How to Find Time to Blog

We hear it all the time: I'm too busy to blog. If you're serious about your digital agency marketing and competing online, how can you not find the time to blog?

Blogging has so many great benefits for your website and your agency. It helps with SEO, brands you as an insurance expert and gives readers a look inside what makes your agency special and different from your competition.

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Don’t Chase Google’s Algorithm

In September 2012, Google stopped up-ranking Exact Match Domains (EMDs). EMDs are domain names that include keyword phrases such as commercial insurance in the domain name getcommercialinsuranceintexas.com. People would snatch these up by the hundreds in the hope of capturing the traffic. This worked for a while, but then Google caught on. Overnight, they downplayed the importance in their algorithm of EMDs. Webmasters that relied heavily on this tactic instantly lost rankings. In fact, it affected 0.6% of all U.S English search queries to a “noticeable degree.”

In the previous years, I had recommended that you not use EMDs and instead focus all of your SEO time and energy on a single domain. You could (and sometimes should) use an EMD if you are pointing a specific marketing campaign from television, radio or print to a landing page geared for capturing and keeping that exact traffic.

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Getting Photos for your Website

 The title says it all. I tried to think of something catchy for this entry, but alas, it is what it is. No matter how straightforward the title is, the subject is a bit more complex. If images are obtained improperly, you could be facing hefty legal fees.

For example, a few of our customers have gone to Google Images, searched for an image they liked, saved it to their computer, and then added it to a blog entry. A few months later, each of them received a letter from a law firm demanding thousands in fees for the unauthorized image. Unfortunately, there are little options for these users. You can fight it in court, or pay the fee. The image providers know that the latter is usually cheaper.

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Why Do-It-Yourself Marketing Doesn't Always Work

Agency owners often have to wear many hats relying on their do-it-yourself entrepreneurial spirit to accomplish the tasks required of running an agency. That spirit can help agencies in many ways, but there is one area to be cautious of doing it all yourself... marketing.

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Tips for Jump-Starting Your Website

Most of the time, success of a website is focused on Search Engine Optimization efforts. There’s plenty of tips and tricks for SEO that are constantly changing and being updated. But every once in a while, you should feel free to switch gears and just focus on having a website. Consider it your responsibility to the loyal visitor who has found your site by way of a search engine. Here’s a few tips to remember have absolutely nothing to do with SEO.

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How the Layout of Your Website Can Affect Google Rankings

I often discuss how a well-designed website will draw visitors and keep them viewing your pages. Did you know that the layout of your website could affect your Google ranking as well? That’s right, not only does Google look at the content of your website, it now looks at the website’s design, navigation and usability.

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5 Simple Steps to Effective Digital Agency Marketing

Why is online marketing so important? Because consumers rely on the Internet to research anything and everything, including insurance. Not sure you believe it? Check out what the direct writers are spending on PPC advertising. And that's only a portion of their budgets.

If the direct writers are spending that much money to market to consumers online, you know it's not only important, it's effective.

But there are certainly things to avoid.

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Search Engine Marketing for the Everyday Insurance Agent - Part 2

Previously, we discussed pay per click for the insurance industry and the basics to getting started. Now we will discuss how to improve your ad’s click through performance.

Converting Clicks into Leads

The industry average of converting clicks into leads is 4-7 percent. This means roughly one out of 20 people who click your ad will convert into a lead. For auto insurance dallas texas you would need to spend $35 to acquire the lead. Note that this is just to acquire the lead. Only if you had a perfect closing ratio would the lead only cost you $35. Should you have a 50% closing ratio that lead would cost you $70. A 25% closing ratio would cost you $140. Notice how quickly this turned into a losing proposition? So what can you do to increase the closing ratio of PPC leads?


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Search Engine Marketing for the Everyday Insurance Agent - Part 1

I speak to many agents about Internet marketing. One subject that always rises to the top is paid search marketing (SEM) or pay per click (PPC). These paid ads show up at the top and right of most search results. These are above the organic free listings targeted by Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services. 

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Masters of Marketing: Engaging Your Customers on Your Insurance Website

Our latest webinar discussed how to make your website effective at engaging your customers online.

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Generating Insurance Leads Through Your Chamber of Commerce Membership

There are perks to being a member of your local chamber of commerce. For one, research has shown that a majority of consumers prefer to work with businesses who are chamber members.

Besides the prestige of being a chamber member, many small business owners, including insurance agents, join their local chamber of commerce to network and get leads.

Want to make the most out of your membership? Here's how you can generate leads by being a member of your chamber of commerce:

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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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How Social Media Can Hurt Your Agency's Brand

The insurance industry has begun to embrace social media. It's even become the norm to have more than one social media account. (Heck, we have five Twitter accounts, four Facebook Pages, two Google+ accounts and one LinkedIn business page.)

Social media moves quickly. Poorly managed social media accounts could backfire and instead of building relationships and raising your awareness online you could be hurting your agency. How? Here are six things to watch for and take care of immediately.

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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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Throttling It Up to 110%

From my dad to coaches and everyone in between would tell me to give 110%. Being rooted in logic and mathematical numbers, I always thought how can you give more than 100% when 100% is all you have?

I was a huge Space Shuttle fan. I watched every launch, knew every detail, and even tried to become an astronaut until they told me that being 6’5” tall pretty much ruled that out. One of the things that has continued to intrigue me about the Space Shuttle was that it normally operated at 104.5% power and even as high as 111% in emergencies. How could these super smart rocket scientists get it wrong and allow something to do more than what it could do? Was I missing something?

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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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Easy List of How to Fully Benefit from Your Website

1. Site Title & Description
   This is what search engines read and display, so make it concise, but descriptive. (For example, ‘Auto, Home, Life Insurance – Dallas, Plano, Richardson TX’ for the title and ‘Example Insurance Agency specializes in auto, home and life insurance in Dallas, Plano, Richardson and the surrounding areas of Texas.’ for the description ) Limit your title to 65 characters and description to 150 characters. Search engines will not index characters beyond this limit. Use this Javascript Kit webpage to count your characters.

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9 Ways to Destroy Your Agency's Brand

Many insurance agencies don't have an employee dedicated to their agency's marketing. Those employees who do their agency's marketing often have other duties and responsibilities that take time and focus away from the agency's brand. And that's fine.

However, there are things that could hurt or destroy your brand if you're not careful. Here are 9 marketing moves to avoid.

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Selling Value Insurance with Price-based Marketing

The holidays are approaching. The time for sales, door busters, and insane pricing is upon us. It reminds me of last year when I wanted a new TV. Holiday discounted prices finally caused me to act and get rid of my old TV.

I ventured down to my local electronics store and started checking out the deeply discounted TV mentioned in an ad. Right next to it was an even better TV for just a few dollars more. The salesperson helpfully explained to me why it was better than the cheaper TV: better picture, better sound and able to connect to the Internet. “Wrap it up,” I tell him. He continues to tell me that if I want that awesome picture I would need the gold plated HDMI cables. Fine; throw it in the cart. 

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Where to Look for Great Content Ideas for Your Blog

We talk a lot about blogging here on the ITC Marketing Blog. For good reason as it plays an important role in adding fresh content to your website, which search engines love, and promoting your agency and your knowledge as an insurance expert, which your clients appreciate.

Blogging can easily become a daunting task. Especially if you struggle with what to write about. There are several places to look for ideas on what to blog about. But the best place to look are your customers.

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