How Credit Unions Can Improve Mortgage SEO

Keeping up in the digital age might feel like a challenge, but it’s actually an opportunity. 

With a focus on serving your existing members and drawing in new ones, you have a range of opportunities you can lean into at your credit union. Staying ahead of the digital curve can help you get your products and services in front of more people, particularly those in need of a mortgage.

Digital marketing is a prime example of the opportunity here. In fact, according to a relatively recent survey of credit union executives and marketers, 75% of respondents reported that digital marketing is an increasing priority at their financial institution. 

You’ve probably already taken some action to establish a digital presence for your credit union, like creating a website. But if you’re not taking further steps to leverage that site, you’re missing out on potential, especially in the realm of mortgage lead generation. Here, search engine optimization (SEO) goes a long way.

So, what is SEO and how can it help credit unions land more mortgage loan originations? You’re in the right place to find out. 

The basics of search engine optimization

SEO gives you a way to rank higher on Google and other search engines. When used well, it also gives you a way to encourage people to click through to your credit union when you show up in a search engine results page (SERP). 

If someone searches “credit union” in your area, for example, a good SEO strategy can help you show up toward the top of the results. It also empowers you to show what you want in the snippet that pops up on the results page, further motivating that searcher to click on your website. 

Good SEO doesn’t stop there, either. If someone went to Google to search for a mortgage calculator and your SERP result promised to deliver one, you should have that calculator on the page they click through to.

Ultimately, SEO gives you a way to get more website traffic to your site, and to deliver a good user experience to anyone who visits your webpages. As a result, it’s a way to better serve your members while attracting new ones. 

Credit unions and keyword research

SEO for credit unions starts with keywords. These are words or phrases that you want to rank for. 

You might, for example, identify “low mortgage rates” as a keyword for which you want to rank. Google’s Keyword Planner tool says that keyword gets somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 monthly searches, meaning it definitely has the potential to help you generate some site traffic.  But here lies the difficulty in SEO. Hundreds of other businesses are also competing for that keyword. Google’s Keyword Planner ranks competition for it at “medium.”

But that planning tool also shows you similar keyword options. It identifies “cheapest home loan rates” as a keyword with a similar monthly search volume, but “low” competition. Perhaps most importantly, the Keyword Planner tool also says that keyword has seen 900% year-over-year growth, meaning more and more people are searching for it. 

Spend some time thinking about keywords for which your credit union wants to rank. If there’s a lot of general competition for them, you can always localize them. You might be hard-pressed to win the top of Google for “mortgage” but you’d likely have better luck ranking high for “mortgage in Ames, IA.” 

Local SEO for credit unions

In fact, there’s one set of keywords you don’t need to research to know they can be effective: your locations. Adding location-based indicators — like your address on every page footer and the names of cities you serve in webpage content — indicates to search engines where your business operates. 

Try this right now: type “credit union” into your search engine of choice. Unless you have location services turned off, it will most likely populate local options for you. This can work to your credit union’s advantage. If you can tell search engines which areas you serve, they’re more likely to put you in front of your local audience. 

While you’re thinking about local SEO, make sure you have your Google Business Profile properly set up. This plays a big role in encouraging Google to put your credit union in front of local searchers. 

Using those keywords

Once you decide which keywords you want to target with your SEO strategy, it’s time to make website changes to use those keywords. 

In some cases, that might mean adjusting your existing webpages. If you decide you want to target “credit union in Ames, IA,” for example, you might add that to your homepage’s headers and throughout the content on the homepage. The first header on your homepage might read, “Your trusted credit union in Ames, IA” or something similar.

In addition to adding the keyword where it’s visible on the webpage, you also need to do some work in the backend to control how your result shows up in search engines. 

Specifically, you want to find the place in the backend of your site where you can change your title tag and meta description. 

To show you how these things display, here’s a screenshot of our own search engine result:

It’s an SEO best practice to include your keyword in both the title tag and the meta description. 

You might also explore creating new webpages specifically for keywords you want to target. If you decide to target the “cheapest home loan rates” keyword we explored earlier, for example, you might build a landing page specifically with a rate table that shows current mortgage rates. Make sure you put “cheapest home loan rates” in the title tag and meta description for that page, too. 

We have an on-page SEO checklist you can use to explore more ways to use the keywords you choose. 

This guide outlines how to get from doing nothing with SEO to leveraging this cost-effective digital marketing strategy. But this is just the start. SEO has a wide range of applications and it could be a game-changer when it comes to attracting new members and advertising your mortgage offerings. 

If you want to chat about ways to use SEO to power up your credit union’s digital marketing, schedule some time with our team. We have extensive experience helping credit unions make the most of their websites. 

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