Building Referral Relationships with Local Realtors

Dec 7, 2021

EPM Wholesale
EPM Blog | Building Referral Relationships with Local Realtors

Can potential homebuyers find you online? If you haven’t spent time optimizing your website, search listings, and LinkedIn profile for local searches, you may be missing out on a lot of business.

Here are the steps you can take to ensure that you and your services as a mortgage broker show up well in search results.

Use Your Geography

When someone wants to buy a home in your city, he or she probably knows that searching for “mortgages” or “mortgage brokers” will not help. He or she is much more likely to search for “mortgage broker CITY NAME.” That is where you want to show up.

Make sure that you use your city, county, or metropolitan area name on your website. You don’t have to stuff that word into all your text, but include it where it makes sense. This could be a tagline that appears on every page or in the descriptive text about who you serve. You might also use local nicknames and other text that local borrowers might search for.

Focus on Your Specialties

Beyond your city or metropolitan area, you likely have types of loans or types of borrowers you specialize in. Use these descriptors on your website, much like you use your local area name. For example, if you have worked with many veterans, you should mention it. That way, a veteran who is specifically searching for a local mortgage broker with VA loan experience will find you.

Claim Your Business

Although there are many search engines out there, most searches take place on Google. And its local business tools offer you options to help people find you. You’ll need to create a Google account for your business and add it to your local search. This process will allow you to add your business type, available hours, and office address. You may see your business already listed on Google if customers have checked in there or posted a review. In this case, you can claim the business as yours — that option should appear on the listing.

Optimize LinkedIn, Too

LinkedIn profiles often show up before business websites because it is a widely known authority site. Therefore, it ranks well in search engines. Make the same changes to your tagline and About section to use the local terms and loan or borrower specialties that set you apart.

Think Like a Borrower

When making text changes to your website, Google business listing, and LinkedIn page, make sure you’re using language borrowers would use. Steer clear of too many abbreviations and jargon when you’re updating your text to make it more search-engine friendly. For example, VA and FHA loans are good things to highlight because the public commonly knows them. Terms, such as “conforming loan” or FHLMC, are less well-known and should not be search terms you’re trying to target.

Optimizing your web presence may seem like a daunting task. However, these easy steps will help borrowers find you in local searches.