Should I get a paid SEO service for my mortgage business?

At Vonk Digital we have been providing an SEO service to our clients for about 6 years. I personally do all the SEO for Vonk Digital, and for many years I even personally did it for our clients. As an SEO expert with 9+ years of experience, I want to help you answer the question “do I need a paid SEO service for my mortgage business?”

The answer is maybe.

A paid SEO service is not always needed… now let me explain. Not all markets are the same and your goals may not be the same either. You MUST analyze your market first. The data is key. I have told quite a few of our clients that instead of spending money on SEO, they would be better off going out to a nice dinner. Before we advise any of our clients to purchase our SEO, we always look at the following first:

Your current social visibility:

If I were to google you right now, what will I see? Do you rank for anything yet? What social profiles do you have? This is something you should try. You should do this for your name and your business (if you are the owner) just to see the very basics. If you google your name and find someone with the same name as you that has 5 arrest reports, that is not good. (YES, this has actually happened to people I have done this exercise with.) This is first thing to be concerned about. Then you can start running some searches to see if you hit on some the mortgage related terms. (ex. Mortgage broker near me, Houston Mortgage Rates, etc.)

Many SEO companies will use the organic research tool within Semrush to show you some data. It is not a bad way to get a quick overview for what you are already ranking for.

Your target geographical area:

What area are you going after? If you are trying to target an entire state or multiple states, then the expectations change. Narrowing this down is critical if you want success in a reasonable amount of time. Mortgages are extremely competitive and there are a lot of companies and options out there. The more focused you can be, the faster you will get results. Your ideal client may also not be in the same location as your office, so that is something to think about.

Once you have an area we need to analyze the numbers. If nobody is searching for mortgage information in your area, it would be nice to know that before paying to rank for empty searches.

So please get educated before you start paying for SEO. On the other hand, just because there is no volume showing in google, that does not mean that you should not want to be #1. It just means do not expect a rapid increase in business.

Your competitors and your market:

Who are we going up against and how saturated is the market? This matters. You may be able to make some very minor tweaks to your website and be number 1 for almost everything you want. Each market is different. And if you are in a market like San Diego, be ready for the long haul. You will not be ranking on page 1 overnight.

Your content:

You may have some existing content we can use. We obviously handle the on page text content, but did you know your website can also have a video sitemap? If you have youtube video content, that is an advantage. Most SEO companies will not even mention that.

Your reviews:

How are we doing with Google and facebook reviews? Does your company or profile have any yet? These play a big role in google maps.

So what side of maybe are you on?

Here is where I am going to say yes.

1. You want to have really strong visibility locally online. “famous in your market”
2. The search volume is at least 30 per month for a variety of search terms.
3. You or your company can afford to ride out the months while this growing.
4. Your market has strong local competition with good online visibility.

Here is where I am going to say no.

1. You just opened your company and you have not done any loans yet.
2. The search volume is low or not measurable and you primarily do business in a smaller city/town.
3. You want to rank is multiple states and cities all over the country.

The biggest take-away I want you to have from this post is that paid SEO is not for everyone. I will never forget when I first started Vonk Digital and we were on page 8 million for “mortgage websites”. We did not exist online.

I will close with this: I understand the feeling of the unknown with SEO, we are happy to share our knowledge and help you decide if you are ready for a paid SEO service or not.

If you want to learn about SEO yourself, start here with Yoast SEO Basics.

Another helpful read is an article I wrote in 2019 that is still very relevant. Ranking your mortgage website in google search results