You do have a mortgage website...you do have a page on your company's website...or maybe you bought a subset template page on a master mortgage website...you do have an email address that does lend credibility to your mortgage business...and, all and all, you have made the big move with many other Mortgage Professionals to the Internet highway.



But something is dreadfully wrong isn't it? You're not getting any mortgage applications. Actually, you're not getting any inquiries or leads either. So, you're beginning to wonder if you did the right thing, and how can you continue to justify the expense?

Let me assure you that you definitely did the right thing by establishing your Internet presence. If you're not getting any mortgage business from it...one or more of the following may be the reason:

1. No one can find you or your website. Yup...this is the number one reason why you're probably not getting any business from your website. If no one can find you, you're not getting any traffic to your website. That also means no leads, no prospects, no applications and, no mortgage business.

There could be many reasons for your "no traffic syndrome." If you're working from a company website or you bought a web presence as a part of an "octopus site" with 5,000 other loan officers, there's no way to improve your position. Sharing a website doesn't work. You can resolve the problem by breaking away from the "octopus" and setting up your own personal mortgage website.

If you have your own website and you're not getting traffic you need to take a close look at how your website is put together. It may be that your website is poorly designed. As an example, your html tags may not be properly optimized or they may be poorly written. Or, your "keywords" need to be reviewed. You don't have to be a programmer to tweak your website and make it acceptable to search engines. Most if not all of this stuff is easily researchable and simple to do. We'll cover some of this in subsequent articles.

2. Your website contains very little if any content. If you're trying to promote 250 loan products (like most mortgage folks) instead of providing valuable and usable mortgage and credit information (called content), search engines will place your site near the bottom of their mortgage list. Search engines want relevant content that supports your contention that your site is in fact mortgage related.

You can easily build your website content by periodically publishing a newsletter or writing and submitting articles to article directories. Make sure everything you generate ends up on your website. Today, content is king...search engines love it...and, they will reward you when they find it.

3. You don't have control of your website. You need to be able to add, delete, and change your website as necessary. Today, anyone can set up and maintain a website using the tools available from their website hosting service. Programming knowledge is not a requirement. A good hosting service will provide you with a program that works very much like MS Word. It's really that simple, and in 60 minutes, you could have your personal mortgage website operational.

The reasons why your website is not performing may be very small and yet varied. But, the result is always the same...people just can't find you. Set aside a small block of time each week to study the Internet and how your mortgage website fits in the scheme of things. More and more of your prospects are using the Internet to find goods and services. If you prefer to neglect this, your competition will gladly fill the void, steal your prospect, and service the customer you never got.