Earning Backlinks vs. Building Them

The goal of any SEO strategy is to get your website noticed. One of the more important aspects of most SEO strategies is developing backlinks. Backlinks are links on other websites that link back to your site. These links tell the search engines, “Hey, this site has some good info, and I link to it!” Most search engines use this to determine how popular a website is on the Internet. Let us first look at why search engines use this as a primary metric in determining where your website shows within the organic search results.

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Insurance Website Builder Introduces Site Search

When creating a website you might think of everything, the best graphics, the nicest layout, and the friendliest navigation. This all works well in the beginning, however, once you site begins to grow and change over time you start to develop a lot of content that is nested deep within your site.

Using best navigation practices it is impractical (and not recommended) to link to every piece of content that you have ever created. Therefore, it is imperative that you have a utility that allows users the ability to easily search your site for the content they need.

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Blogging Consistently

Here's another presentation in  our Masters of Marketing webinar. This presentation discusses tips for blogging consistently, using a content calendar, so that you can develop customer loyalty and satisfy the need for fresh and relevant content on your website. If you would like to join us every fourth Thursday of the month at 12:00 p.m. CST when we discuss marketing tips, you can register here.

Masters of Marketing: Blogging Consistently

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Let's Talk Expiration Dates

You've heard it time and time again. Content is King.

To show how your content is a reflection of your site to Google, let's consider expiration dates.

Somewhere, either sitting in your refrigerator, on your kitchen counter, under the seat in your car, or at your desk, you probably have food that will one day go bad. It will eventually sit there too long, start to grow mold, eventually stink up everything, and you will finally throw it out. Imagine if Google viewed your site the way you view that food.

Well it does. Kinda.

Google wants to expose its users to fresh sites. That means it will take note of sites that are updated often and updated with meanigful changes. Sites that are left too long and become stale will be tossed aside and may never be served up as a search result. So if it hasn't been stressed enough already, keep your site fresh.

How often should a site be updated? Often. Weekly, if possible.

How much should a site be updated? A lot. More should be changed than just the date, navigation, or advertisement.

What kind of content should be added to the site? New Pages. Not just new content on existing pages. Google wants to provide new value, so it wants to find new pages.

As a bonus, here's an infographic from bitrebels to further breakdown how to make your content King.

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.

Source

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

Au Naturale...

search en·gine op·ti·mi·za·tion
"SEO: the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the natural, un-paid, or organic search results"

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Back to the Basics

SEO combines the methods of how search engines work, what people search for, the actual terms or keywords entered into search engines, and which search engines are preferred by target audiences.

Optimizing a website for SEO involves editing the content, promoting that site around the web, and removing any barriers possible so that search engines can index the site.


No Cheaters Allowed

Don't cheat yourself out of something rewarding to get something easy. SEO can be thought of similarly to a relationship. Your site should be accessible, have goals set for the future, always know the right things to say, know the likes and dislikes of search engines, never come off as fake, automated, or a copy-cat, and never ever bore them. Never.


The Truth of the Matter

If you would prefer to find love by going on reality television, getting engaged after 1 week, and becoming married after 1 month, then I can already guess how long that marriage will last...

But if you prefer the tried and true way of meeting someone at your local coffee shop, getting to know that person over a few dates, then embarking on a lifelong journey of happiness, you're already one step closer to understanding SEO!


Making it Make Sense

They say love is fleeting. And search engines can be just as tricky. So if you haven't figured it out by now, you have the power to choose that regrettable rush of a drive-thru wedding in Vegas or holding on to the lasting satisfaction of a relationship sustained through the ups and downs. This is similar to Paid SEO tactics and Natural SEO tactics. You can pay to feel that instant, however short-lived rush, or you can grow naturally. The results will speak for themselves.

In dating and in SEO.

Bing overtakes Yahoo! as the #2 Search Engine

New figures just released last month, show that Bing (Microsoft sites) has overtaken Yahoo as the second most popular search engine on the Web, according to comScore. Microsoft sites increased their search share by 0.1% compared to the previous month, and interestingly Yahoo decreased theirs by 0.5%. This is in-keeping with the recent move by Yahoo to merge their Site Explorer with Bing's Webmaster Tools, as Yahoo focuses more on paid advertising and Bing focuses on search.

White Hat SEO & Black Hat SEO

Search Engine Optimization can be divided into two categories: methods that search engines consider “best practices”, and practices that search engines frown upon. Search engines try to lessen the effects of black hat SEO. The search engine industry and the SEO community have classified these methods as white hat SEO and black hat SEO. White hat techniques typically produce long term results and black hat practitioners, in the back of their mind, know that their sites may be de-indexed from the search engines if they’re found out.

White Hat SEO
White hat methods follow the search engines’ guidelines and do not try to trick the internet visitor or the search engine. White hat is not only about following guidelines, it’s about making sure the search engine content matches what the user will see. White hat recommendations include creating content for users, not for the search engines, and then making the content easily accessible to the search engine spiders, rather than to try to deceive the search engines.

Black Hat SEO
Black hat SEO tries to improve rankings in ways that are not approved by the search engines. One black hat technique is to use text that is the same color as the background. Another technique is to take the user to a different page than the one that was requested, a technique called cloaking.

Search engines may penalize sites they find using black hat methods. Punishments include reducing their rankings or removing the website from their index. These penalties can be implemented automatically through search engines’ algorithms or manually by review.

Our SEO team at Insurance Website Builder only uses white hat methods that will ensure your insurance websites will remain indexed in the search engines and highly ranked.

Customizable Page URLs for IWB customers

Introducing customizable page URLs for Extra pages especially for Insurance Website Builder customers. Now when you create an Extra page on your website you can add a descriptive web address, which is very advantageous for SEO. Here are the highlights:

1. This feature is only available for Extra pages
2. There are two fields to fill out, you must enter both fields in order for your page to be viewable.
3. You can enter your own words or choose the first field from a drop down menu.
4. You can use the handy View on Site Live link to view live web page, located beside the two fields.
5. You are only allowed certain characters in the fields: A-Z, a-z, 0-9, hyphens and underscores
6. The maximum number of characters per field is 50.
7. The extension ".aspx" is automatically added to the page

Here's what you need to remember to optimize for the search engines: 

1. Use insurance related keywords and geo-targets in the customized web addresses.
2. Make sure to separate keywords by either hyphens or underscores. This will make it easier for the search engines to read.   
3. Make sure you don't duplicate keywords. For example, this is not acceptable, http://www.agencyname.com/homeowners-insurance/home-insurance.aspx.
4. Don't go crazy on the number of keywords you can add, there should be a maximum of two words per field.
5. Make sure the web address makes sense to a visitor, that the two fields are somehow connected. For example http://www.agencyname.com/auto-insurance/sr22.aspx
6. Be careful not to duplicate existing pages URLs.

Additional Resources

• On-site optimization - learn how to optimize your homepage for search engines.