MIMA23: Getting to grips with SEO & how to use content

Following the 2023 Mortgage Industry Marketing Awards, Barcadia Media’s Andy Shields got together with three of this year’s winners – Gemma Reid of MPowered, Leah Brunskill of MFS and Savannah Dewhurst of Coreco – for the first in a series of mortgage marketing panel discussions, chaired by awards sponsor and industry marketing expert, Jeff Knight.

In our third installment, we take a look at what our marketing gurus had to say about making SEO, or search engine optimisation, work for your business.

For the uninitiated, SEO uses certain techniques to help your website appear higher in search rankings like Google – such as ensuring your content contains the kind of terms your potential clients are likely to be searching.

Don’t overcomplicate things

Our experts’ first recommendation was that brokers don’t put the cart before the horse when it comes to SEO – with Jeff Knight noting that SEO firms often prompt businesses to start looking at SEO before anything else.

He added: “You should be starting off with the right content on your website in the first place-  otherwise you’re driving people to your website and they’ll just bounce away.”  

Dewhirst agreed, adding: “The first place to start is content […] and researching keywords as well. Make sure those keywords are in your content and the titles of your pages. You can use websites like Semrush to find out what the most popular keywords being used for your industry are.”

Tailoring content to your audience

Suggesting blogs and articles as a good place to start, Brunskill noted that content should be useful to both clients and the wider industry to help build credibility for your brand, citing MFS’s recent pieces on the landlord-tenant relationship as an example of relevant, educational content. She added that asking contributors to share their experiences as a blog is a good way to relieve the burden of creating content: “When you […] try and put 1,000 words on paper, that’s scary and takes loads of time. To show Google that you’re posting frequently – think about who could feature on the blog and get them to do the work for you.”

Building up backlinks (links to your content from elsewhere on the internet) is also a key part of your content strategy, Dewhirst added.

“Google really loves that – so it will push you right up [the rankings]. You want to contact anyone who might have mentioned your website somewhere and asking them if they would mind linking to it.”

Tools of the trade

All our marketing experts recommended using available tools – both free and paid – to ensure your SEO efforts aren’t wasted.

“Free tools such as Google My Business are really good,” Reid said. “Brokers can set up a free profile and it helps you showcase relevant information about your businesses in a search engine so when people in your local area are searching for services like yours, you’re more likely to come up.”

Paid tools, such as SemRush, were expensive, the experts warned, coming with additional features, such as those helping you to optimise your website for search engine results like featured links.

“Use Google as well!” Dewhirst suggested for brokers trying to avoid paying high fees for SEO tools. “See what comes up when you put in search terms, see what’s performing well,and try and copy that to see what works – trial and error.”

She added that page titles were important for search engines, suggesting that brokers ensure their page titles were as descriptive as possible – with Reid adding that URLs for any blogs or articles should also be descriptive to allow Google to categorise your content.

Tackling SEO can seem daunting for small businesses – to hear what else our marketing experts have to say, watch the entire webinar on the Mortgage Industry Marketing website.

Our marketing experts’ advice for SEO:

·         Start with content – give site visitors something to see when they get there

·         Build up an idea of the keywords your potential clients are searching for

·         Use free tools such as Google My Business

·         Make URLs and page titles as descriptive as possible

·         Ask for links back to your content for better search ranking