Lots of relevant keywords, as often as possible on your website. This is what many website owners have been taught is the key to search engine visibility.
But too many keywords crammed into too "small" a space — "keyword stuffing" — can make search engines shun your site. Some simple guidelines can help you avoid this pitfall. Here are some do's and don'ts.
DO differentiate yourself and your site.
You have no realistic chance of ranking in the top ten results for the phrase "mortgage refinance." So peppering your content with the phrase "mortgage refinance" without more isn't going to help.
Where are you most likely to get customers from? If Southern California, try "Orange County mortgage refinance." Are you seeing a lot of homeowners with adjustable rate loans wanting to lock in a fixed rate before their payments spike? Then try "Orange County adjustable rate mortgage refinance." The point is to understand what web visitors want to see on your site and deploy keywords that accurately describe it.
DO write like you — and your customers — talk.
A phrase like "Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio mortgage broker with Summit County adjustable rate and interest only loans and Akron, Ohio refinancing" is rich with keywords — and a lousy way to start off a page on your site.
Imagine you printed a brochure or yellow pages ad that started out with that phrase. Better yet, imagine you introduced yourself that way when you met a customer in your office. What would you expect the reaction to be?
DO consider paying for help.
If you're like most site owners, keyword deployment is harder work than you thought. If you don't consider yourself the world's best writer, you might look into hiring a freelance copywriter, they're cheaper than you think.
Whatever you do, write good, attractive, engaging copy that also happens to liberally use your keywords. Don't mash as many keywords as you can into as small a space as possible. It will turn away both search engines and visitors.
DON'T simply cram your keywords into your title and metatags.
It's good to have relevant search terms appear in your page title and early in your content. It's bad to have them appear too often in your title and early in your content, and nowhere else.
Scatter your keywords liberally throughout your content, don't cram them all into one or two spots and think you're done.
DON'T underestimate the sophistication of search engine "spiders."
"Spiders" or "bots" are the programs that crawl the web and index its pages, like yours. Yes, they're looking for keywords, but they're looking for a lot of other things, too.
They want to see a lot of content. Your Mortgage XSite has dozens of pre-written pages you can customize and publish with a few clicks. If you haven't customized your content yet, it's vital that you do it now. We gave you pre-written pages to help you get started but editing these pages is what makes you stand out from the thousands of mortgage websites. It's easy to edit your content. Once you've logged into your XSite, click on the XSite icon, then My Content and finally on the page you want to customize.
They want to see frequent updates. Don't let your text stagnate — revisit it every so often to freshen it up for the next spider visit. If you send out a press release, add it to your XSite. You can also write about local events or trends with interest rates in your area.
They also want to see what are called inbound links from other websites. And, it’s easier to get other sites to link to yours if you have fresh, relevant content. Talk to your favorite agents, financial advisors, lawyers, or local business owners - the possibilities are endless.
When you're ready to customize your keywords, click on the content page you want to edit and scroll to the bottom of the screen. We've included keywords for the pre-written pages but after you customize the content you'll want to add keywords that highlight your new content.
