Name of your website?Altrust Finance Group
Your name?
Rob Donald
Your Location (city, etc)
North Perth
When did you start your website and why?
To promote our finance products and loans to potential clients in Western Australia and to generate sales leads for our mortgage broking business.
Please give us a short summary of your website, business model, etc
My Altrust Finance website is typically information based about the types of home loan products and debt consolidation loans that as a mortgage broker we can offer new and existing customers. We accept online requests for mortgage advice on home loans, bad credit loans, debt consolidation, mortgage refinancing, lo doc loans and investment & equity loans.
We also offer free resources on all areas of financing for website visitors. We cater mainly to local and country based enquiries in Western Australia.
What has been the most difficult part of creating and running your website?
Probably getting our website to rank well on the search engines and to maintain a decent level of website traffic.
What has been the easist part of operating your website?
It tends to generate 2 to 4 genuine sales leads for us each month so conversion into real business has probably been the easiest part for us so far.
What was your biggest mistake?
Using some SEO tactics that got us dropped from the search engines in particular using text in white that was not visibly apparent to our website visitors, basically due to a lack of knowledge in this area and being a bit overzealous in trying to get results. We fixed the errors and resubmitted out site to the search engines.
Who maintains your website and why?
Our initial website design company completes any programming changes or technical issues that arise, we have our site independently hosted with a web host company and have recently engaged Rank1 Website Marketing to complete our SEO and website marketing requirements.
Tell us how your business has benefitted from your website?
The website has better promoted our mortgage broking business within our local state sales territory and nationally plus we are now getting some international exposure as well. Generally it has boosted our sales enquiries and conversions to sales by about 15% annually.
What are your views on ecommerce and the future of the internet?
We wouldn't be without a website as it definitely contributes to our overall sales generation and promotion of our services within the business and wider consumer community. All of our affiliates in mortgage broking and financial services who don't currently have websites are looking into having one built so they can keep up in the industry.
What are your views on Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
We have tried to do our own website marketing and SEO with fairly inconsistent results thus far so we have recently outsourced our SEO requirements to Rank1 Website Marketing and have already seen some good improvements with our search engine rankings on Google and MSN where previously our keywords were not showing up in the first 10 to pages of results. If we can gain an advantage over our direct competitors on the Internet and improve our site popularity we are all for it!
What are your views on Search Engines? Have they helped or hindered your website?
Well being dropped from the search engine results certainly hindered us and had a significant impact on our website traffic levels and being in a very competitive keyword end of the market on the Internet has made becoming visible on the search engines quite a difficult process.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
Certain paid directory listings topic specific to our area of expertise in finance, free classified ad listings, link building and having our site optimized for the search engines.
What method has been least successful for promoting your website?
Probably pay per click advertising, we have spent hundreds of dollars and then pulled the advertising and still generated the same level of sales enquiries.
What would you like to see change with respect to the internet?
Less spamming, less pop up ads and viruses generated from bad neighborhood sites.
You can enter a question of your choice and the answer here: How does Altrust Finance compare to other traditional lenders?
Altrust Finance Group can offer 100's of loan options to clients whereas traditional lenders can only offer their own loan products. Altrust Finance offers free mortgage advice and services unlike other Australian based mortgage brokers. We offer a range of loan products for the self employed, first home buyer, investor, or those people with bad credit who have been unable to get a loan. Altrust Finance are mortgage specialists in home loans, mortgage refinance, lo doc loans, non conforming home loans, debt consolidation and bad credit home loans.
What is your website address?
Altrust Finance Group