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Steven Cross
In a bid to tighten his stranglehold on lead generation in the mortgage market, John Kolenda has shelled out hundreds of thousands of dollars on two internet domains.
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The two domains, www.homeloan.com.au and www.homeloancalculator.com.au, were acquired for a six figure sum – the highest ever paid for domain names in the mortgage broking industry.
Despite the massive cash outlay, Mr Kolenda remained bullish about the purchase, and said the domains would complement his current phone number 1300HomeLoan.
Mr Kolenda told The Adviser that once you snap up a good domain name, it markets itself.
“We will use the domain site itself to promote leads, so it will be complementary to 1300HomeLoan, but independent.”
“Homeloans.com.au is already searched in excess of 200,000 times a month. So we’re investing money into a valuable site, which will give customers access to good information.
“We put money behind the SEO to get it quite organic so it ranks highly and is featured in the top results of a generic Google search.”
Having your business on the first page of a generic Google search such as “home loan” or “mortgage broker” has proven to generate much more traffic to a website.
Mr Kolenda told The Adviser that it was a different principle to his 1300HomeLoan ‘phone word’.
“The power of ‘phone words’ has a different potential to domain names. Phone words get people to remember the number so that when people decide to jump onto the property ladder, we will be on the top of their mind.
“You just need to feature in the top two or three in people’s minds and you’ll be a first point of call.
“Homeloan.com.au is a separate strategy, but equally important. Online, everyone understands that they’re investing lots of money so most consumers go online to do their research. As long as we come up first, we have their attention.”
Homeloan.com.au will be run as a comparison site to get an insight into the different products and lenders and what they can offer. The calculator site will provide consumers with functionalities for how much they can borrow or monthly repayments.
David Bowgen from mortgagebroker.com.au has had his generic domain name since 2006 and says in his opinion, it works.
“It’s been great for us. To be honest, we haven’t had to advertise. We did initially, but it’s worked very well for us.
“We don’t run Google ads, and we’re still number one or two in a search.
Mr Bowgen has also raised the importance of ‘feeder sites’ which direct traffic to a main website.
“We have about 10 feeder sites. So we own the domains homeloansmelbourne, homeloanssydney, homeloansperth and so on. And all these sites do is direct people to our main site.
“They’re perfect,” he says. “You also need to think about buying commonly misspelt domain names, like morgage.org will direct you to mortgage.org. That certainly works.”
Mr Bowgen said a good domain name can be invaluable to an independent local broker.
“If you wanted a keyword domain name and you were a broker in, for example, Sutherland. When an ordinary consumer goes searching for a local broker in their area, they’ll type in ‘home loans Sutherland’ and you will be first on the list.
“If you’re called Peter Smith Home Loans, it’s going to be really hard to be found.”
