Using Blogs and Technology to Build Your Business

[Note: If you’re a professional SEO, you can skip this article.]

Can I find you on the Web? If I REALLY need to talk with someone about my mortgage RIGHT NOW, what are the chances that I could go to Google, type in i need help with my mortgage, and find you in the top 10 search results?

The title of this post is Why Should Mortgage Professionals Blog. We should blog so more people know about us, like us and trust us, right? Meeting more people and developing a friendship with them that grows into a trusting relationship is sort of marketing 101 for service professionals and it’s an enjoyable way to make a living. The first step in that process is to meet more people, and blogging exposes you to a lot more people. Kinda basic, but really important point.

OK, so maybe you’re writing all these remarkable articles on your blog and you’re commenting on other blogs, and maybe you’re even developing some actual business from your blog?

You can gain a whole lot more exposure by writing for your audience and editing for Google. I’m talking about search terms - the exact words that a person types into a search engine when they are looking for an answer to a problem. If you use those search terms in your page title, your post title, your article content, and maybe even your link anchor text, then you just tweaked your blog with some Search Engine Optimized magic.

HUD already has the top two spots for the search term i need help with my mortgage and my blog isn’t in the top 100. With 53,000,000 pages listed for that term, I might not want to use that exact phrase, unless it was my company tag line or something. If we dig a little deeper, we can see that only 5 pages have the phrase “i need help with my mortgage” in the title of the page - much less competition, much easier to make yourself magically appear in the top Google search results for that search phrase.

Now, I have no idea if anyone is actually searching for help with their mortgage using that search phrase, but I would guess it’s a pretty safe bet, wouldn’t you? Basic Search Engine Optimization is just making it easier for more people to find you. Use the words they use for a bigger serving of Google juice.

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I don’t know about you, but sometimes I think the Wall Street Journal can be a little dense. I mean, I’m not a trader, or hedge fund manager, or an analyst, so sometimes all the industry jargon and abbreviations in the paper can make my eyes glaze over.

That’s why I was pleasantly surprised this morning to read Today’s Wall Street Journal article titled How Credit Got So Easy And Why It’s Tightening

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From the Washington Post: Borrowers who don't know how to deal with mortgage brokers waste their time and that of the brokers. Sound familiar? If you haven't read his writing before, Jack Guttentag is The Mortgage Professor, an actual Professor of Finance emeritus at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He writes a nationally syndicated column and at his own web site, The Mortgage Professor. He gets a LOT of traffic to his site and many people read his advice columns in newspapers and web sites across the country. With so many borrowers (and potential customers for you) reading his advice, you can find great marketing and content ideas in his articles.

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