Introduction to Online Marketing

A personal website is a great way to increase exposure and efficiency in your marketing efforts, and offers a great return on investment. By empowering your clients with online calculators, live rates, listings, application forms, pre-qualification, and learning resources, your website does the work for you, saving you time and money. A website is also an effective method of generating new leads and sales, and gives you instant credibility.

“If you build it they will NOT come.” – That is, unless you promote your website. Once you learn how and promote your website effectively, your website traffic and leads will snowball and provide you with a regular source of income. Here are some great methods of increasing traffic to your website:

• Network with other website owners – There are BILLIONS of websites on the Internet. Every great website has a great webmaster behind it. Search for websites that are relevant to your industry, and then e-mail the webmaster with a genuine compliment on their site and kindly ask them to trade links with your websites. The more links other websites have to yours, the higher your websites will show on search engines such as Google. You can add links to your Avicy website by logging into your website editior, and clicking on "Site Content" at the top.

• Google Adwords – a great way to generate traffic to your website is using Google’s Adwords service. You create small text ads (just like newspaper ads), but the difference here is your ads only show when people search for specific words, which you are able to define. This produces highly targeted traffic which means better leads for your investment. See http://www.adwords.com for more information

• Search Engines – Once your site is built, you can begin to submit it for inclusion in the most popular search engines. Some website builders offer to automatically submit your website to search engines. If not, you can do this yourself by visiting search engine such as google.com and finding the “add site” page, such as http://www.google.com/addurl.html. Avicy Gold and Platinum plans include free search engine submission.

• Meta Tags – Meta tags include key words that are in your website’s underlying code, that search engines use to find your site when someone searches for the term. Without meta tags, your website will not show up when someone searches for specific terms that have to do with your services. You can edit your Avicy website's Meta Tags by logging into your account, click "Setup/Edit Website" and clicking on "Site Content" at the top.

Make sure the key words that are included in your website’s meta tags are targeted to your website. If you live in Seattle for example, put “ seattle loan officer” or “ seattle mortgage” in your keywords.

Here are some sample keywords you can include in your mortgage website’s meta tags:

"loans, loan officer, home loan, mortgage rates, lending, mortgage, rate, rates, calculator, mortgages, loans, application, lender, lenders, lending, online mortgage application, debt, consolidation, refinance, refi, home mortgage rates"

In addition to meta tag keywords, you can include a meta tag description of your site. Use this space for a short and sweet introduction to your website, which will show up under your link on search engines. Call the viewer to action, by putting phrases such as “click now for a free loan consultation” in your site description.

• Research the competition – Go to google.com and search for other mortgage and loan officer websites. Notice which search words generate the best results. Type a list of these keywords that you can use for meta tags and for Google Adwords.

To view your website or any website’s popularity in search engines, enter the website address at http://www.alexa.com/

To view how popular keywords are on search engines, and to get keyword suggestions, use the Overture keyword suggestion tool: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/