Mortgage SEO is Not Mortgage Lead Generation

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In this article, I'll explain an important distinction that is often "blurred" in the minds of many mortgage professionals who use the Internet for mortgage marketing purposes. As the title suggests, that distinction is between mortgage SEO (search engine optimization) and mortgage lead generation.

About once a week, I receive a phone call from a potential client asking about my search engine optimization (SEO) services. At some point, the caller will say something like, "I need search engine optimization because my website does not generate leads."

This is usually when I pause for a brief "lecture" on the difference between SEO and lead generation. The purpose of mortgage SEO is to generate web traffic. That's it. If you were under the impression that mortgage SEO generated leads as well, then I'm sorry to disappoint you

Of course, this doesn't mean that a good mortgage SEO program cannot help you generate leads. It can surely help you with the lead-generation cause, but only by providing you with traffic from which to generate those leads. In order to realize the full lead-producing potential of your mortgage website, you have to combine SEO with an effective lead-generation program.

If you increase the amount of traffic to a mortgage website with no lead-generation techniques in use, you will more traffic but still no leads. On the other hand, if you increase the amount of traffic to a mortgage website with effective lead generation, the increased traffic will directly correspond to increased leads and inquiries.

Or to state it mathematically:

* False: Web traffic = web leads
* True: Web traffic + lead generation = web leads

Web Traffic is Only an Opportunity

To further clarify the distinction between mortgage SEO, website traffic and lead generation, I often use the analogy of a lemonade stand. For the sake of this analogy, let's pretend you have set up a lemonade stand beside a busy highway. The problem is, your lemonade stand is situated on a narrow shoulder of the road where cars cannot pull over. You can imagine the result. Cars whiz by you all day long, but none of them stop. So here you have an endless supply of traffic that you are not capitalizing on. As a result, your lemonade stand is a failure. The traffic is right in front of you, but it might as well be a million miles away.

Now convert that lemonade stand to your mortgage website, and convert the vehicle traffic into web traffic, and you will see my point. Opportunity only favors those who capitalize on it. If your mortgage website has plenty of traffic but does poorly in the lead-generation department, then most of your web traffic will pass right by ... like those cars passing the lemonade stand.

Mortgage SEO is a traffic generator. Mortgage lead generation is a lead generator. Though they work together, they are two separate things.

Brandon Cornett is the publisher of Smart Mortgage Marketing, a website offering marketing advice for mortgage brokers and others in the industry.