Are Spiders Affecting Your Mortgage Marketing Results?
BATTLECALL GUEST EXPERT: Tom Domin, Mortgage Marketing
Toolkit
Yes...there are bugs that can affect your marketing and you don't
need a pest exterminator to resolve the problem. Now, if you're a little lost at
this point that's OK...this article is definitely for you and may explain why
you're not generating any mortgage leads from your website.
What are Spiders?
Spiders are software programs that are specifically designed to
crawl the World Wide Web, gather data (hence the term Spider) and then send it
back to their databases. This is how Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN,
Alta Vista, and a host of others, gather data about you, me, and our websites.
They constantly travel the Internet collecting data and sending it back to their
parent database.
Using the Google Spider as an example, when the Spider finds your
website it will look for key words that indicate the purpose of the website. It
may find "mortgage," or "first time homebuyer," or "refinance," and it then
sends that information back to Google coupled with your website address. Google
evaluates, rates, and then indexes the information it receives and now your
website (www.yourname.com) is listed in the Google database as having something
to do with "mortgage" and "first time homebuyer" and "refinance," simply because
those words appeared on your web pages.
Just as a side note...The Google Spider is so efficient and so
thorough, that your website will be indexed and listed in as little as three
days (usually seven to ten days) after you post content on your web page.
Now...every time someone uses a search engine and types in
"mortgage" or "first time homebuyer," or "refinance," your website pops up in
the search results and your shopper can click on your link and then visit your
website.
Sorry...I'm afraid
not!
Consider this...the last time I used Google with "mortgage" as the
search term, it took .19 seconds to return 154,000,000 results. Therein lies the
problem...there are just too many web pages. There's no point having your web
page ranked 153,999,067, because people just aren't going to find you before
their eyes begin to fail.
You
need improve your rankings and move your web page closer to the top. Spiders use
a code called relevancy. Relevancy means that if your website doesn't have the
word "mortgage" anywhere then your page won't come up when someone types
"mortgages" or "first time homebuyers" in the search
string.
The
key to being found in cyberspace is developing a site that is friendly to
Spiders. If you want to be placed at the top of search engines for mortgage
customers, then you need to make it easy for a Spider to log you and your
relevance. Easy to log means having your key words like "mortgage" and "first
time homebuyers" appear throughout your web page. If a Spider compares two web
pages to determine relevancy rankings, which site would be ranked higher, a site
that had the word "mortgage" appear once, or one where "mortgage" appears
numerous times near the beginning of the page?
Now, you need to be careful here. If you flood your site with key
words just to be found, most Spiders can recognize that old trick and it's very
possible that you'll be penalized and your site will be black-balled and erased
from the database. One nice thing about Spiders...once they find you, they
continually return to your web page checking and documenting changes you may
have made since the last visit. You'll find some Spiders (Google for example),
returns to your site every single day, collects data and analyzes
it.
Although the actual logarithm used by the Spiders is a deep dark
secret (much like the Coke recipe), we do know that the following points are an
integral part of the equation:
Relevancy -- Is your website dedicated to selling cars and trucks,
home improvement supplies, or mortgages. Your key words indicate to the Spider
the website's purpose.
Key
word density and frequency -- How many times your key words appear and exactly
how they appear is important to Spiders. Remember, key word flooding is a no
no.
Content and information -- Spiders follow all the links on your
website indexing the information and articles you have placed there as well as
additions, deletions, and changes. You need to talk about mortgages and not how
great you and your company are. The more content the
better.
Links pointing back to your website -- Back links are extremely
important to Spiders and can improve your website ranking significantly. Writing
and publishing mortgage articles is definitely the answer. Don't forget to
include your resource box with a link back to your website. Articles not only
provide back links, they provide valuable content improving your website's
position. Use your City and State in your article title and you'll improve it
even more.
Some studies have shown that over 95% of all who have access to
the Internet use Search Engines to help find their information. A good first
step is to design and implement your website around the search terms your
customers will be using and your chances of being found will increase
dramatically.
About The Author:
Tom Domin has over twenty-five years of experience in sales and training in Real
Estate and as a Licensed Mortgage Broker. He is currently publisher of "Tom's
Mortgage Tips" a twice monthly Mortgage Newsletter for Mortgage Professionals.
You can sign-up by visiting
http://www.mortgagemarketingtoolkit.com
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