How Your Insurance Website is Losing Money on Google

Or more accurately, how to lose money by not being on Google. It's simple to lose money by not ranking in Google's search results... don't invest in SEO.
When you have a few minutes, conduct an experiment. Go to Google (make sure you're not logged in if you have a Google account), and search for one of your top keywords. If you don't have a keyword, use the line of business you are promoting right now with your city or geographic region if your agency is in a small town. Some examples: "Carrollton home insurance" or "Fort Worth auto insurance." Is your agency on the first page of results? If it's not, you could be losing money.
SEO services can take up a lot of your marketing budget. To determine if investing in SEO makes sense for your agency, you first need to calculate your potential return on investment.

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What is Keyword Research?

Articles on search engine optimization often talk about keyword research (or keyword analysis). But what exactly is it?
Keyword research is the process of identifying which keywords or keyword phrases people are likely to use on Google and other search engines when searching insurance.

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10 Common Mistakes that are Hurting your SEO

Search engine optimization can be overwhelming and confusing. There are a few key tips to always remember when optimizing your site, but there are also a few key things to always watch out for. Make sure you’re not letting your hard work be undone by any of these common mistakes.

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Keeping It Fresh

One of the biggest challenges for today’s websites is keeping Google happy and interested. It’s not that it’s difficult. It’s simply time-consuming (when done correctly) and overwhelming if you don’t have a strategy setup to guide you.

As the saying goes, ‘Content is King,’ and it’s fresh content that keeps visitors engaged, because really, who wants to read about your Christmas Contest in March? Unfortunately, more than half of business owners fail to update their site even once a month. To put it in perspective:

– Sites that update their content  5 times a month receive 300% more traffic
– Businesses that utilize social media marketing receive 400% more site hits

Source

4 Easy Types of Content to Make Google Happy

Social Media

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogging and the other various social media sites attract millions of people every single day. News articles, helpful tips, or special events posted on Facebook, or even a 140-character tweet about new products on Twitter all have search engine optimization advantages. Since social media content is essentially the epitome of fresh & relevant content, it is the most likely to be picked up by Google.

Press Releases

By definition, a press release is the announcement of something new. This makes it another type of content that search engines favor. Press releases can target your SEO keywords, improve your brand-association, and in the end, be posted to your social media accounts. Benefits like that should never be ignored.

User Generated Content

As an insurance agent, your business can rely heavily on the comments and reviews of your customers. This can be a double-edged sword, but the rewards definitely outweigh the risks. Invite people to comment on your blogs or your Facebook wall. Direct them to reviews on your Google business listing. Many consumers rely on the experiences and evaluations of others to determine the quality and value of your services. Search engines take into account how people interact with your site, so to gain new visitors, be sure those returning visitors are making their satisfaction known. Most importantly, you can also combine these efforts with your social media platform.

Marketing Automation Content

Lastly, this overlooked, yet important tool is essential to your website’s overall optimization and relevance. If you have helpful information that’s industry specific and appeals to your audience, post it on your site! Use it to gain more information about your visitors. With this focused content, people will not only want to gain access, but the content itself will help build relevancy for your target keywords. An example of this is to offer free reports for download off of your site in exchange for a Name & E-mail address. It’s a win-win-win for all parties involved. Consumers gain free information, Businesses gain leads, and search engines gain helpful data.

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Gain access to even more tips, help, guidance, and strategy for your Insurance Website today!

How to Optimize your SEO settings

This information should be entered in the SEO Settings section of the Administration Console. Watch a video on how to optimize your SEO settings for your IWB website.

Page Title

• Should be the Main Keyword Phrase (kp)
• Must 60-70 characters long (including spaces)
• The main kp is normally 3-4 words long in the format “Geo-target Line of Business”, e.g. Dallas Auto Insurance, Cheap Dallas Home Insurance, Dallas TX Contractors Insurance
• Only insert the main kp. The Website automatically adds “ - Company Name” at the end

Site Description

• Must be 150-160 characters (including spaces)
• Must include main kp
• Must describe the website, what it offers, what the company specializes in
• Must be a full sentence, i.e. humans read this, so it must make sense, with a full stop at the end, appropriate capitalizations etc.
• Can include areas covered, e.g. cities, counties, state
• Do not include address, hours of business

Page Keywords

Note: The top 3 search engines, Google, Yahoo and Bing do not take page keywords (meta keywords) into account when ranking a website. As such, these are not important if you want to rank in the top 3. However the smaller search engines may still use this data, so it's best to add some.

• Must be at least 10-15 keywords
• Must be comma delimited
• First keyword must be main kp
• Can include derivatives of main kp e.g. home insurance, home, insurance etc.
• Each keyword must be present somewhere on the homepage, be it in the main body or navigation.
• Can include areas covered
• Do not include zipcodes, area codes

Read more about how this is reflected on Google's Search Engine Results page.

On-Site Optimization

One of the two main components of SEO is on-site optimization.  This involves optimizing your site by using keyword phrases both in the source code and the content of your website. It is crucial to have unique, keyword-rich, relevant content on your homepage. Google puts heavy emphasis on website content and this is one of the easier requirements to meet. 

• Choosing a main keyword phrase (kp) and sticking to it. This phrase must have a geo-target and a line of business associated with it, e.g. Dallas car insurance, cheap Dallas home insurance, Dallas TX business insurance.
• Optimize SEO Settings on your website. Your page title, page description and the first phrase in the page keywords section in the Admin Console should all contain your main kp.
• Embolden important keywords. This will alert the visitor and Google what is most important on your page. 
• Make sure all words in your meta keywords appear somewhere in the homepage. Navigation links and footers can include the phrases.
• The kp must appear in at least 3 places. Your main kp must appear on your homepage 3-5 times. This can be as a heading, in the footer and the body of the content.
• Add an H1 heading tag containing your main kp. In the Admin Console, under Site Content Editor, select Home Page from the drop down menu. In the HTML side type your heading like this:  <h1> Dallas Auto Insurance </h1>
  The main kp is closer to the top of the page and Google will read that first. Google reads text from top to bottom, so it is crucial to have your most important information close to the top of the page. Alt tags for images are also very important (contact your webmaster or IWB Support for help on this).
• Add your main kp in the footer. For the footer go to www.reliableins.net to see an example. In the Admin Console, under Site Content Editor select Site Footer. Type in your main kp, Dallas Auto Insurance. To make it a link do the following:
• Click the chain link icon on the toolbar within the content editor to open the Hyperlink Manager.
• In the URL textbox type in the URL.
• In the Link Text textbox type in the link's description.
• Select New Window in the Target drop down box. 
• Once completed, click the Ok button.
  

The other main component is off-site optimization. This involves creating inbound links to your website.