How Geo-Targeted Pages on your Mortgage Website Can Change Your SEO Game Overnight
If you haven’t added geo-targeting to your content marketing mix for your mortgage company, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to connect with your audience and boost conversions or sales. This simple act of including pages that are optimized for specific locations can have a significant impact on the amount of traffic your site can generate. In fact, it’s possible to completely change your SEO game overnight! Take your mortgage marketing to the next level!
What Are Geotargeted Pages?
Geo-targeting is the act of creating content that is specific to your audience’s geographical location. When someone searches Google (and other search engines), the platform will consider that user’s IP address, Wi-Fi data, or even GPS data, then deliver content that is specific to that location. For most Google users, location is one of the most important factors in determining which results should be shown first, so if you want to remain competitive with a local audience, geo-targeted webpages are must-haves.
For example, if a user in Indianapolis, Indiana searches for the term “get a mortgage,” Google will deliver thousands of results – some local, some national, and some global. Assuming that all other SEO criteria have been met, the relevant local mortgage brokers that have created geo-targeted web pages for the Indianapolis area are most likely to be shown first, and these will be followed by local brands that have not optimized their websites with geo-targeting. If you want your website on the first page of results, geo-targeting is a crucial step.
Example of a Client’s Site We Did This For
For example, here a website we built for a mortgage company in Chicago, there is a tab for “service areas” in navigation with a page for each licensed state. These pages started ranking very quickly.
The Initial Results
These were all zero’s prior to the website launch. After roughly 30 days lots of pages started making their way through the search results.
Where to Apply Geo-Targeting
Geo-targeting involves including specific locations in various parts of your website. Some of the most important considerations include:
- SEO Metadata: Including locations when optimizing your title tags and meta tag descriptions can drastically improve your search rankings in the locations you target.
- Heading Tags: Even the headings within your copy can include locations! These will help Google properly index your pages so it can deliver relevant content to the right audiences.
- Website Copy: You will also want to create copy that hones in on specific locations that your mortgage company serves. For example, you might choose to create location-specific landing pages and blog posts including the names of cities and states that you want to target.
- Image Filenames and Alt Tags: Including imagery that is specific to the location being targeted helps satisfy Google’s SEO algorithm, and in turn, it can improve your overall rankings.
- Interlinking Pages: Linking geo-targeted pages throughout your website can benefit your mortgage company by providing users with a wider range of content that is suitable for their unique needs.
The Most Important Facets of Geo-Targeting for Your Mortgage Company
Geo-targeting is about much more than simply indicating the locations you serve. In fact, it can benefit you in several other ways that you may not have considered. For example, geo-targeting can:
- Personalize the user’s experience. In today’s highly competitive world, standing out from the crowd is more important than ever. One of the best ways to do this is to provide your website visitors with a unique experience based on their location. Google users are far more likely to click a search result if it includes information they can relate to – and that includes their specific location.
- Make searches simpler for users. Imagine searching for the perfect mortgage broker, clicking a link, reading the information on the website, and then realizing that this particular company doesn’t serve your area. Creating geo-targeted copy for every area you serve makes the process of searching simpler and more convenient for your target audience.
- Generate much more traffic. When you personalize your website for individual locations and provide relevant information for each of those locations, your search ranking will start to increase immediately. Again, it’s all about providing search engine users with an accurate and convenient search that leads to the information they want.
As a mortgage company, it’s important to design your website around the locations that you serve. Not only does it satisfy Google’s SEO algorithms, but it ensures that search engines put your website in front of the right audiences whenever possible. If you incorporate geo-targeting into your copy, your heading tags, your images, and even your interlinked pages, you can boost your search rankings almost immediately and enjoy more traffic than ever before.
