Web Server Stats Utilized In All Walks Of Research
Thousands of web pages are being added every day as the World Wide Web comes into its own as a normal business venue. As the Web gets more crowded, there's also more online business to be had - if loan seekers can find you. Web marketing experts say there is plenty of consumer interest in accessing financial services and products - including mortgages - on the Web, if they can get them conveniently. Since 71% of Web visitors use the search engines to navigate the Web, you can assume that they will be using Yahoo!, Lycos, Alta Vista or one of the many others to shop for a mortgage loan. A lot of consumers are frustrated with Internet search engines right now. In May, the research firm Find/SVP reported that while 55 million new users were poised to get on the Internet, over 9 million people have stopped using the Web in the past year because they couldn't get a handle on the search process. Products like Web Compass from Quarterdeck can give users improved results, but mortgage professionals have no control over whether such products will be widely adopted. What can you do now to help more prospects reach your site? Plenty. Whether you use email, provide Web services for Realtors, buy strategic online banner ads, or select the right language to bait the search engines, the first step is to be clear about what niche you want to carve out for yourself, and that means the first thing to do is go back and sharpen your company mission statement and calculate the visitor statistics of your website. The chances that borrowers will reach you on the Web increase dramatically when you or your Web publicist know what to tell the search engines about what you do. Hierarchical search engines, which simply index Web pages, look at page titles only. The more sophisticated search engines scan the whole page, allowing you to employ meta tags and key words that let them know what you have to offer. A meta tag is a line of hidden HTML code seen only by sophisticated search engines like spiders. What you hope to do is attract borrowers looking for the loans that are your specialty. The words you emphasize in your page title, keywords and meta tags depend on whether you are trying to attract purchasers, refinancers, remodelers or borrowers in a particular geographical area. If you and your Web publicist are nimble enough, you can modify your strategy to position yourself properly as interest rates rise or fall.
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