Tree.com, Inc.

NASDAQ: TREE

Analysis of Lendingtree, one of Tree.com’s marketplaces that connect consumers with multiple lenders that compete for their business, from a search engine marketing perspective.

Strengths

• Ranks well for home finance terms. Its most valuable keywords are “lending”, “home loans”, and “mortgage loans”.
• Partnerships bring traffic and links. Lendingtree has links on the homepages of Expedia, Hotels.com, Hotwire, and Autotrader.
• Provides widgets to third-party sites that contain links back to Lendingtree.
• Good URL structure and information architecture.

Risks

• Google Advisor Comparison Ads grab attention on top of search results for many of the same keywords that Lendingtree targets.
• Heavy reciprocal linking between Tree.com’s network of sites. Google can discern these sites have the same owner and may discount the ranking power of links between them.

Competitors

• Bankrate
• Mortgageloan.com
• Ditech
• Quicken Loans

If you’re interested in discussing further analysis of the Tree.com network or other firms, please contact us.