How NestReady increases mortgage lender website ranking by 5.5 million positions

Adding Value Beyond the Mortgage Application
Resource Financial Services (RFS) is a local independently owned mortgage banker with a team of full-service mortgage bankers serving the Southeast of the United States of America from eight locations. RFS was named #227 on the 2012 Inc. magazine list of 500 fastest-growing privately held mortgage companies in the nation.
Objective
Resource Financial Services is leveraging NestReady’s digital real estate expertise to help them:

  • Adapt to the ever-growing demand from homebuyers for convenient digital services and one-stop-shop solutions.

  • Grow their overall online presence and strengthen their branding by positioning themselves as an innovative mortgage lender.

  • Promote their new VA Home Loan and generate more online leads in a cost-effective way.
    • Challenge
    1. Resource Financial Services is an independent mortgage banker with a traditional business model supported by mortgage bankers and their relationships with local real estate agents.

    2. RFS’ online presence has been historically limited with https://www.resourcefinancialservices.com/ having an Ahrefs rank* around 10 million. AHREFS Rank: refers to the ranking of all websites by the size and quality of their backlink profiles.

    3. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the RFS' sales teams to work from home, which limits their ability to collaborate with local partners and clients, increasing their need to transition their services online.

    4. Resource Financial Services did not appear on any search engine results for VA Home Loan queries.

    5. Resource Financial Services was utilizing Google Adwords to boost web traffic and online visibility. With an average cost per click of $25 to $50 for "VA Home Loan" keyword combinations, the strategy has proven to be costly and only effective in the short term.

    6. Resource Financial Services did not have the internal resources nor the digital marketing expertise to develop a solid backlink acquisition strategy which is one of the most effective SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategies available today: A website can have a variety of appealing and informative content. However, if the overall website authority is low, the ranking of the content pieces will also be, and users will not be able to find the content. With low website authority, RFS' website was hard to find by homebuyers through organic searches.
    Solutions

    To solve Resource Financial Services’ main challenges, NestReady’s Digital Marketing Team based its solutions on the following items:

  • The activation of a technical SEO strategy centered around backlink acquisition to enable a better overall ranking for RFS’ main keyword terms.

  • Delivering on-page and off-page SEO that improves indexation and increases the probability of top keyword terms ranking on the first two pages of one of the main search engine platforms.

  • A 'Digital Footprint' expansion that compliments SEO efforts - such as producing new and engaging content that will rank well on search engines.

  • Aligning SEO tactics with brand-wide marketing strategy optimization.
    • “Our partnership with NestReady stemmed from our need to enhance our digital user experience, and we are now able to provide a single platform that streamlines all the difficult parts of the homebuying process. We are excited about the partnership and believe the technology and concept behind what NestReady is offering will change the home purchasing process for the better.”
    A. Wade Douroux - CEO, Resource Financial Services
    How We Did It & Results
    1. The NestReady Digital Marketing Team collected guest blog posts across multiple domains that contain backlinks, which point back to Resource Financial Services' website.

    2. Implemented custom anchor text (the clickable text that is in a link) that includes ‘VA Home Loan’ keywords within the guest blog articles.

    3. Enabled Google's ranking algorithm factor in the backlinks pointing to Resource Financial Services' website and allows RFS to rank for new keywords, which increases the amount of organic (free) traffic going towards their website.

    4. Published informative blog posts and home listing articles for RFS, targeting hyper-local keywords to increase RFS' overall organic reach and online presence.
    • organic-traffic

      100% improvement in Ahrefs Rank

      RFS’ Ahrefs Rank improved from 10 million to 4.5 million; this increase is equivalent to outperforming 5.5 million websites after working with the NestReady Team for only two months.

    • audience-quality

      #1 Position for ‘Mortgage Financial Services’

      The NestReady Team helps RFS maintain the #1 position on Google for local search results in South Carolina for the keyword combination ‘Mortgage Financial Services’. Over 357 million pages are trying to rank for this keyword combination.

    • brand-engagement

      Increased ranking by over 100 positions for ‘VA Home Loan’

      RFS was not ranking on any search engines for ‘VA Home Loan’ in February. After starting to work with NestReady, RFS started to appear in search results on Google for this keyword combination and began ranking on page two and three on Yahoo and Bing. RFS is now outcompeting over 50 million pages that are also trying to rank for this keyword combination.

    Conclusion

    Utilizing an SEO strategy, such as backlink acquisition, to obtain the objectives indicated in this case study, is a more effective and sustainable method in comparison to SEM. As an example, to appear on the first page on Google for five niche industry keywords using a backlink acquisition strategy (SEO), RFS would have to invest $5000 in the first month to see results in the second month. This ranking will last for many months afterward. If RFS were to try and produce the same results with Adwords, it would cost $6000 in the first month, and in three months, the total cost would be anywhere between $14k and $18k.

    Many companies, like RFS, buy Adwords because SEO is considered to be complicated and often requires more resources and time. However, it doesn't have to be. With NestReady, lenders can gain insights from industry experts and utilize top digital real estate strategies to obtain a higher digital presence using SEO techniques that are cheaper and more efficient than traditional SEM strategies.

    About NestReady

    NestReady bridges the gaps between consumers, banks, and real estate professionals, enabling financial institutions to offer a personalized and seamless Total Homeownership Experience. With NestReady, lenders can enhance their marketing, increase engagement and client loyalty, and achieve higher and faster conversions.

    Let's Talk

    Next Article

    Real Estate Marketplace Platforms - Hashtag Social Media Report

    You Might Also Like

    • post-img

      What Are Zillow, Trulia, and Redfin’s Most Used Hashtags to Attract Homebuyers?

      Continuing with our series on discovering the best marketing strategies and communication utilized by the top real estate platforms to attract homebuyers, we wanted to take a look specifically at three of the largest real estate platforms right now:  Zillow, Trulia, and Redfin.

      While most lenders and real estate companies have limited marketing resources, these companies have ample marketing teams that dedicate a significant amount of time to fine tunning their message and communication to attract homebuyers. So what can we learn from them?

      If you are interested in our previous posts from this series, which discuss the 13 leading real estate marketplace platforms and what phrases and hashtags they use to attract homebuyers across various social media platforms, you can find them here and here, or, to read the complete report, download it here. 

      Why Use Hashtags to Attract Homebuyers?

      Hashtags have been growing in popularity and are not limited to Twitter anymore. In fact, hashtags are widely used on most social media platforms. They allow your brand to connect to a topic and become part of that conversation. So even if a user is not following your brand on a social media platform, but is following a hashtag, they will see your post. As communication and marketing become more dependent on social media, it is essential for brands to become part of these conversations.

      How Often Is Zillow Using Its Top Hashtags?

      The NestReady Team analyzed the usage of hashtags per platform, starting with Zillow. #Brandname is often an obvious choice as the most common hashtag. The hashtag #socialsurvey is the second most used hashtag. #mortgage is used 19% of the time by Zillow, and they only started offering mortgages as of 2019! It clearly shows how invested they are in this side of the business.

      The hashtags #openhouse, #homebuying, #homeownership, #homebuyers, #housing, when combined, appear more than 20% of the time on the social media posts shared by Zillow. It is also interesting to notice that terms #realtor, #realtors, and #realtorslife show up very often when combined; it shows a close working relationship between real estate agents and Zillow.

      Zillow also gives us a sneak peek at their primary target markets using the hashtags #millennials, #firsttimehomebuyers, and #investing, also mentioned as #investment.

    • post-img

      The Advantages of Supporting Homeowners on Every Step of the Journey

      We have all heard about how important it is to stay in touch with clients; it keeps you top of mind, generates referrals, and repeated business. But in the busier than ever mortgage industry of today, how can mortgage lenders stay in touch with homeowners?  And even if they do find the time to reach out, what value can they provide?

    • post-img

      What Are the Top Words Used to Attract Homebuyers?

      As we continue our research to further understand the best marketing strategies and communication utilized by the top real estate platforms to attract homebuyers, we wanted to look at the top words and phrases. Our team has analyzed the 13 leading real estate marketplace platforms to understand what phrases they use to attract homebuyers across various social media platforms. 

      We have already analyzed the top hashtags utilized by these companies and were able to identify over 200 hashtags used by real estate platforms on social media. We discovered multiple dominant hashtags that various companies use on our shortlist. Read more about it in our previous post, or to read the complete report, download it here. 

      Words Used By Most Real Estate Platforms

      When we looked into the words and phrases that are used by most of the 13 top real estate platforms, we were surprised to see that positive and encouraging terms such as advice, opportunity, and impact, and also curiosity inducing terms such as sneak peek, are surprisingly used by more real estate platforms than industry-related words such as homes, estate, buying, and selling.

      It shows that their focus goes much further than the scope of what they sell, real estate, to include the other interests and day-to-day topics that also affect their target market. This strategy is essential in providing valuable and relatable content that will keep homebuyers engaged with the brand for the long term. As the homebuying journey is often long, keeping homebuyers engaged from their first visit and returning to their platform often is one of the keys for real estate platform companies.