If you want your business to flourish, you need a mortgage website designed and developed by professionals. And for a website to bring you leads day and night, you NEED traffic. The best part is, you really don’t have to spend a lot of money to generate a reasonable amount of targeted loan shoppers to your mortgage website.

Above all keep in mind, it won’t happen overnight.

Okay, here is the list of all 20 traffic tips.

1) Proper HTML Structure

This may sound very basic to many of you, but believe me there are plenty of good real estate and mortgage websites with poor HTML structure. If you want search engines to take you seriously you need to have a proper valid HTML structured website.

2) Search Engine Friendly Mortgage Website

Major search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, AOL, ASK, DuckDuckGo etc can bring in tons of traffic to your site, so it’s essential that your pages are search engine friendly. A search engine-friendly structure makes it easy for search engines to crawl your site and understand what it’s about.

A search engine-friendly website is the one that is technically correct, easy to use, and properly structured. So that search engines can understand its content and index it properly in their search result pages.

3) Submit To The Major Search Engines

There are thousands of search engines, but reality is over 95% of web surfers only use a handful of them. Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask, Yandex and DuckDuckGo are the most popular right now. Once main ones list you, your mortgage website will eventually show up on some of the other “less important” one. Because there are many search engines that feed from the popular ones there is no need to go and submit your website to these portal engines.

What to Submit

These days, to submit your website, you’ll need to have something called a sitemap. Then you need to tell the search engine where to find it.

A sitemap is a file (in most cases a XML file) stored on your server that contains information about all the pages (that you want indexed) of your website. Search engines look at your sitemap what to index and how your content is linked together.

Where to submit your mortgage website

Google:

If your website is not new, there is big chance that it’s already on Google. Google web crawlers find most of the website automatically, and there is no need to manually submit or list them. But if you are just launching or your website search engines haven’t indexed it yet, then yes go for it.

You can check for yourself whether Google has crawled and indexed your website. For that, type site:mywebsite.com into Google search. You will now get a list of all the pages, posts, and other content types that are indexed and listed with Google.

If you don’t see your website there, then Google hasn’t been able to find and index your real estate or mortgage site yet. In this case, it is a good idea to submit your site to Google. The first step in this process is to register with Google Search Console. To find a step by step guide on this go to How to register your mortgage website with Google Search Console

Bing & Yahoo:

It recommends using the URL submission tool (inside Bing Webmaster Tools) to get web content indexed (as soon as it is published) or updated online.

This process starts with you signing up Bing Webmaster Tools, it’s free. And not only that you can submit your website URLs, you can also get your website’s performance data, take advantage of free SEO tools and analyze details to improve your site rankings on Bing search results.

DuckDuckGo:

It has gain popularity recently. But it’s search results are mainly drawn from Bing’s index. So if you’ve submitted your website to Bing, it should appear on DuckDuckGo, too.

Yandex:

Submitting your site to Yandex is similar to submitting it other search engines. To start with, you’ll need to verify your website on Yandex’s Webmaster Tools.

Once verified, login to the Webmaster Tools, hit the arrow to the left of “Indexing” in the menu on the left side. Click “Sitemap files”. Paste your sitemap URL into the input field. Click “Add” and you have done your part.

4) Comment On Related Blogs

We all know the importance of blogs and blog posts, however commenting on related blog posts can help your site a lot too. Most blog posts allow you to leave comments, and with your comment, you are usually allowed to leave your website URL.

The key here is not to comment on any blog that you found first. It’s more effective spend some time to find blogs related to same niche as yours (e.g. real estate, mortgage, loans, home search…). This will not only have potential to bring audience with the same interest but will help you rank higher in search results of search engines (aka SERPs).

5) Link Exchange

Link popularity is probably the most important criteria search engines use for ranking your website (especially the big boss Google). And how do you get websites to link back to you site? There are many options, one of them is link exchange. It is also knows as reciprocal linking. As the name says, this is a practice in SEO where two websites agree to link to each other’s content.

However, it’s not about the number of links. Quality of links is more important. Also excessive link exchange is considered a link scheme and violates Google’s Spam policies. So it needs to be done ethically and with the aim to add value of your content to benefit the end user.

So find website with content beneficial to your website users and try to establish a reciprocal link exchange program with them.

6) Guest Posting

There is no better way to show authority and gain credibility than presenting useful articles in front of your targeted audience. But what if you’re website is brand-new and there is no audience?

Find someone who does!

When you guest post with respected sites, it allows generate links from reputable projects on a regular basis. Additionally when you showcase your expertise, you can establish credibility with readers, and Google.

So, search for sites and blogs within you niche and contact them to see if they allow guest posts. And do have a few sample articles ready to show them in case they ask.

7) Publish a Newsletter

Email marketing can be one of the most effective ways of creating loyalty and trust with your readers (potential clients). Sending periodic newsletters to your subscribers can help keep tighten the bond. This can keep them updated on your site, your products and your services.

What’s great about newsletter subscribers is that they’ve already told you they like what you have to offer. So it’s important you only send them what is of their interest so they don’t unsubscribe.

And you can always automate this by setting up a follow-up/drip campaign. Setup a series of automated message on intervals that you deem suitable for your clients.

8) Have Your Own Blog

The key to building free search engine traffic is to get quality related sites to link back to yours. Major search engines take this into great consideration while ranking your website for keywords you seem to be targeting.

Your blog can act as that high quality, “related website” to point to your own, and in the long run it can attract it’s own traffic. For example, this blog has useful content and it is linked to primary website iReadySites.com a mortgage website design and development company.

9) RSS Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a XML-based file that contains your blog’s latest posts. RSS feed is an effective strategy to increase your blog’s search engine optimization (SEO) and drive more traffic to your website.

Most blogging platforms have built in RSS feed. RSS feed gets updated, whenever you publish a post. You can distribute your content to other websites and platforms, allowing more people to discover and link to your content with the help of RSS feed.

10) Forum Link Building

Having a website seems deceptively easy. Many mortgage professionals think that all you need to do is have a website, new business will be generated. But that is not all, there a lot more to it. And as I’ve suggested in previous paragraphs, link building is a great way to generate targeted steady traffic.

One way to drive traffic to your website is forum link-building. This means interact on the forums, answering question to create backlinks to your website. Find a forum related to niche, participate help and establish yourself as authority.

Quora, Stack Exchange/Stack Overflow and Reddit could be good starting points.

11) Create and Distribute an eBook

An eBook is an electronic version of a informative document that users can easily download and you can send via email as well. Choose a relevant and compelling topic for your eBook to attract and engage your target audience. Put in text links to your products inside book, this way it can be a great source to bring in repeat visitors (who are most likely you buy your product).

12) Product & Service Reviews

Customers value reviews a lot because they are often authentic content written by real users. So, reviews are social proof and help build trust and loyalty. Product reviews can help your mortgage site rank higher for relevant keywords, increase in-bound links, and enhance your authority and trustworthiness.

Before you get on with writing a compelling review, find a relevant and valuable product and/or service. Also make sure you know what your audience needs and pain points are, and what they are looking for in a product or service.

Write a review with clear and logical structure covering all the points mentioned above. Add comparison with other similar options in the market and mention any alternatives or recommendations that you have.

When your reviews help people in purchasing a product they really need, they’ll view as a credible source. And are more likely to purchase products and services you offer them.

13) Mortgage Website YouTube Channel

YouTube is one of the most powerful platforms for driving targeted website traffic. With over 2.5 billion monthly active users, it’s a goldmine for companies looking to connect with their target audience.

The question is: how do you drive people from YouTube to your website? Well, if you present people with amazing videos, a good percentage of viewers will actively seek out your mortgage website.

Here are some key points to consider while using YouTube as a traffic source:

• Your videos must be entertaining and offer some value to your viewers.
• Make sure your YouTube page and videos are optimized.
• Include a CTA (call to action) to your website in your videos.
• Ask People to Subscribe, Like & Share
• Include links to your website in individual video descriptions.
• Use Cards and if, Possible, End-Screens
• Find relevant opportunities to link to your website in the comments.
• Promote your website in your About section.

14) Advertise Your Mortgage Website

Some people don’t like the idea of paying for traffic, but in a world where competition is so high and getting top ranking is quite difficult, paid marketing is definitely worth considering.

Google Adwords and Microsoft Ads are the two most popular online marketing programs. There are many online marketing methods but Pay Per Click (PPC) is arguably the best of them especially for some who is just starting out.

The nice thing about PPC advertising is that you only pay for the traffic you receive. Even though many popular keywords are very expensive, you can still go for “lesser searched” terms that are cheaper. You won’t get as much traffic as with the main keywords but cost per click will be quite low. And if you can find hundreds of cheaper keywords and phrases, combined traffic will be good enough.

Also instead of Google, you can start with Bing, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and other cheaper advertisement platforms.

15) Use Social Media

Social media engagement is far more than simply sharing a link across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc., to your commercial or residential mortgage website in the hope it increases website traffic. Social engagement is about encouraging conversations with the right people, responding thoughtfully, and driving excitement and enthusiasm.

The key is selecting the social channel that works best for your niche. This heavily depends on your business model and the audience you want to target. For example, LinkedIn is a good choice if you want to promote a white paper or webinar to a professional audience, while Instagram is more suited to visuals, like product imagery. Facebook and YouTube are great places to showcase you product in the shape of compelling videos and reels.

16) Influencer Marketing

According to BrightLocal, 88% of people trust online reviews written by other consumers as much as they trust recommendations from personal contacts. So building a relationships with industry influencers can be a great way to promote your business. Here are few things to get you started on influencer marketing:

• Determine your goals (new customers, brand awareness etc)
• Understand the rules (check Federal Trade Commission)
• Do your research and compile a short list of influencers
• Reach out privately, and personally
• Collaborate with your influencer to develop effective content
• Have a close eye on end results.

17) Content Transformation

Convert your popular content into another format (like an ebook, video, infographic or podcast). This is very simple and effective way of using old content and turning them into a traffic generating machine.

18) Publish Long-Form Content

Longer articles often rank higher in search results than articles with a low word count. A research team by serpIQ studied the average length of the content in the top 10 results of search queries. The company found that the top-ranked posts were over 2,000 words.

Now question is, what is long-form content? There is not definite answer, for some it’s more than 1000 words, some go for 1200 words and vast majority consider a writing piece with more than 2000 words a long-form content. So you decide but should be more than 1000 words (with images and/or videos).

19) Host a Giveaway Contest On Your Mortgage Website

People love free stuff and you can use this generate more traffic. Just start a contest on your website or on your favorite social media platform. To enter the contest, people need to enter their email address (which you then add to your email list).

20) Ethically “Steal” Your Competitors’ Traffic Sources

First and the foremost, “stealing” is just a figure of speech here. We aren’t suggesting anything illegal or even unethical. So, how can you steal competitors’ traffic effectively? SimilarWeb can be a great source to get your started with this. It can show you all of their top traffic sources for free. Below, are some great tips to make that happen:

• Learn as much as you can about the competing mortgage websites
• Analyze how their metrics and SEO performance compare to your site.
• Create high-quality content with the targeted keywords and phrases by picking out competitors’ strengths and weaknesses.
• Learn from where they are getting their backlinks and try to get some from the same resources for your website too.

Your Turn

I hope this post showed you how to increase your mortgage website traffic using some know and some lesser known strategies.

Now I’d love to hear from you.

Which technique from this post are you ready to try first?

Or

Maybe you have a strategy of your own?

Either way, let me know in the comments section below.