What search phrases are the best for your mortgage market?

oppenheimer · #1 (**permalink**) 01-16-2005, 01:03 PM

This common question is faced by everyone new to the world of websites including mortgage broker websites.

There are a number of tools available on the internet that supply the history of search phrases used during the course of the previous month. Tools supplied by Wordtracker and Overture are a few of the most popular.

Use this link to access Overtures keyword Suggestion Tool: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

When selecting keywords remember to target a broad selection if you want your website to produce a flow of leads, you will miss the largest part of prospective borrowers if you target only "your town mortgage" and "your town refinance". You should address interest rate searches; real estate searches, homes for sale by owner searches and any other home, house, mortgage, real estate search terms you can imagine.

Don't be discouraged if the keyword recommendation tools show zero searches (very common for local terms) for the term you choose, this just means there were not enough searches for them to report an accurate number. If there aren't allot of searches for a given term there probably won't be much competition for the term and therefore you can probably rank your site at or near the top of the search results with little effort.

What is the difference if you target a search phrase like "your state mortgage" that has 20 searches a day or 10 less trafficed terms that only have 1-3 searches per day? The difference is the comfort that a borrower may have delaing wth a mortgage broker that has focused on their small market. Our experience shows that the conversion rate is higher on these types of local leads.

Put yourself in the place of a prospective borrower, how many ways and reasons can you think of that you may need to search for mortgage related websites? Make a list and try to target all of them with your website.