By acknowledging weaknesses, you can develop targeted strategies to address and overcome them, improve you overall service, and enhance your market position.
• Opportunities: This may include emerging market trends, changes in regulations, or new customer segments. By staying attuned to these opportunities, you can tailor your marketing strategies to capitalize on them. For example, if there is a growing demand for eco-friendly home improvement loans, a loan officer could position themselves as a specialist in this area.
• Threats: This may include increasing local competition, economic fluctuations, or evolving customer preferences. By addressing threats head-on, you can adapt your marketing strategies to remain resilient and competitive.

When You’re Ready To Take Your Lending Career to the Next Level –LenderHomePage

If you’re ready to take your mortgage business to new heights and see these strategies in action, we invite you to experience an on-demand demo to discover how we can empower your marketing efforts to gain a competitive edge and achieve greater success in your mortgage business.

Start Winning With Tech – Demo Now

Your mortgage website is your digital real estate (no pun intended). But while you have the freedom to design it any way you want and the obligation to deliver an ideal user experience, you also must ensure that your website’s visibility is optimal. This is where a mortgage site’s structure comes into play.

As a mortgage provider, you may not have a team of web designers to help guide you through this critical process. That’s why we created this ‘mortgage website audit checklist’ where we guide you through the most critical aspects you should focus on, ensuring that you’ve maximized your website’s visibility and indexability.

What is a Website Audit?

A website audit is an assessment of every page on your website to determine elements that need correction or improvement. While it may be easy to spot issues on your homepage, an audit combs through your entire site, looking for visual and technical problems that can negatively impact user experience and search ranking.

Common issues that an audit may uncover are broken links, duplicate pages, missing meta descriptions, and not mobile-friendly.  

Thin or non-original content and slow page loading are typical but significant issues that most mortgage websites suffer from, and it’s no surprise. Creating pages upon pages of original, quality content isn’t fast or simple.

And designing a website that provides optimal page speed often means a complete technical redesign of its framework –an overhaul that other website providers aren’t willing to invest in.

But we did…

Meet LHP 3.0 — Websites Built For Speed!

But let’s get back to website audits.

Why Bother Auditing Your Mortgage Website Anyway?

There are numerous reasons why you should conduct an audit of your mortgage website.

Gives you insight into your website’s framework

Unless you understand the ins and outs of your site, you won’t know what to alter to improve your search ranking. 

Optimizing for SEO

Only through a website audit can you determine how to improve your website’s SEO. Conducting a site audit can help you find what errors you have made so you can correct them and also identify any missed opportunities to gain more SEO benefits.

Better convert visitors

Track your visitor’s journeys by identifying where your audience clicks and whether they fall off at a certain point. A website audit gives you a chance to spot these issues and get them fixed.

Beat competition

With a competitive website audit, you can see what is working for them so you can possibly replicate it. For example, SpyFu is a great tool for learning about the most popular keywords that your competitors use.

Backlinks analysis tools such as Ahrefs and Ubersuggest allow you to examine your competitors’ backlink profiles and compare them to yours.

How to Conduct a Website Audit

There are many tools you can use to conduct a website audit. Free tools such as Google Pagespeed Insights and Google Search Console give you an excellent view of what’s going on with your site.

There are also paid comprehensive website audits, although the information overload may leave you with more questions rather than answers. 

So which audit road should you take? 

We recommend starting off with a mortgage website template that addresses the most common offenses right off the bat.

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After that, follow the list below of the primary areas you’ll want to focus on.

DIY Website Audit Tips for Loan Officers and Mortgage Brokers

Use a site audit tool

The tools previously mentioned are great for pinpointing the most overlooked website issues, such as 404 errors, technical errors, duplicate content, crawlability issues, etc. Any red flag warnings should be the first ones your fix.

Review and Elevate Your Web Content

One crucial aspect of this audit is assessing the existing content on the website. Content not only serves as the voice of the business, but it’s foundational to search engine ranking and conversion. However, editing and creating content is much easier said than done.

But that’s where AI-powered editing and writing tool comes to your aid! Audit your content using AI tools that check your spelling, grammar, and tone. Depending on the tool, it may also suggest keywords to strengthen your SEO.

When it comes to content creation, professionals can use AI to efficiently generate first-draft content that helps expedite writing web content. Can it really be that simple? See for yourself!

Our newly launched LHP 3.0 websites come with built-in AI-writing tools, empowering loan officers and mortgage brokers to effortlessly craft compelling and relevant content for their online platforms. With this advanced feature, you can streamline the content creation process, optimize search engine visibility, and connect with your audience more effectively than ever before. 

Take a closer look at your website’s user experience (UX)

Nobody wants to stay on a website that is hard to navigate. Is your homepage clean with a clear, concise message? Would first-time visitors know where to navigate different pages and your contact page? Ask yourself these questions and make any changes accordingly.

Once you have done all of the above, make a list of recommended changes and hand it over to your developer(s) and or designer(s).

If you rather not bother with all of these design issues, your best bet is to go with a mortgage website template from LenderHomePage that is already designed for an optimal borrower experience and lead generation.

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Features That Every Mortgage Website Should Have

Are you missing any of the below features on your website? If so, it’s time to start creating a plan for implementing them.

An ‘About’ Page

Your clients want to know exactly who they are working with, so it’s highly essential for mortgage companies to provide an ‘About Us’ page on your website telling them who you are and what makes you different. 

Loan Officer Pages
Loan Officer pages give your team a way to promote themselves, your company and bring traffic to your website. To provide a more personal connection, add short bios under each team member’s photo. Add the ability to apply with each loan officer and potentially schedule meetings with them directly. This is a great value add to clients and a feature that helps with attracting and retaining originators.

If you are the sole owner and employee at your company, you can include a longer bio next to your photo since you’ll have a lot more real estate on the page.

Testimonials

A website should not just be an avenue to increase online presence. You can also leverage it to build trust. How do you build trust? By showcasing customer stories.

Having high-quality and relatable case studies on your website can ensure prospects that you are an expert in your field and have benefitted others with your work. 

Especially in an industry such as real estate, where your clients have to make important decisions and invest a lot of money, you absolutely need to have case studies on your site to move your leads along the funnel.

Reviews

Client reviews serve as a validation of your business’s credibility and reliability. During the consideration phase, prospects seek out feedback from others who have experienced your service and expertise first-hand. 

By having a collection of genuine client reviews readily available on your website, you provide valuable information that assists potential borrowers in their decision-making process. By prominently displaying your reviews, you demonstrate that real people have had positive experiences with your business and brand, strengthening your reputation and making it easier to convert web visitors into mortgage leads.

Interactive Tools

Once a visitor has landed on your website, you want them to stay. To do this, you must provide free interactive tools and resources that engage prospects. 

It’s fine if you want to create gated content to collect lead information, but be sure to provide a handful of ungated resources as well. Not everybody wants to provide their information, but this doesn’t mean they will not make a good client. An example of a free tool that every mortgage company should have on their website is a free mortgage calculator. 

Sometimes, popups can be interactive. However, you want to keep these to a minimum as nobody wants to keep hitting the ‘x’ button to see the content that they came to your website for in the first place.

Social Media Icons

You may come across many websites where you scroll down to the bottom footer and find a line of social media icons for LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc. What’s the real purpose of linking your social channels to your website?

Although it may seem counterproductive to lead key prospects away from your site, you should consider that the people who will click these icons are your site visitors who are taking the time to learn more about your company. They are likely deeply invested and just need to see that you are an expert in your field before they convert to a customer.

Make sure that you’re consistently posting high-quality content to each of your channels to have a positive impression among your crowd. This is your chance to showcase that you are knowledgeable about the mortgage process. You can share your blogs, testimonials, infographics, social tiles, and any other information that can better convince your audience that they should choose you as their lender.

You should also include a link to your website through your social channels. This allows your social media audience to get one step closer to contacting you, which should be your final goal.

Optimize with LHP 3.0 – Request A Demo Today!

Lead Magnets / CTA Buttons

Encourage your audience to commit further to you by incorporating lead magnets and call-to-action buttons on your website.

A lead magnet is an element where you offer something of high value for free (such as an ebook or guide) in exchange for their contact information.

A call-to-action (CTA) button is similar. It contains only a motivational message that encourages visitors to take additional action that moves them closer to a funded loan.

That action could be to interact with your chatbot, call your office, use your online mortgage calculator to estimate a monthly payment, or even begin their online application. The messages on the buttons are typically short (ex., ‘Inquire Today,’ ‘Schedule a Call with Us’).

Blog

If your website does not already have a blog, you should create a section for it. Blogs help you showcase your expertise and knowledge while also helping you show up better and more frequently in local search queries. 

Decide how often you will create content and post. A healthy schedule is to post about once a week. 

Have writer’s block? Use our AI mortgage writing tool to blast through it! Available on LHP 3.0 websites.

Effortless Website Optimization: Utilizing LenderHomePAge Mortgage Website Templates for Increased Leads

There are so many improvements you can make on your mortgage website to increase leads and encourage prospects to reach out to you faster. By making even the most simple adjustments, such as moving around certain elements on your website, you can greatly improve the visitor experience.

If working with website design elements is not your strongest area, leverage a mortgage website template from LenderHomePage.This out-of-the-box solution establishes a strong baseline that checks off most of the audit list. Then, you can use the tips provided in this guide to fine-tune your site as you see fit.

Elevate Your Mortgage Site’s Visibility: Get A Demo

Link building plays a vital role in SEO and is one of the factors Google considers when determining search rankings. While actions like improving page speed can provide an immediate impact on ranking, link building is an endeavor that focuses on enhancing your website’s authority over time.

Although it may require some patience to see tangible outcomes, each high-value backlink compounds your authority, propelling and solidifying your site’s position in top search results for your target market.

Over time, backlinks increase website visibility and lead-generation opportunities.

While directory sites are a popular and effective link-building tactic, there are more advanced strategies that offer even greater advantages. Uncover the simplest and most impactful method to obtain high-quality backlinks for your mortgage website using AI, empowering your website to enhance credibility, authority, and achieve higher rankings.

SEO-Friendly Website Templates –Demo Today!

Link-Building 101: Understanding The Basics

When you “build links” to a website, you are essentially inserting your URL on other domains, which tells search engines that your website is important, and, therefore, should be ranked higher in search results. This is one of the main link-building benefits for mortgage websites. 

However, the catch is that you can’t just add any backlinks. It has come from a site with a related niche and also has some authority of its own. More on that later.

It’s also important to note that tackling backlinks to increase your site’s visibility is best done after foundational content and technical SEO strategies have been implemented, such as: 

• SEO mortgage content with meta titles and meta descriptions (continue reading to learn how we make this easier with our AI-enabled content creator on LHP3)
• Responsive, mobile-friendly design
• Optimized site architecture
• XML site map
• Optimized page speed

Now let’s discuss best practices for link building.

Pro Tips for Effective Link Building on Mortgage Websites

There are so many complexities involved with link-building. Here are some practices you should steer away from to avoid getting penalized by search engines.

Avoid paying for links (Sort of)

Google does not like it when sites attempt to artificially enhance their ranking, and this includes buying backlinks that go to sites whose purpose is just to host backlinks. This is called link farming and is penalized by all search engines. 

However, paying a marketer or agency to attempt to secure backlinks on your behalf is allowed. But buyers, be aware! Some marketing agencies may still employ “link farming” tactics in their services. This is because building links takes time and effort. Avoid getting penalized by never buying farmed backlinks, work with a reputable marketing agency —or do it yourself with the tactics we’re about to teach you!

When guest blogging, post on sites related to your niche.

Google and other search engines quickly pick up on the type of websites linking to you. As a mortgage broker or loan officer, you may not want to post on sites about general pet care, for example. Otherwise, search engines assume your site is about pets and will not help you rank for mortgage, real estate, or location-specific keywords.

Get rid of outdated practices, such as commenting on blogs with your website link.

Simply adding your link and a sales pitch to the comment section of a popular website is a very spammy practice and does not make you or your company look good. Instead, provide engaging and thought-leadership commentary along with your website link for the best results.

Loan Officers: Try Our Game-Changing Mortgage Websites

4 Link Building Hacks for Mortgage Websites to Rule the Rankings

On the other hand, here are some practices you should opt for to improve your link-building efforts and ensure you are building links in an ethical way.

Use Web Content as Ego Bait

Ego bait is a strategy that involves creating content specifically designed to flatter or appeal to influential individuals or potential referral partners. The goal is to attract attention and generate backlinks by tapping into the “ego” or self-interest of these individuals.

Ego bait content can be in the form of an article or interview, but listings are fast and easy ways to gain traction from many individuals from just one piece of content. 

The key to successful ego bait backlinking is to create engaging content that showcases the targeted individuals in a flattering, authentic way while also providing relevant value to your business and prospects.

For example, you can create a listicle highlighting the various yoga studios in your target location, like traditional, hot, prenatal, etc, and detail the differences between them.

Another option would be to use local professionals to create content. A piece titled “Omaha Home Inspectors Answer Your Toughest Questions” is an example of a type of content that may perform well for SEO using keywords but also gives you an opportunity to create a backlink.

Reach out to the business and let them know that you’ll be featuring them on your site. Share the link and ask if they can add it to their site –creating the backlink!

They’re also likely to share it on social media, so remember to tag them on any social posts you create from the content.

When executed effectively, ego bait can not only attract valuable backlinks but also establish relationships with influential figures or brands in your industry, potentially leading to further collaboration and exposure.

Struggling to find the right words or short on time to craft captivating content? No worries, we’ve got you covered! Introducing our game-changing LHP3 website platform with its supercharged AI-enabled content creator. Simply share the topic, throw in a catchy title, and let our AI work its magic to generate an incredible first draft. It’s like having a wordsmith sidekick on demand!

All that’s left for you is a quick polish, and you’re ready to publish. Don’t let time or inspiration hold you back – unleash the power of our AI content creator.

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Thought Leadership

If you have been actively searching for guest blogging opportunities, you may have come across some that are seeking experts on a specific topic. For example, there is a website called HARO, which stands for ‘Help a Reporter Out.’ You can offer your knowledge and expertise to publications to gain valuable and high-quality backlinks.

Other ways to do this are by carrying out original research, doing podcast interviews, speaking at relevant industry conferences, creating and posting infographics to your socials, etc.

Besides the backlinks, you will also benefit by better gaining your audience’s trust. Everybody wants to work with a savvy, well-spoken loan officer. Let’s also remember that high-quality content often leads to increased trust and higher rates of conversion.

Broken Link-Building

There are so many broken links on the web, and these can badly impact a website. Take some time to research sites in your industry that have broken links. The goal is to either create new content or use your existing content and encourage the webmaster of that website to replace the old content with your new content.

Before reaching out, always make sure that the content you are pitching adds value to the page and is not just there for the sake of link-building. Explain what value it will add to that page when you reach out.

Here is more information on broken link building. 

Do Directory Submissions

Directory sites are a great way to build links to your mortgage website. To get the most out of this tactic, you’ll want to create two lists: top general directories and industry-specific directories.

The general directories are those that every business should be listed in (ex. Google My Business, Yelp, Bing, etc.) plus any locale-specific directories. The niche-specific directories will be ones that are related to mortgage or real estate (ex. Zillow and MortgageBite).

When getting listed in directories, prioritize that that allows for a website URL. The ones without a URL are still good for exposure but will not help you with link-building.

Another thing to keep in mind is to ensure all of your company’s information is consistent throughout different directory sites; otherwise, this can negatively impact your SEO.

LenderHomePage: Empowering Loan Officers to Excel in the Digital Age

Unleash the power of link-building! Elevate your mortgage website’s authority and boost search rankings effortlessly with our AI-enabled mortgage content creator. Book a demo now and experience how our tools simplify the creation of quality content that attracts backlinks and builds your online presence.

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If you’ve been a loan officer for any number of years, you’re familiar with the ebbs and flows of the mortgage market. When things are good, they are very good. And other times, they are “less good.” Then there are times like the one we’re currently experiencing where it’s particularly challenging.

The good news is that all signs indicate we’re over the worst of it. The market has somewhat stabilized, and consumer confidence is on the rise. However, while the market is steadying and self-correcting, it’s still a far cry from a booming demand; profitable lead gen and conversion continue to be tough.

Thriving in the current environment and preparing for booming success when we’re on the upswing again means loan officers must adapt and innovate now.

You must take charge of the future by embracing change and finding new solutions that set you apart from the competition.

In this blog post, we’ll explore key strategies to help you become a successful loan officer in any market—from understanding your most lucrative channels to knowing how to leverage mortgage tech to win more referral partners. With our insider tips, you’ll be on your way to becoming a top-performing loan officer –no matter the market!

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Successful Loan Officer Lead Gen Strategies

Consider the following four recession-proof strategies to have a pipeline of consistent leads coming through.

1. Identify 3-4 marketing channels that bring in the most qualified leads.

When you focus on too many lead channels at once, it’s difficult to keep up, and you may spend too much time on marketing strategies that bring little to no return for your business. 

Instead, examine your analytics to understand which marketing channels are truly most successful at converting leads to customers. Your channels could include social media, co-marketing with existing realtor partners, paid leads, paid mortgage digital marketing, organic leads from Google searches, review sites, referrals, and social media platforms.

Examine which channels supply the most leads and have the highest/fastest conversions.

Filter it down to the top three or four that work best for your mortgage business, and see how you can take it a step further. Be sure to set smart, attainable goals which motivate you to work better towards them.

Since digital marketing is a major part of successful mortgage lead generation marketing, be sure to also check out our eBook on how to increase your digital presence online to gain more traffic and leads. The eBook also covers using mortgage loan officer marketing tools to your advantage, including leveraging social media platforms and search engines to find high-quality mortgage leads.

2. Establish new realtor relationships and nurture existing partnerships.

With higher rates and most mortgage transactions lying on the purchase side, you’ll want to consistently work to establish new realtor partners and add value to existing ones. Keeping regular contact with your realtor partners and continuously providing value is key to gaining more purchase leads. Sending a sporadic text or call to “check-in” and see if they have a prospective borrower they’d like to send your way is a poor and ineffective way to build a mutually beneficial relationship.

Instead, you must think of ways to positively contribute value to your existing realtor’s business, especially in the form of digital currency, such as content, tech tools, and marketing. Plus, you need a way to engage new realtors with a compelling reason to work with you. 

For example, originators using Loanzify Mobile App are able to co-brand the mortgage mobile app with their realtor partners to keep prospective buyers engaged with home searches, location-based mortgage payment calculators, and instant mortgage readiness checks – instrumental and advantageous features that consumers won’t find on other real estate apps like Zillow.  

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Going above and beyond to provide extraordinary value to your real estate partners is the only way to stand out and strengthen your relationship and is one of the best strategies for mortgage lead generation.

3. Leverage mortgage technology as a unique differentiator.

One aspect that will forever help your business stand out from your competitors is the technology you use and provide to your customers.

But this is where most companies get it wrong. It’s not just about having tech or even the latest tech (although legacy software is ill-advised).

The #1 benefit you want from your technology is providing customers with the best mortgage experience possible. Home financing is intimidating enough –it should not feel like a chore, too. Luckily, intuitive consumer-facing mortgage software from LenderHomePage helps homebuyers obtain home financing easily and quickly while making the journey exciting. 

If you resolve the issue of borrower experience better than your competitors can, you’ll close loans up to 5x faster. Not only that, but building out a stellar customer portfolio attracts other marketing-qualified leads, and you’ll be well on your way to success. 

4. Gain Insight into Your Local Market and Niche Opportunities

As a loan officer, staying informed about national mortgage trends is essential to providing excellent service to your clients. However, it’s equally important to understand your local market thoroughly. National headlines may not always apply to your region, and being aware of the nuances of your local market can help you identify revenue opportunities that might otherwise be missed.

One way to stay on top of your local market is to cultivate relationships with real estate agents in your area. These professionals are often the first point of contact for home buyers and can provide valuable insights into the current state of the market. And as mentioned above, real estate agents are a vital aspect of lead generation –particularly in a challenging market.

Another strategy is to track the data and metrics specific to your region. This can include things like the number of new home starts, the number of homes on the market, job market demands, and significant city improvements that may draw the attention of curious home shoppers. 

By staying up-to-date on these metrics, you can identify trends and changes in the market and adjust your strategies accordingly.

You can also use this information to create short blog posts to send out to your prospects and referral partners.

Wrapping up: How to stand out as a loan officer

Loan officers must stay informed of the current market shifts and use strategies such as optimizing their marketing channels, leveraging mortgage technology, building relationships with realtors, and understanding local markets to succeed. Whether in a booming market or a downturn, there are ways to remain competitive and profitable. 

Plus, being prepared should never be underrated when it comes to achieving long-term success as a loan officer—regardless of what type of environment you are working in.

So if you’re ready to take action, contact us at LenderHomePage today and get access to powerful digital tools that will give you an edge against all competitors in any market. We look forward to partnering with you to win.

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A marketing plan helps you grow your mortgage business – this is true even for single MLO’s. But let’s face it, creating a plan can be overwhelming and confusing. We understand. Many loan officers find themselves in the same boat.

The great news is that we’ve simplified it for you with this guide.

Our straightforward but thorough loan officer marketing plan template covers everything you need to succeed in your role and ensure business growth. With our help, you can stop stressing about creating a plan and start focusing on reaching your goals toward mortgage business success.

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Identifying Where Your Business Currently Stands

Prospecting likely takes up the majority of your day, but you don’t want to overlook analyzing your business as a whole. For example, are you keenly aware of which marketing activities are bringing in business or whether there were any significant changes to your lead generation avenues?

Start by focusing on where your leads are currently coming from and where they drop off. For example, if you see that you’re getting traffic from social media, but you struggle to move them further down the path to closing, you know that there’s work to be done there.  

Note that little to no leads from a particular source doesn’t mean you should abandon it altogether. For example, you may have heard that email marketing is dead, but that’s simply not true.

Email marketing has some of the highest ROI’s as well as decent conversion rates in marketing. So if one of your lead generation tactics isn’t quite panning out, it may just mean you need to alter your strategy, not can it altogether.

So start by examining the hard data and see where your business currently stands with lead generation and conversion. After that, you’ll have a clearer picture of how to structure your business plan.

Goal-Setting: Essential to Loan Officer Success

Setting goals and objectives isn’t just a marketing ploy. It’s actually scientifically proven that goal-setting helps individuals achieve impressive results in record time. Using goals not only motivates you but also defines what success looks like to measure your progress. 

The best method, by far, is to use the “SMART” goal method, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Here’s an example:

• The first step in working towards your goals is to identify the goal. Let’s say that you want to close more loans. Specify how many loans you want to close.
• Next, identify your closing ratio. This will help you determine whether your goal is attainable. For example, an LO with a current closing rate of five loans per quarter will have a better chance of achieving eight loans per quarter. If you’re a newbie, eight loans might be too lofty to achieve in your first quarter. 
• Closing more loans is an indicator of a successful loan officer, so we know this goal is relevant. But you also want to make sure that any goals you set are in-line with company expectations. If your company has a specific quota, you’ll want to take that into account as well. 
• Next is giving yourself a timeframe in which you’re going to achieve this goal. In our example, we’re giving ourselves a quarter to reach eight closed loans. 

Now that we have a foundation let’s jump into creating your marketing and business plan.

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Mortgage Loan Officer Marketing and Business Plan: How to Structure Your Plan

Now that you know what works, what doesn’t, and what strategies you have yet to test out, you are in a better position to create your loan officer business plan. Since marketing and business plans can get hefty, a good way to stay organized is to divide your plan up by different fields or departments. For example, you want to have a section for the ‘operations plan’ and the ‘marketing plan.’

A good template you can follow is to start off with an Executive Summary followed by some industry and market insights. After that, you can go into the fields.

Executive Summary

Every good plan needs a strong introduction that will give a clear snapshot of the different sections of the business plan. A good loan officer executive summary will include the following:

• Brief information on your business
• Target borrowers
• Local competitors
• Your UVP (Unique Value Proposition)
• Brief description of the plan from different viewpoints, such as lead generation tactics and realtor partnership creation.

As counterintuitive as it might seem, it’s best to write this section of the plan out in the end when you have a solid idea about the details of your marketing plan.

Industry and Market Analysis

Having a detailed analysis of your industry and market landscape is a great way to set a direction for your plan. What this does is give you valuable insight into how big your target market is, how much it is expected to grow in coming years, what’s trending in your industry, what trends are here to stay, etc. 

Your industry analysis should answer questions such as:

• Who are your main local competitors?
• What is the TAM (total addressable market)?
• What is the SAM (serviceable addressable market)?
• What is the SOM (serviceable obtainable market)?

Marketing Plan

As for the ‘Marketing’ section of your plan, you must cover the four P’s: product, place, price, and promotion. Explain the product(s) and or services you are offering. Since your loan officer business is likely local, explain how the location of your business impacts its growth. Address the following questions: 

• Is there a large serviceable obtainable market in your area? e.g. are you working with a local builder, with a top realtor, etc…
• Who are your local competitors? 
• How are you differentiating yourself from your competitors? (Hint: competing solely on rates or products is unlikely to be effective)
• Are there any local mortgage niches that are being underserved? 
• How will you promote your mortgage business, and what mortgage technology do you need to support your efforts?

Operations Plan

Don’t let the label mislead you. Operations simply refers to how you’ll complete your tasks and how your workflow and tools will help you achieve your goals. The first step is to outline your short and long-term goals and the processes you use in each of those areas.

Some examples of short-term processes would be:

• Managing your document workflows
• Applying tech to improve communication
• Implementing more interactive digital tools to drive engagement
• Allowing borrowers to pay for their own credit report

Some examples of long-term goals would be:

• Streamlining the borrower intake between your mortgage website and application
• Create mortgage content geared around your niche target and implement it in your lead funnel
• Shifting to a personalized self-serve model that automates time-consuming processes without sacrificing service.
• Implement a social media marketing plan that helps build relationships and engages potential clients.

By using this loan officer business plan template, you’ll have a compelling framework to achieve your goals and create a clear path for career longevity. And at LenderHomePage, there’s nothing more important to us than helping mortgage loan originators succeed. That’s why our suite of digital mortgage tools are different.

From mortgage website templates with built-in lead magnets to a co-branded mortgage mobile app that grows your realtor referrals to an intuitive 1003 intake, our mortgage tech is designed to help captivate and create clients for life. Schedule a demo today and take the first step toward your long-term success.

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You may have heard of search engine optimization for your website, but did you know that there is a set of SEO practices for YouTube, too? Just like search engines, YouTube has its own search feature. 

Every day, millions of video creators compete to make their videos appear in the first results of searches, and you can get your mortgage YouTube channel up there, too, if you follow the practices mentioned in this article. 

Read on to discover the top YouTube SEO tactics that can help you improve your ranking. 

1. Rename your video file using a target keyword.

Make sure that your target keyphrase is included in the file name itself before uploading it onto YouTube. This one is easy to miss since viewers will not see the name of the actual file.

However, the file name is one of the key areas (aside from the title and description) that YouTube uses to determine how relevant your video is to the topic. 

So if you have a file titled ‘tips video September 12 upload.MOV’ and it is a video on home buying tips, you will want to change it to ‘home buying tips business name.MOV’. Make the file name as close to the topic and your business name as possible.

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2. Insert your keyword naturally in the video title.

One of the most obvious places you want to insert your target keyphrase is in your video title. However, do not make the mistake of forcing it in the title. It should appear naturally, and readers should find your title intriguing. 

Similar to optimizing a title tag for search engine results, your mortgage YouTube video title should be no longer than 60 characters. You want your readers to be able to read the entire title without it cutting off. 

For example, if your keyword is ‘home buying tips’, a good title for your video could be ‘Home Buying Tips You Did Not Know About’. This title is intriguing, under 60 characters, includes the keyphrase, and we managed to have the keyphrase at the beginning of the title!

It might also be a good idea to use some online tools to research what keywords users are searching for on YouTube regarding your topic. Ahrefs has a free YouTube keyword research tool that provides a fair amount of keywords for you to get a solid idea.

3. Optimize your video description.

Your mortgage video’s description also has to face a character limit. Your description must not surpass 1,000 characters. You may recall that past videos didn’t have very long descriptions, and that is because most of the people who clicked on a video are there for the video, not necessarily the description. But don’t underestimate the power of the video description! 

Since it’s part of the Google “family,” the video description will be indexed on the Google search engine, giving it a solid chance of getting more views and traffic. 

Be sure to accurately describe your video in the first 100 characters, as this is the snippet that will show up before you have to click ‘Show More’. Going back to the home buying tips video example, let’s come up with a good description to support our video.

Buying a home is a big investment, and these home-buying tips will ensure you are getting a good deal. Home buying trends differ from year to year, and along with trends, best practices change as well. 

Got another helpful tip you want to share with our viewers? Comment below and let us know! Also, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe to our channel.

The description above is great because the first sentence describes the purpose of the video and what viewers will get out of it. Plus, it is nearly 100 characters. Not only that, but we also encourage our viewers to engage with the video and subscribe to our channel, which helps your video rank higher. 

Another feature you might want to make good use of is adding a transcript.

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4. Tag your video with popular keywords that relate to your topic.

When you are preparing your video for upload, you have the option to add relevant tags that you think will help viewers find you. This not only helps people find you but also helps YouTube further determine what your video is about to help you rank properly. 

You want to have a good mix of regular and long-tail keywords to reach as many people as possible. However, don’t think that YouTube is not smart enough to detect when you have used a tag that is completely irrelevant to your topic. Your home-buying video should not have a tag with whatever is currently trending if it’s off-topic. The last thing you want is for your 1,000+ subscribers channel to get penalized on YouTube.

5. Categorize your video.

Did you know that you can categorize your YouTube videos? You can find this setting under ‘Advanced Settings.’ Many YouTube channel owners may not properly utilize this feature because it can be hard to determine which categories your video can fall under. In that case, it is always a good idea to do your research. 

Find out which channels are in the lead for a specific category, what their video content looks like, how their audiences interact with their content, and one of the most important points to note, what the style and format of their videos are. 

All of these observations can help you determine whether your video would fit in that category or not. Some examples of categories for your mortgage YouTube channel could be ‘Buying a Home,’ ‘Refinancing,’ and ‘Credit Scores.’

6. Upload a custom thumbnail image for your video’s result link.

Thumbnails have nothing to do with keywords or how YouTube reads your content, but they certainly play a major role in attracting your audiences’ attention. You may notice that when you search for a tutorial or even a fun vlog, the top results will show videos that have eye-catching custom thumbnails. 

YouTube does give you recommendations for thumbnails when you are uploading your video, but at the end of the day, your video will be most successful if you take the time to design a custom thumbnail. Some good thumbnail ideas for mortgage YouTube channels can include a nice luxury-style house with a diagonal arrow pointing downwards, showcasing that now is the right time to buy a home. 

As for text in thumbnails, having actionable words such as ‘Buy a Home Now’ or ‘Don’t Wait to Buy’ etc. can capture your audience’s attention.

Canva is a great platform for creating video thumbnails, and it has tons of free features, including icons, stock photos, shapes, fonts, etc. Although Canva has a design option for ‘YouTube Thumbnail’ with the dimensions already taken care of for you, it is still important to keep in mind that best practices include using images that are 1280×720 pixels (16:9 ratio), and around 2MB or smaller file sizes. Before uploading a custom thumbnail, you need to get your account verified on YouTube. 

7. Use video hashtags to drive YouTube search results.

Hashtags are not only a great way for your mortgage business to be found on social media channels such as Instagram and Facebook, and YouTube as well. The good thing about hashtags on YouTube is that you can add them to your title and description to help viewers find your video. 

Here’s another cool tip: when you add hashtags to your video title, they will automatically get hyperlinked and shown above your title.

8. Add subtitles and closed captions

Subtitles and closed captions are terms that are sometimes used interchangeably, but when it comes to YouTube videos, there’s a critical difference. 

Subtitles are mostly meant for translating languages. Non-native English speakers may find subtitles helpful.

Closed captions, on the other hand, simply display the text being said in the video and do not involve translating dialogue into a different language. 

The files for both subtitles and closed captions will also include timestamps for every couple of lines of the text mentioned in the video, so viewers can go back to them as they want.

Which should you have? Both! Having both subtitles and closed captions gives you a greater chance of your video being found on various search engines. 

9. Increase audience engagement.

We’ve discussed various on-page SEO strategies, but what about off-page SEO? For YouTube, off-page SEO usually refers to the likes, comments, shares, and subscribers that a video or channel receives. That is why you should always encourage audience engagement. Whether you want to ask viewers to like and comment at the beginning, middle, or end of the video is up to you, but definitely mention it in every video. 

Another good strategy is to respond to the comments you receive. Not only does this increase the number of comments on your video, but also makes the viewers feel welcome – prompting them to see more of your videos.

10. Make Longer Videos

Longer videos are great for gaining higher revenue due to the fact that you can achieve more watch time hours and place more ads throughout the video. However, just because longer videos are more advantageous revenue-wise does not always mean that everyone needs to create longer videos. Sometimes, shorter videos gain more views since they are an easy watch.

The best way to decide whether your videos should be longer or shorter is by searching for similar content to yours and seeing which videos performed well. Look up other mortgage channels on YouTube and see what the average length of their videos is. If the longer videos performed better, then you know what to do.

Next Steps…

Now that you are aware of the top 10 best practices to help your YouTube videos rank higher with SEO, you can start creating video content that converts!

If you have not been following these practices and have uploaded videos that may not meet these criteria, you can always go back to those and optimize them. Even thumbnails can be changed on past videos, so there is nothing to fret about.

It’s about time you add YouTube to your mortgage marketing plan and start utilizing the most popular video platform to gain more leads for your real estate business. Need more help with your mortgage marketing? Check out our all-in-one customer-facing tech stack designed to help you generate clients and boost realtor referrals.

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You may have heard of search engine optimization for your website, but did you know that there is a set of SEO practices for YouTube, too? Just like search engines, YouTube has its own search feature. 

Every day, millions of video creators compete to make their videos appear in the first results of searches, and you can get your mortgage YouTube channel up there, too, if you follow the practices mentioned in this article. 

Read on to discover the top YouTube SEO tactics that can help you improve your ranking. 

1. Rename your video file using a target keyword.

Make sure that your target keyphrase is included in the file name itself before uploading it onto YouTube. This one is easy to miss since viewers will not see the name of the actual file.

However, the file name is one of the key areas (aside from the title and description) that YouTube uses to determine how relevant your video is to the topic. 

So if you have a file titled ‘tips video September 12 upload.MOV’ and it is a video on home buying tips, you will want to change it to ‘home buying tips business name.MOV’. Make the file name as close to the topic and your business name as possible.

Leverage Video on Your Site – Request a Demo

2. Insert your keyword naturally in the video title.

One of the most obvious places you want to insert your target keyphrase is in your video title. However, do not make the mistake of forcing it in the title. It should appear naturally, and readers should find your title intriguing. 

Similar to optimizing a title tag for search engine results, your mortgage YouTube video title should be no longer than 60 characters. You want your readers to be able to read the entire title without it cutting off. 

For example, if your keyword is ‘home buying tips’, a good title for your video could be ‘Home Buying Tips You Did Not Know About’. This title is intriguing, under 60 characters, includes the keyphrase, and we managed to have the keyphrase at the beginning of the title!

It might also be a good idea to use some online tools to research what keywords users are searching for on YouTube regarding your topic. Ahrefs has a free YouTube keyword research tool that provides a fair amount of keywords for you to get a solid idea.

3. Optimize your video description.

Your mortgage video’s description also has to face a character limit. Your description must not surpass 1,000 characters. You may recall that past videos didn’t have very long descriptions, and that is because most of the people who clicked on a video are there for the video, not necessarily the description. But don’t underestimate the power of the video description! 

Since it’s part of the Google “family,” the video description will be indexed on the Google search engine, giving it a solid chance of getting more views and traffic. 

Be sure to accurately describe your video in the first 100 characters, as this is the snippet that will show up before you have to click ‘Show More’. Going back to the home buying tips video example, let’s come up with a good description to support our video.

Buying a home is a big investment, and these home-buying tips will ensure you are getting a good deal. Home buying trends differ from year to year, and along with trends, best practices change as well. 

Got another helpful tip you want to share with our viewers? Comment below and let us know! Also, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe to our channel.

The description above is great because the first sentence describes the purpose of the video and what viewers will get out of it. Plus, it is nearly 100 characters. Not only that, but we also encourage our viewers to engage with the video and subscribe to our channel, which helps your video rank higher. 

Another feature you might want to make good use of is adding a transcript.

Embed Your Video in Your Website

4. Tag your video with popular keywords that relate to your topic.

When you are preparing your video for upload, you have the option to add relevant tags that you think will help viewers find you. This not only helps people find you but also helps YouTube further determine what your video is about to help you rank properly. 

You want to have a good mix of regular and long-tail keywords to reach as many people as possible. However, don’t think that YouTube is not smart enough to detect when you have used a tag that is completely irrelevant to your topic. Your home-buying video should not have a tag with whatever is currently trending if it’s off-topic. The last thing you want is for your 1,000+ subscribers channel to get penalized on YouTube.

5. Categorize your video.

Did you know that you can categorize your YouTube videos? You can find this setting under ‘Advanced Settings.’ Many YouTube channel owners may not properly utilize this feature because it can be hard to determine which categories your video can fall under. In that case, it is always a good idea to do your research. 

Find out which channels are in the lead for a specific category, what their video content looks like, how their audiences interact with their content, and one of the most important points to note, what the style and format of their videos are. 

All of these observations can help you determine whether your video would fit in that category or not. Some examples of categories for your mortgage YouTube channel could be ‘Buying a Home,’ ‘Refinancing,’ and ‘Credit Scores.’

6. Upload a custom thumbnail image for your video’s result link.

Thumbnails have nothing to do with keywords or how YouTube reads your content, but they certainly play a major role in attracting your audiences’ attention. You may notice that when you search for a tutorial or even a fun vlog, the top results will show videos that have eye-catching custom thumbnails. 

YouTube does give you recommendations for thumbnails when you are uploading your video, but at the end of the day, your video will be most successful if you take the time to design a custom thumbnail. Some good thumbnail ideas for mortgage YouTube channels can include a nice luxury-style house with a diagonal arrow pointing downwards, showcasing that now is the right time to buy a home. 

As for text in thumbnails, having actionable words such as ‘Buy a Home Now’ or ‘Don’t Wait to Buy’ etc. can capture your audience’s attention.

Canva is a great platform for creating video thumbnails, and it has tons of free features, including icons, stock photos, shapes, fonts, etc. Although Canva has a design option for ‘YouTube Thumbnail’ with the dimensions already taken care of for you, it is still important to keep in mind that best practices include using images that are 1280×720 pixels (16:9 ratio), and around 2MB or smaller file sizes. Before uploading a custom thumbnail, you need to get your account verified on YouTube. 

7. Use video hashtags to drive YouTube search results.

Hashtags are not only a great way for your mortgage business to be found on social media channels such as Instagram and Facebook, and YouTube as well. The good thing about hashtags on YouTube is that you can add them to your title and description to help viewers find your video. 

Here’s another cool tip: when you add hashtags to your video title, they will automatically get hyperlinked and shown above your title.

8. Add subtitles and closed captions

Subtitles and closed captions are terms that are sometimes used interchangeably, but when it comes to YouTube videos, there’s a critical difference. 

Subtitles are mostly meant for translating languages. Non-native English speakers may find subtitles helpful.

Closed captions, on the other hand, simply display the text being said in the video and do not involve translating dialogue into a different language. 

The files for both subtitles and closed captions will also include timestamps for every couple of lines of the text mentioned in the video, so viewers can go back to them as they want.

Which should you have? Both! Having both subtitles and closed captions gives you a greater chance of your video being found on various search engines. 

9. Increase audience engagement.

We’ve discussed various on-page SEO strategies, but what about off-page SEO? For YouTube, off-page SEO usually refers to the likes, comments, shares, and subscribers that a video or channel receives. That is why you should always encourage audience engagement. Whether you want to ask viewers to like and comment at the beginning, middle, or end of the video is up to you, but definitely mention it in every video. 

Another good strategy is to respond to the comments you receive. Not only does this increase the number of comments on your video, but also makes the viewers feel welcome – prompting them to see more of your videos.

10. Make Longer Videos

Longer videos are great for gaining higher revenue due to the fact that you can achieve more watch time hours and place more ads throughout the video. However, just because longer videos are more advantageous revenue-wise does not always mean that everyone needs to create longer videos. Sometimes, shorter videos gain more views since they are an easy watch.

The best way to decide whether your videos should be longer or shorter is by searching for similar content to yours and seeing which videos performed well. Look up other mortgage channels on YouTube and see what the average length of their videos is. If the longer videos performed better, then you know what to do.

Next Steps…

Now that you are aware of the top 10 best practices to help your YouTube videos rank higher with SEO, you can start creating video content that converts!

If you have not been following these practices and have uploaded videos that may not meet these criteria, you can always go back to those and optimize them. Even thumbnails can be changed on past videos, so there is nothing to fret about.

It’s about time you add YouTube to your mortgage marketing plan and start utilizing the most popular video platform to gain more leads for your real estate business. Need more help with your mortgage marketing? Check out our all-in-one customer-facing tech stack designed to help you generate clients and boost realtor referrals.

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While mortgage tech has helped streamline many aspects of origination, there’s a massive disconnect that nearly all tech stacks are neglecting, and it’s causing you to bleed thousands in potential revenue.

Allow us to explain. 

Most mortgage technology is focused on the compliance side of the transaction —that’s where components like automation and integrations take front and center, and for good reason. Modernizing lending is long overdue, and strides made in recent years to advance mortgage tech and regulations have been an insurmountable win. 

Mortgage Tools that WOW

But can you recall the last time compliant-focused software like your LOS helped initiate a loan?

Do you know which facets of your LOS encourage the borrower to keep up the momentum and complete the application?

As you might have guessed, no aspect of an LOS or other compliant-focused tech helps sell loans.

In fact, digitizing the intake process has actually made it more challenging for the consumer!

Here’s why –

Your prospects don’t care about compliance. All they want is to get approved for a loan they can afford in the most straightforward and enjoyable way possible. 

Obviously, compliance 100% matters to your business, but when it comes to your clients, relying on compliance-focused mortgage tech rather than customer-centric will make you lose every time. 

An LOS is an enabler but is not a complete intake solution. 

A recent study demonstrates this idea clearly. When consumers were asked what factor most positively influenced their interaction with a business, only 32% specifically mentioned technology (PwC, 2018).

In contrast, nearly 50% pointed directly to experience as the most important and influential factor. That’s not to say that technology doesn’t matter, but rather it points to how crucial the experience with the technology is –because THAT’S what they value the most. Experience, not functionality.

Furthermore, this study revealed that you have few chances to get it right. 59% of consumers said they would walk away from a business after several bad experiences, while 17% said they would leave after just one bad experience!

And in an industry where your services are needed once every seven to ten years, losing them now could mean losing them forever!

Can you afford to lose over half of your prospective borrowers?? 

Of course not! No one can afford to lose clients. But that’s precisely what happens when you entrust your revenue to an application focused more on compliance rather than conversions.

Your All-In-One Customer-Facing Tech Stack

Customer-Centric Mortgage Tech is EVERYTHING To Your Business

When it comes to converting website visitors into borrowers, customer-centric technology and how it’s implemented in the borrower’s journey play a crucial role. But what exactly makes tech “customer-centric,” and why is it so crucial for selling more loans? 

Simply put, customer-centric mortgage technology places the customer at the center of the intake operation. It engages and involves the customer at multiple touchpoints to unburden them from the mechanics of origination while empowering and motivating them to complete the necessary tasks. 

It also fosters a positive experience throughout the journey –from first discovering your brand to considering your service to starting an application to finally completing it –and maps out a path that significantly increases conversion rates and grows your business by creating loyal clientele.

Are you forcing a process on your clients or making it easy for them to send you a loan?

Nearly 50% of consumers will abandon their mortgage application, and friction from a compliance-focused application is likely the reason. Check out the main culprits of high application abandon rates:

• Consumer is confused by the process and is unable to find assistance
• Consumer is overwhelmed by the requirements
• Consumer doesn’t understand the terms or requirements
• Poor user experience from inferior application design and/or technical problems

Burdening your clients with a compliance-focused app because “it gets the job done” completely ignores your client’s needs. And without a client, is there even a loan? 

If your LOS is compliance-focused, what helps your loan officers sell more loans?

Competing solely on rates or products will only take you so far. The rest lies in your unique value proposition and the borrower journey you create with your customer-centric tech. This is the battleground for communicating your competitive advantage and how your loan officers will sell loans!

How does your client-facing technology match up with the big-box lenders?

If you’re using a traditional compliance-focused intake, you’re essentially holding the door open for your prospect to walk out and choose a big-box lender. 

Never forget that being a pioneer isn’t the only reason that Rocket Mortgage surpassed mega lenders like Wells Fargo and JP Morgan. It was also their keen awareness that the customer’s online experience was how they would win over the consumer.

The same rings true for you. Even more so!

Not only has Rocket Mortgage climbed to the top of the heap to the tune of $340 billion in originated loans a year, but they’ve also revolutionized consumers’ expectations of how online lending should be.

And the boom of online shopping only reinforces this expectation! Anything less than a positive and intuitive online borrower journey is trash. 

Now more than ever, a positive borrower experience with customer-centric tech is mandatory for a successful mortgage business. 

LenderHomePage has the technology and resources to help you quickly shift your business to a customer-centric model that engages prospects from the first touch, enhances their interactions with your company, encourages high conversion rates, and wins them over to become advocates for your services. 

Explore our website and learn more about how we help you captivate prospects and maintain motivation until the loan and loyalty are yours.

Get that WOW Experience NOW

Rising interest rates and economic uncertainty have triggered major pullback from consumers, underscoring the necessity for mortgage professionals to revamp and fortify every angle of their business.

Further still, forward-thinking lenders understand that this downturn doesn’t just warrant an immediate response to weather the storm but also to prepare for when the market is white hot again –and that means upgrading the most critical areas now.

Get Ready for 2023

Market Predictions 2023

All Signs Point To Purchase Market Remaining Strong

Buying a home remains an amazing opportunity for those with the resources. With higher interest rates potentially leveling off in the near future, consumers will be looking to mortgage professionals to help them understand their options better – including buydown products that will help them manage their rate for the first couple of years of their loan.

GSE Programs Ensure Affordability and Reignite Consumer Enthusiasm

Home affordability is top of mind for government-sponsored entities (GSEs) right now, and they continue to roll out policy updates so that more people can purchase a home. With sound policies from GSEs and access to information through mortgage professionals like you, consumers are becoming more confident, and homeownership will no longer feel like an elusive dream.

Getting and Retaining Clients: The Goal in this Cyclical Industry

This year, your focus should be on retaining clients. Building a booming refinance market starts with purchases and creating great experiences that keep borrowers coming back for more! Tailor your technology to allow maximum speed and efficiency in closing loans quickly – within two weeks or less – so everyone involved gets an incredible experience at every stage of the process. Doing this will create lots of opportunities for those looking to refi down the road, not only now but well into 2023 too!

Broker Channels On The Rise

We are entering a new era in mortgage brokering, with brokers currently accounting for 22% of loan originations and predicted to surge up to 33% by 2026. Aside from the several thousand in savings that can come with using a broker, consumers are looking for personalized guidance and education –a niche that plugged-in brokers are particularly dominant in.

Winning in the Immediate + Preparing to Dominate

Even without a definitive answer on when the market tides will turn, mortgage professionals must strategize to win in the present and the future.

To be clear, this article isn’t about helping you to “stay afloat” in a challenging market.
It’s about making the necessary technological transformations that help you win in any market –going beyond surviving a storm and shifting into mastering it and having the tools required to service the inevitable demand in the times ahead.

Let’s break down what that will look like in 2023.

2023 is all about Making Strategic Mortgage Tech Investments

Customer Experience is King

Consumers are becoming more and more self-sufficient when it comes to accessing their personal finances. From shopping for a new credit card to comparing car loans (and home finance options), their next financial venture is just a few clicks away. In fact, upwards of 85% of Americans prefer to use a mobile app for their financial and credit needs.

But instant gratification or self-sufficiency isn’t the main differentiator that you think it is.

Consumers have voted with their dollars and made it overwhelmingly clear that they demand an exceptional customer experience.

Have you already made the necessary changes to ensure you’re offering it? Are you delivering it consistently across all platforms and executing it better than your competition? Remember that a customer experience that converts goes beyond convenience. 

It captivates, delights, excites, and provides access to a bright future they’re ready to make a reality. 

Get Ready for 2023

Boost your Realtor Referrals

The mortgage industry has become a highly tech-savvy space, with rapidly evolving technology and user demands affecting every loan transaction. Yet amid all this advancement, we can’t forget human interaction still plays an essential role in generating success.

This could be seen through your online reputation – consumers trust their peers when deciding who they should work with for critical financial matters such as a mortgage.

It’s even more true regarding realtor partners; referrals from this network can make or break your pipeline, no matter the market.

Working together, agents and mortgage professionals are a robust partnership with the same mission: to make home buyers happy! Building an effective working relationship requires more than just teamwork. It takes communication, trust, and the ideal lending ecosystem that optimizes collaboration. 

Depending on where you’re currently in your digital transformation, it could be as simple as filling in existing technology gaps or possibly an entire mortgage tech stack overhaul. Whatever the case, building a wider referral network and developing deeper relationships with realtors should be based on creating the ultimate experience for agents, borrowers, and mortgage professionals.

Get Ready for 2023

Leverage tech for LO recruitment & retain your top producers.

Competition is always high in our industry, so building and maintaining your powerhouse team is even more paramount during challenging markets. It’s also all the more difficult.

One of the best ways to achieve this is by equipping your team with tools that nurture and fuel a healthy pipeline of qualified leads. Intuitive mortgage technology like that from LenderHomePage is designed to delight and capture those high-priority consumers – the lifeblood of your top producers. 

Plus, intelligent mortgage tech streamlines the process and provides your decision-makers with the insight they need to hyper-focus on qualified candidates while seamlessly nurturing the rest.

Get Ready for 2023

Prioritize social media management and digital presence!

Out of all the marketing efforts available, the one that is often considered most paralyzing by LOs is precisely the one that is the most critical for 2023 — social media! 

Consumers are overwhelmingly savvy about using the internet to support their home-buying process, including social media. By making it a priority to capture that mindshare of those browsing social media and asserting yourself as an expert, you can build your brand and earn the trust of potential borrowers. 

While paid social media ads are still king for capturing leads, simply having an active and engaging social media presence is a robust way to expand your sphere of influence, increase lead-generating opportunities, and drive action.

While social media can be daunting, it by no means has to overtake your workday productivity. 

Take advantage of our social media mortgage marketing services that automate the process (from providing the content to automated publishing to done-for-you-branding), and never be worried about leaving “money on the table” by ignoring social media marketing. 

There’s no way around it; the mortgage industry is bracing for a formidable next two years as housing demand and interest rates continue on their path to correction.

But don’t let that distract you from the immense opportunity that is still available –and will multiply.

Get Ready for 2023

Leverage data-driven mortgage marketing strategy.

McKinsey reported as early as 2021 on a powerful trend for both bank and nonbank lenders. Investments in third-party technology and data resulted in massively improved customer experience. However, it also demonstrated that it could similarly turn data-driven insights into a marketing strategy that can help lenders navigate the ever-shifting lending environments.

For example, data could be used to predict a consumer’s propensity to apply for a new mortgage within a specified period of time. By combining traditional credit data and Fair Credit Report Act-compliant alternative credit data* (or expanded FCRA-regulated data), lenders could increase the likelihood of connecting with qualified consumers. Essentially, lenders can leverage the data to analyze who is qualified based on their credit criteria, plus the possibility that they will apply for a mortgage loan.

However, propensity models are only part of the equation. 

Data is also the foundation to hyper-segment your marketing reach, which is particularly critical in times like these when you’re trying to extend your marketing budget. By incorporating your internal CRM data with non-FCRA data, you can further distinguish look-alike populations to customize your messaging across all your marketing channels. 

Once you have your look-alike prospects, you must nurture them in a digital ecosystem that ultimately converts them to clients.

For forward-thinking mortgage pros and those who know winning takes strategy supported by innovative technology, 2023 will be their year. 

Get Ready for 2023