As a mortgage Web site owner wishing to rank well for high traffic keywords, you will need to invest somewhere in the neighborhood of $150,000 over the next 12 months. Thus, if you close two extra loans per month with an average margin of around $6,000 (plus or minus) per file, you can pay for your SEO strategy. That is the bitter pill you must swallow if you are to rank for your primary keywords. Nothing you have tried up to know is likely to have worked with any decent level of efficacy. The good news, (or troubling fact), is that you are probably paying that much for just six months of Internet leads. To get off the mortgage Internet lead treadmill, you need to strongly consider drastic measures that you would otherwise shy away from.

For your $150,000 over 12 months you will hire an SEO expert, (or strong knowledge candidate), who will hire a part time, talented Web developer, and a handful of auxiliary knowledge workers to help ghost write content and execute your link strategy. Chances are that unless you are an experienced writer, your primary focus should be on running your day-to-day operations and selling loans. Search Engine Optimization is a full time job requiring the same effort of a hungry loan officer. You would not send a rookie loan officer to close your highest margin loans anymore than you should allow an inexperienced help-desk operator to optimize your Web site. Both scenarios result in poor execution even if there is a lot of activity. Obviously this is more of a guideline than a rule; but guidelines are important to at least acknowledge in most cases.

For now we will assume that you accept that you will spend a sizable sum to achieve the results you demand. Let us go deeper into the strategy that has helped many mortgage sites rank for such keywords as California Home Loans, Mortgage Calculators, and other high level keywords. You need to understand the strategy so you are not taken for the proverbial 'ride' when selecting an SEO expert.

You can call this your Web strategy remediation plan, or your SEO site plan; for that matter you can call it 'David' and will not matter; simply educate yourself on the following steps to be an informed consumer. These steps are in no particular order except where remembered in the right order:

• Set up your site so that each page has unique content. Do not “borrow” or steal content from another site, this will only serve to hurt you in the long run.
• Utilize text links everywhere instead of using image links. You can use Cascading Style Sheets, (CSS), for properly stylizing your links where appropriate.
• Be sure to "nofollow" all your non-money links such as your about us, contact us, licensing info pages. 'nofollow' is a tag created by the engineers at Google to tell the Google spider not to follow that link thereby not diluting your page rank.
• Get one-way inbound links from your friends and family list (make sure it is Latent Semantic Indexing friendly). Good Latent Semantic Indexing strategy dictates that human readable, keyword dense sentence/paragraph structure surrounds an anchor text, (or link text), for your primary keyword. For example, if I want to rank high for the name 'David' I had better surround the linked text with names like John, Peter, Paul; or that I am telling a story about that entails a sling shot and a big guy named Goliath. This tells Google what 'David' is about and why 'David' is important, (though we already know why). :)
• Write to a blog that is integrated into your site; allow your employees to blog as well, but make sure each post requires approval. The mortgage industry is world renown for turnover and well spoiling.
• You need to hire talented ghost writers to put out about 20 articles a month with LSI in mind. Your SEO expert will do this but you can find them at eLance.com or other similar sites.
• Have a unique page with unique content for each keyword you are trying to rank for. This should be literally hundreds of pages by the time you are a year into the process.
• Push as much reputation as you can to the pages you want ranking highly in search results. This probably means that you want to link to your home page, interest form, or even your secure 1003 page, (more on this in a later article), on every page of your site.
• Create multiple entry points to your Web site and experiment with squeeze pages to build your email list. This is not entirely off topic since your Web marketing strategy should never ignore the power of a great direct marketing campaign.
• Perform your keyword research using such tools as Overture, Adwords, and WordTracker. Look for long-tail and other low hanging fruit keywords. Long tail searches might be something like 'Orange County Refinance Rates July' or similar such phraseology. Do not try and rank only for 'Mortgage rates.' Yes, some obvious keywords get a lot of traffic but your goal is to rank in the top spot for as many keyword terms that fit mortgages as possible. Getting to the second or third page of Google for big-time keywords is nice but it is nothing like actually earning traffic.
• Only reciprocal link with similar interest sites such as title companies, other mortgage companies, real estate related blogs and the like. You do not sell widgets or sprockets and the time is wasted. Google is smarter than that and will not reward your efforts to the degree that you makes the work worthwhile.
• Get one way links from anywhere but link farms. When somebody gives you a free link, they are saying that they like your site, or they hate your site. However, the power of the one way link is undeniable.
• NEVER outsource your link campaigns to people you do not know or that cannot be held accountable for their actions. You can get punished by Google in a heartbeat when they link you to bad neighborhoods such as link farms or Web sites run by unscrupulous Webmasters.
• Three way and more way linking strategies trump all, (for now). One way inbound links are better but in lieu of that, you can link to a friends site that you find interesting and he can link to another friends site that he finds interesting and she can link back to your site because she finds it interesting. The fact is that reciprocal linking has less value these days; it is not without value and should still be a part of any long term link campaign.
• Have I mentioned to get fresh and unique content on your site as often as you can? Good, it is important. One new blog or one unique article a day would be fantastic.
• Syndicate your press releases usi
  Ways To Maximize Customer Loyalty Programs
  Be near. This is a very simple rule of thumb when trying to making customer loyalty programs work. Just start within the area you are most capable of reaching. Don't go over the fence if you have not secured for yourself a very effective and viable base in your own backyard. Be as near to your customers as possible geographically. Be daring enough to expand when you are already well-known in your area. And trust me, you would not even have to try branching out because it will naturally come when the locals are satisfied with what you give them.Be prompt Most rebates, incentives and other customer loyalty programs take forever to experience. Some take about a million points just for a few tokens. Make your customer loyalty programs reachable and at the same time easily attainable. Make it in such a way that you don't get a deficit but customers won't accuse you of being a deceptive scrooge. If you are not yet up for this challenge, it is better to do away with the customer loyalty programs than make a very deficient one that will turn off your customers and potential customers off.Filt
  ntent and execute your link strategy. Chances are that unless you are an experienced writer, your primary focus should be on running your day-to-day operations and selling loans. Search Engine Optimization is a full time job requiring the same effort of a hungry loan officer. You would not send a rookie loan officer to close your highest margin loans anymore than you should allow an inexperienced help-desk operator to optimize your Web site. Both scenarios result in poor execution even if there is a lot of activity. Obviously this is more of a guideline than a rule; but guidelines are important to at least acknowledge in most cases.

  For now we will assume that you accept that you will spend a sizable sum to achieve the results you demand. Let us go deeper into the strategy that has helped many mortgage sites rank for such keywords as California Home Loans, Mortgage Calculators, and other high level keywords. You need to understand the strategy so you are not taken for the proverbial 'ride' when selecting an SEO expert.

  You can call this your Web strategy remediation plan, or your SEO site plan; for that matter you can call it 'David' and will not matter; simply educate yourself on the following steps to be an informed consumer. These steps are in no particular order except where remembered in the right order:

  • Set up your site so that each page has unique content. Do not “borrow” or steal content from another site, this will only serve to hurt you in the long run.
  • Utilize text links everywhere instead of using image links. You can use Cascading Style Sheets, (CSS), for properly stylizing your links where appropriate.
  • Be sure to "nofollow" all your non-money links such as your about us, contact us, licensing info pages. 'nofollow' is a tag created by the engineers at Google to tell the Google spider not to follow that link thereby not diluting your page rank.
  • Get one-way inbound links from your friends and family list (make sure it is Latent Semantic Indexing friendly). Good Latent Semantic Indexing strategy dictates that human readable, keyword dense sentence/paragraph structure surrounds an anchor text, (or link text), for your primary keyword. For example, if I want to rank high for the name 'David' I had better surround the linked text with names like John, Peter, Paul; or that I am telling a story about that entails a sling shot and a big guy named Goliath. This tells Google what 'David' is about and why 'David' is important, (though we already know why). :)
  • Write to a blog that is integrated into your site; allow your employees to blog as well, but make sure each post requires approval. The mortgage industry is world renown for turnover and well spoiling.
  • You need to hire talented ghost writers to put out about 20 articles a month with LSI in mind. Your SEO expert will do this but you can find them at eLance.com or other similar sites.
  • Have a unique page with unique content for each keyword you are trying to rank for. This should be literally hundreds of pages by the time you are a year into the process.
  • Push as much reputation as you can to the pages you want ranking highly in search results. This probably means that you want to link to your home page, interest form, or even your secure 1003 page, (more on this in a later article), on every page of your site.
  • Create multiple entry points to your Web site and experiment with squeeze pages to build your email list. This is not entirely off topic since your Web marketing strategy should never ignore the power of a great direct marketing campaign.
  • Perform your keyword research using such tools as Overture, Adwords, and WordTracker. Look for long-tail and other low hanging fruit keywords. Long tail searches might be something like 'Orange County Refinance Rates July' or similar such phraseology. Do not try and rank only for 'Mortgage rates.' Yes, some obvious keywords get a lot of traffic but your goal is to rank in the top spot for as many keyword terms that fit mortgages as possible. Getting to the second or third page of Google for big-time keywords is nice but it is nothing like actually earning traffic.
  • Only reciprocal link with similar interest sites such as title companies, other mortgage companies, real estate related blogs and the like. You do not sell widgets or sprockets and the time is wasted. Google is smarter than that and will not reward your efforts to the degree that you makes the work worthwhile.
  • Get one way links from anywhere but link farms. When somebody gives you a free link, they are saying that they like your site, or they hate your site. However, the power of the one way link is undeniable.
  • NEVER outsource your link campaigns to people you do not know or that cannot be held accountable for their actions. You can get punished by Google in a heartbeat when they link you to bad neighborhoods such as link farms or Web sites run by unscrupulous Webmasters.
  • Three way and more way linking strategies trump all, (for now). One way inbound links are better but in lieu of that, you can link to a friends site that you find interesting and he can link to another friends site that he finds interesting and she can link back to your site because she finds it interesting. The fact is that reciprocal linking has less value these days; it is not without value and should still be a part of any long term link campaign.
  • Have I mentioned to get fresh and unique content on your site as often as you can? Good, it is important. One new blog or one unique article a day would be fantastic.
  • Syndicate your press releases usi
    Interview Preparation - 5 Steps for a Successful Interview
    Once you get the call for the interview, the next thing that you have to do is prepare for it. Following are a 5 steps for a successful interview: (1) Do your research – It doesn’t matter how much knowledge or experience you have about the position that you are trying to get in a company if you don’t have a clue who the company is or what they do. It is disastrous to enter into an interview and not be able to tell your interviewer what their company is about. How else are you going to tell them why you feel that you would be a good addition to their company? A good and less time consuming way to get to know about a company is to look up their website. You can gather general knowledge, including the names of key people and their job titles. You should sift through most of their pages, including the pages that show samples of their work and/or products.(2) Know your contact – When called for an interview, ask to whom you will be talking to. It is nice to be able to greet your interviewer by name at the beginning of the interview without first being told who they are. It show
    ntent from another site, this will only serve to hurt you in the long run.
  • Utilize text links everywhere instead of using image links. You can use Cascading Style Sheets, (CSS), for properly stylizing your links where appropriate.
  • Be sure to "nofollow" all your non-money links such as your about us, contact us, licensing info pages. 'nofollow' is a tag created by the engineers at Google to tell the Google spider not to follow that link thereby not diluting your page rank.
  • Get one-way inbound links from your friends and family list (make sure it is Latent Semantic Indexing friendly). Good Latent Semantic Indexing strategy dictates that human readable, keyword dense sentence/paragraph structure surrounds an anchor text, (or link text), for your primary keyword. For example, if I want to rank high for the name 'David' I had better surround the linked text with names like John, Peter, Paul; or that I am telling a story about that entails a sling shot and a big guy named Goliath. This tells Google what 'David' is about and why 'David' is important, (though we already know why). :)
  • Write to a blog that is integrated into your site; allow your employees to blog as well, but make sure each post requires approval. The mortgage industry is world renown for turnover and well spoiling.
  • You need to hire talented ghost writers to put out about 20 articles a month with LSI in mind. Your SEO expert will do this but you can find them at eLance.com or other similar sites.
  • Have a unique page with unique content for each keyword you are trying to rank for. This should be literally hundreds of pages by the time you are a year into the process.
  • Push as much reputation as you can to the pages you want ranking highly in search results. This probably means that you want to link to your home page, interest form, or even your secure 1003 page, (more on this in a later article), on every page of your site.
  • Create multiple entry points to your Web site and experiment with squeeze pages to build your email list. This is not entirely off topic since your Web marketing strategy should never ignore the power of a great direct marketing campaign.
  • Perform your keyword research using such tools as Overture, Adwords, and WordTracker. Look for long-tail and other low hanging fruit keywords. Long tail searches might be something like 'Orange County Refinance Rates July' or similar such phraseology. Do not try and rank only for 'Mortgage rates.' Yes, some obvious keywords get a lot of traffic but your goal is to rank in the top spot for as many keyword terms that fit mortgages as possible. Getting to the second or third page of Google for big-time keywords is nice but it is nothing like actually earning traffic.
  • Only reciprocal link with similar interest sites such as title companies, other mortgage companies, real estate related blogs and the like. You do not sell widgets or sprockets and the time is wasted. Google is smarter than that and will not reward your efforts to the degree that you makes the work worthwhile.
  • Get one way links from anywhere but link farms. When somebody gives you a free link, they are saying that they like your site, or they hate your site. However, the power of the one way link is undeniable.
  • NEVER outsource your link campaigns to people you do not know or that cannot be held accountable for their actions. You can get punished by Google in a heartbeat when they link you to bad neighborhoods such as link farms or Web sites run by unscrupulous Webmasters.
  • Three way and more way linking strategies trump all, (for now). One way inbound links are better but in lieu of that, you can link to a friends site that you find interesting and he can link to another friends site that he finds interesting and she can link back to your site because she finds it interesting. The fact is that reciprocal linking has less value these days; it is not without value and should still be a part of any long term link campaign.
  • Have I mentioned to get fresh and unique content on your site as often as you can? Good, it is important. One new blog or one unique article a day would be fantastic.
  • Syndicate your press releases usi
    Selecting Your Domain Name
    I have been asked many times by new clients how to select a business domain name. I’ve answered some commonly asked questions to assist you with one of the most important purchases you will make for your online business. 1. Should Your Business Name Be Your Domain Name? 99.9% of the time, the answer to this question is Yes. We are living in the Internet age, and consumers are becoming savvier at purchasing goods and services online. When people think of your product (or service) they’ll connect it with your website, which makes repeated visits to your site easier for your customers. What if the domain name is already taken? All is not lost. You have some options: • Offer To Purchase - If you are connected with a brand name then you may want to pursue purchasing this name from its current owner. The domain contact information can be obtained in the form of a “Whois” lookup. Inquire as to whether they are open to selling the domain name, but be aware they’ll likely charge a higher fee for it than you would normally pay. • Back Order – This is becoming a very po
    bout 20 articles a month with LSI in mind. Your SEO expert will do this but you can find them at eLance.com or other similar sites.
  • Have a unique page with unique content for each keyword you are trying to rank for. This should be literally hundreds of pages by the time you are a year into the process.
  • Push as much reputation as you can to the pages you want ranking highly in search results. This probably means that you want to link to your home page, interest form, or even your secure 1003 page, (more on this in a later article), on every page of your site.
  • Create multiple entry points to your Web site and experiment with squeeze pages to build your email list. This is not entirely off topic since your Web marketing strategy should never ignore the power of a great direct marketing campaign.
  • Perform your keyword research using such tools as Overture, Adwords, and WordTracker. Look for long-tail and other low hanging fruit keywords. Long tail searches might be something like 'Orange County Refinance Rates July' or similar such phraseology. Do not try and rank only for 'Mortgage rates.' Yes, some obvious keywords get a lot of traffic but your goal is to rank in the top spot for as many keyword terms that fit mortgages as possible. Getting to the second or third page of Google for big-time keywords is nice but it is nothing like actually earning traffic.
  • Only reciprocal link with similar interest sites such as title companies, other mortgage companies, real estate related blogs and the like. You do not sell widgets or sprockets and the time is wasted. Google is smarter than that and will not reward your efforts to the degree that you makes the work worthwhile.
  • Get one way links from anywhere but link farms. When somebody gives you a free link, they are saying that they like your site, or they hate your site. However, the power of the one way link is undeniable.
  • NEVER outsource your link campaigns to people you do not know or that cannot be held accountable for their actions. You can get punished by Google in a heartbeat when they link you to bad neighborhoods such as link farms or Web sites run by unscrupulous Webmasters.
  • Three way and more way linking strategies trump all, (for now). One way inbound links are better but in lieu of that, you can link to a friends site that you find interesting and he can link to another friends site that he finds interesting and she can link back to your site because she finds it interesting. The fact is that reciprocal linking has less value these days; it is not without value and should still be a part of any long term link campaign.
  • Have I mentioned to get fresh and unique content on your site as often as you can? Good, it is important. One new blog or one unique article a day would be fantastic.
  • Syndicate your press releases usi
    Mortgage Marketing in the 21st Century
    For loan officers and mortgage brokers, marketing the benefits of your products to your potential customers is very important to the success of your business. It is also important that you keep up with your competition’s marketing concepts.Marketing can rear its head in many ways. Verbally, through networking. Business cards, mailers, flyers, billboards, radio, television, etc.The point of the above named marketing methods is to get yourself and your products in front of your potential clients.In the 21st century, the internet has become a very important and powerful medium in the world of marketing.So it is very important that you keep up with it, because you better believe that your competition is.Most mortgage companies, if not all mortgage companies by now, have web sites that you can refer people to, so that they may learn more about your company.These web sites are great, but it doesn’t tell the consumer anything about you personally. And, more than likely, there is an 800 number leading them in a direction other than yours.Here is where you might want t
    nterest sites such as title companies, other mortgage companies, real estate related blogs and the like. You do not sell widgets or sprockets and the time is wasted. Google is smarter than that and will not reward your efforts to the degree that you makes the work worthwhile.
  • Get one way links from anywhere but link farms. When somebody gives you a free link, they are saying that they like your site, or they hate your site. However, the power of the one way link is undeniable.
  • NEVER outsource your link campaigns to people you do not know or that cannot be held accountable for their actions. You can get punished by Google in a heartbeat when they link you to bad neighborhoods such as link farms or Web sites run by unscrupulous Webmasters.
  • Three way and more way linking strategies trump all, (for now). One way inbound links are better but in lieu of that, you can link to a friends site that you find interesting and he can link to another friends site that he finds interesting and she can link back to your site because she finds it interesting. The fact is that reciprocal linking has less value these days; it is not without value and should still be a part of any long term link campaign.
  • Have I mentioned to get fresh and unique content on your site as often as you can? Good, it is important. One new blog or one unique article a day would be fantastic.
  • Syndicate your press releases using a service such as PR Web.
  • Renew your domain registration for 10 years plus; Google really likes that, (probably).
  • Get your site bookmarked socially, (twitter, del.icio.us, technorati, etc...), by supplying interesting content as often as you can.

  The bottom line is that there is no magic bullet and no guarantee of success even if you follow all the above steps. Ranking high for mortgage anything is tough to do. Hire an SEO expert or very capable knowledge worker for around $30 an hour plus an expense account of around $3,000 a month for programming support, article writing, and outside services. Do not expect to see significant results for six months and then just enough to see progress. By the end of the year you should see enough inbound traffic to sustain a small office with mortgage leads; then you can cut off your $50/per Internet leads. The good news is that once your ranking is high enough for your top level keywords, it is easier to maintain. The above steps are primarily white-hat SEO techniques that will not get you 'sand boxed' by Google or de-listed completely.

  Remember, the engineers at Google are smart. In fact, there is a shortage of talent in Silicon Valley because Google is taking all the best engineers and paying them whatever they want. Google's algorithm is complicated and there is no one way to optimize a Web site. Everything you do on your Web site is important; good or bad, it all affects how Google ranks or does not rank you.

  There are other viable search tools on the Internet: Yahoo, MSN, and ASK. But, Google is what we optimize for because Google is the 800 pound gorilla in the space. Clobber your competition in search and you clobber them on the street.

  Best of luck!