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Among the top 10 results for key home-equity search terms are just two non-banks, three banks and three credit unions. But it was one of the non-banks that had the overall best placement.
HELN did a search on Google’s search engine for three important terms or phrases tied to home-equity borrowing: ‘HELOC,’ ‘home equity loan,’ and ‘second mortgage.’
The search was done on a laptop windows computer utilizing a scarcely used browser that was not logged into a Google account. Only the first 10 results were considered.
For the ‘HELOC’ search, the first result was Bank of America. Next up was Rocket Mortgage, which was the fifth result, and No. 6 US Bank.
A search for ‘home equity loan’ yielded results that showed US Bank as the No. 2 result and the highest-ranking lender. BofA was third, Rocket Mortgage was No 5, Provident Credit Union was the ninth result, and Navy Federal Credit Union came in at No. 10.
Results for a search of ‘second mortgage’ were topped by Rocket. Citizens Bank was No. 4, while US Bank came in at No. 6. The ninth search result was Star One Credit Union.
Among the non-lender results for all three terms/phrases were Bankrate, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Federal Trade Commission, Forbes, Investopedia, LendingTree, Nerd Wallet, The Balance, The Mortgage Reports and Time. LendingTree had prominent ads on each of the consumer news sites.
Competition among home-equity lenders in search engine optimization is clearly fierce, as is exhibited by the three to four ads in Google’s search results that precede organic, unpaid search results.
Overall, based on the three search terms/phrases analyzed, HELN came up with the following organic ranking of home-equity lenders:
- Rocket Mortgage
- US Bank
- Bank of America
- Citizens Bank
- Provident Credit Union
- Star One Credit Union
- Navy Federal Credit Union
Although BofA ranked high in search results for ‘home equity loan’ and ‘HELOC,’ it was not among the first 10 results for ‘second mortgage.’
