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ISCOVER
The internet has forever changed the way consumers find their mortgage brokers. Domain Group chief product officer Damon Pezaro explains how you can use this to your advantage.
By making a few simple tweaks to your online presence, you can effectively raise your Google ranking and as a result, bring in those leads who are unlikely to scroll past the first page of search returns.
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Step 1: Do your keyword research
The first and most basic thing you must do is put yourself in the browser’s shoes.
Think about what someone looking for a particular service might type into Google, then incorporate these keywords or phrases into your website content and blog if you have one. Make sure your main keyword or phrase appears at least once on every page.
Step 2: Make use of your meta tags
A meta tag is essentially a statement that describes the contents of a web page. This is the most important factor in search engine optimisation (SEO) ranking, so make sure yours are descriptive.
In the coding area of your website, you’ll find meta description tags and meta keywords tags. If you do nothing else, fill these in because they inform web crawlers (which gather links) about your page.
Step 3: Take advantage of photos and videos
When adding images to your website, make sure you optimise them for search engines.
Do this by filling in the alt tags (which also appear when people “mouse over” the image on the web page) and saving your images with a descriptive file name.
Search engines can’t read images, so they rely on alt tags and file names to process what the images contain.
Step 4: Get backlinks from authoritative websites
Let me offer an analogy.
Just as the contestant who receives the most votes wins the election, websites that receive more links from other websites will potentially outrank others in search results.
Keep in mind, however, that the quality of these backlinks is important. Find reputable influencers in your community – those you know have a popular online presence – and ask them to create a link to their site from yours.
Step 5: Join the social media bandwagon
Those who create a profile for themselves on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube and Pinterest will reap the benefits – not only of additional promotion, but also the boost to their SEO.
There are two ingredients for success to keep in mind. First, you need to provide quality content that will be of interest to your network of “friends” and followers. Secondly, you must make your content easy to share. Consider using “share” buttons, fill in the “About” section of all your profiles and update them regularly to improve your ranking.
