How My Mortgage Blog Ranked Top Ten in Google Within a Month

[carlo@CreditReportAtlas]

Greg,

The story of your life is no different than mine. I am the same way except today I kept it open to manage my advertising agendas. As a business owner, it's very important to take one day out of my busy months to analyze and review my advertising expenses and ROI. After all, without advertising no one would know you're in business. I dash $2,000 a month on Google, Yahoo and AOL pay-per-click programs (I'm a strong believer of "You gotta spend money to make money") and within 6 months my goal is to spend $10,000/month on online advertising. So far things are moving along pretty good.

Thanks,
Carlo

[DelawareMortgages]

Erik,

Can you check my website now and see if it is ready to be linked to?
www.DelawareMortgageLoans.net


Thanks,
John Thomas
www.DelawareMortgageLoans.net

[Erik]

Already did it a few days ago, John.

[carlo@CreditReportAtlas]

Originally Posted by DelawareMortgages

Erik,

Can you check my website now and see if it is ready to be linked to?
www.DelawareMortgageLoans.net


Thanks,
John Thomas
www.DelawareMortgageLoans.net

Nice website, John. It has a very clean look.

[Secret!]

Originally Posted by DelawareMortgages

Erik,

Can you check my website now and see if it is ready to be linked to?
www.DelawareMortgageLoans.net


Thanks,
John Thomas
www.DelawareMortgageLoans.net

Instead of telling you what a pretty template look you have (and you do), how about some IMPORTANT info, that may save your butt?

Based upon the personal information your site collects (in your sidebar) from potential customers - it MUST be "secured" - both to give potential customers a good feeling about you, but more improtantly, the way it is now violates The GLB Statute. Getting your 'host' to "secure" it only takes moments; may cost a tiny bit extra, but sure would be smart!

[PBryan]

That was a good post. I found the info about link building to be especially important. Combine the link building with picking a targeted market (in this case, Utah mortgage loans), and you have a great start.

When building the number of links that point to your site, did you send out emails to website hosts requesting that they exchange links with you? Or, did you stick to websites that offer link exchanges right on the site?

Or, even more labor intensive... did you ever bother calling different website hosts and asking about link exchanges?

[Erik]

There's a lot of debate these days over the value of links, especially link exchanges, when it comes to how the search engines view them. Some Search Engine Optimization pros believe link exchanging for search engine ranking is basically futile. Others think there is still value in it.

For me, I'll exchange links if I think the site is link-worthy and if I think a return link will generate any traffic for me directly. In other words, I basically assign a value of "zero" to exchanged links and look at it from a point of view that perhaps I'll get some quality traffic from the link itself.

One-way links (a link to your site from a site you do not link back to) are unanimously considered valuable by Search Engine Optimization experts when it comes to how search engines value these links. Get all the one-way links you can.

One-way links from sites considered "authoritative" are especially good. For example, if you got a press release published in the local paper and they linked to your site from the story on their website, this would be considered a highly valuable one-way link from an authority site. (And yet another good reason to work on Page Ranking campaigns)

Links from your local chapter of NAMB could also have some significant value. Same goes for your local Chamber of Commerce, if you're a member.

It's my opinion that a link exchange is generally only worth my time if it's with a site closely related to my own in both topic/content and quality.

I wouldn't bother seeking or approving link exchanges with non-relevant sites.

The best way to get one-way links (in my opinion) is to provide unique, helpful, quality content on your site that other webmasters will want to link to naturally.

[lenderama]

I haven't taken the time to post lately, but this subject caught my eye. My blog is #1 for the search term mortgage blog and performs well (first page) with all sorts of related terms like mortgage industry, mortgage search engine, mortgage insights, and many others that describe my blog.

Lots of folks will try to sell you on how to get Google love, I'll tell you for free. Make a quality blog that people find worthwhile, link to other quality blogs, and ask them to link back.

The blogospere rewards a "pay it forward" type philosophy. when you find a blog you think is good, link to it. Only then should you invite someone to link back. When you find a post that's worth note, link to it in your own post, and tell your readers about it. Leave comments on other blogger's sights about the post they just made. Do not use comments to advertise your blog. when people read your comments, they'll be able to click on your name to visit your blog. When they get there, you better have lots of good information for them to consume. I now have well over five hundred posts, plus some additional tools and training resources for my blog. You need to provide great content for your regular readers, and understand that some other readers are you piers, and will link to you if you have something good to say.

Google love comes when these other bloggers link back. It comes when they discover your site and find an article worthy of note to their own readers.

FYI, I recently launched a new search engine that spyders only quality blogs from real estate and mortgage professionals. Any bloggers wanting to be included, or anyone who want's to see what the blogoshere has to say about our industry can check it out at rembex.com

[Erik]

Would anyone who has created a blog with wordpress be interested in using the simple script I use on Utah Mortgage Loans to collect pre-qual leads? I've had a couple of requests via email for it and am thinking about creating a wordpress plugin so anybody can easily use it.

Thoughts?