Why People Leave a Website

Getting someone to visit your website can be challenging, especially with all of the posts, emails, tweets, etc. that are competing for attention nowadays. When consumers come to your website, the last thing you want is for them to leave right away. But if your website design doesn't provide a pleasant user experience, visitors can become frustrated and then quickly leave.

A good website design will keep frustration to a minimum, take the visitor deeper into your website seamlessly and show him the information he is looking for.

Here are some examples of website design that can drive your visitors away.

Source: What Makes Someone Leave A Website?

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!

5 Top Tips for Blog Titles

We all know how important blogging is. It helps users engage with your agency and makes it easier for search engines to find your website. The problem is, everybody is blogging, and you need something to make your blog posts stand out. The easiest, simplest, most important thing to do is to have catchy, attention-grabbing, click-worthy titles. And here’s how:

1. Curiosity - Make your title easy to figure out what the post will be about, yet still keep the reader wanting more. 
1. Ask questions - "Do you know the difference between home insurance and flood insurance?"
2. Add an oddity - "What insurance coverages do Superheroes have?"
3. Present the opposite - "There is no such thing as Cheap Insurance"
4. Introduce controversy - "Pay for Cheap auto coverage, or Save your Family"
2. Give an advantage - Show the reader that by reading your blog post, they will somehow benefit. Examples include:
1. How to ...
2. 8 Ways to ...
3.  Learn about ...
3. Evoke an emotional response - Readers may not always choose to read something based solely on how it makes them feel, but it could subconsciously influence them. These are better suited to social media posts. Use words like:
1. awesome
2. free
3. amazing
4. crazy
5. epic
6. stupidly
7. You get the gist 
4. Appearance - The supposed ideal length of a blog title should seven words long. Introduce some alliteration or rhyme to make it look and sound pleasing. Not as important as points 1 to 3 above, but still worth thinking about.
5. Set Expectations - There's nothing worse than clicking on a blog post and reading content that is completely unrelated to the title, or doesn't give what reader expects. Don't mislead your readers by posting catchy, but ultimately empty title.

So there you have it. Remember, try to write a title that you yourself would find interesting as a consumer. And just have fun with it!

Do you have any tips or examples of titles that received good feedback?

5 Reasons Why Your Business Should Use Twitter

Facebook is the biggest social network in the world and many business owners have understood how useful Facebook could be for business. Twitter, however is also another important network that could be useful for your business.

Twitter reached 500 million registered users just a couple of days ago and you can find a good mixture of comments, connections, content, images, videos, people and news that are presented in real time within your niche. Twitter is a platform that updates really quick, breaks worldwide news, influences major brands and allows small businesses to promote their brand just like the big companies.

There are many reasons why you should consider Twitter for your business and we would like you to understand the top 5 reasons:

1. Real Time News

Many of the most important worldwide news have been shared in Twitter before any other media in the world. Its simplicity is a key element that allows us to share something within seconds from a cellphone, computer, tablet o any device connected to the Internet. If you want to know what is happening about a specific topic, you can use Twitter as a search engine to get really good information related to this topic.

2. Share Your Knowledge and Drive Traffic to Your Website or Blog

Twitter is one of the best platforms to share information and your knowledge. Posting tweets related to specific or different topics can help you increase the number of followers and sharing good content will help you drive traffic to your website or blog. Twitter can also help you increase the number of fans or likes that you have on your Facebook page.

3. Build Your Brand

Many people are on Twitter and it provides another channel to build your companies brand. People could recognize your brand later If you customize your Twitter profile, with a picture, a unique background that coincide with the feel and look of your brand, a link to your website and a bio that explains who you are or what you could offer.

4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Links shared on Twitter have a direct impact on search engine rankings and many have tried to use this information to improve search rankings. Remember to include keywords as well as a link to your website in your profile.

5. Build a Community

People are sharing and commenting in real-time and you can build loyalty, commitment and sense of belonging to a topic. Many people are looking to connect with different communities on Twitter.

Are you or your business taking advantage of Twitter? Our SEO team at Insurance Website Builder can help you optimize your insurance websites as well as your Twitter account. Call us today at 1-800-383-3482 for more information.

https://twitter.com/InsWebBuilder

From Jocks to Geeks--Happy Friday!

Whether you were Captain of the Football Team, Class President, both, or nothing at all, there's a social media site out there that complemented your social circle. Or lack thereof.

Even more so now, there's a social media site for everybody. Each with its own, unique personality. It's these personalities that can determine their popularity, their use, and most importantly, which one you feel most comfortable using. The different sites reach different audiences, so take a look and see how your favorite social media fares in the public forum...if social media were a highschool.

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"

---

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.

Timeline Is Coming To Your Agency's Facebook Page: What to Expect

Last fall Facebook introduced a big change to personal profiles... a new profile layout called Timeline. This morning Facebook officially announced that Timeline will now be available to brand pages. All brand pages will be automatically updated with Timeline on March 30, 2012.

What you can expect:

• Though the layout of your page will change, Facebook will remain a channel of two-way communication.
• Like Timeline for personal pages, you will now get to add a cover photo to your agency's Facebook page. This large photo at the top of your profile is a great opportunity for showcasing some creative designs and reinforcing your agency's brand.
• New admin capabilities will include the ability to pin your most important content so it remains at the top of your profile for seven days.
• You can also star different milestones in your agency's history - like opening a new location, adding a line of business, etc - so it appears twice the size of other items in your profile thereby drawing attention to those important periods of your history.
• A simpler, easier-to-use admin panel that expands and hides on the same page you're editing. You will no longer have to go to a separate page to change the content.

What to do:

• If you have a social media plan, review it and look for what works, what doesn't and what Timeline can help improve. If you don't have a social media plan, now is a great time to consider putting one together.
• Start working on your cover photo. Since it is a large photo, there is a lot of space to feature something captivating and reinforce your brand. You can update your cover photo weekly so it's always fresh. The dimensions for cover photos are 851 pixels wide and 315 pixels tall.
• Go through your agency history and star the milestones you want to highlight.
• Update your information and look at who has access to your page. Do you need all of those admins? Get rid of anything that isn't necessary or is out-dated. 

If you have an insurance website from Insurance Website Builder, please note that Timeline will not affect our Facebook social media plugin, which puts a mini-version of your website on Facebook.

Changes to Facebook tend to cause a bit of a panic. Take a deep breath. This change is not going to happen overnight. You have until March 30.

6 Local Business Directories You Can't Ignore

1. Google Local: This is the big dog of all local business directories. If you aren't listed here, you're throwing away money and missing out on potential customers. Filling out your listing completely and having your customers review your business should result in high rankings. Top local listings appear on the first page of the search results.

2. Yahoo Local: This is another large local business directory. Listings can take up to a month to be approved since they are manually reviewed.

3. Bing Local: This business directory shares the same format at Google and Yahoo local listings. Once you submit your listing, Bing will mail a postcard to your business with a verification code.

4. Hotfrog.com: This directory has over 71 million businesses globally. They claim that businesses will rank higher because their technology helps get your unique keywords picked up by search engines.

5. Yelp.com: Yelp is very popular local directory the ranks well with search engines. So, your actual Yelp listing may show up in the search results. The more positive reviews a business has, the better the higher the business ranking. This isn't dofollow, but it is free and should send at least a few customers your way.

6. Kudzu.com: Kudzu is a highly-rated nationwide directory that allows free listings. It takes a few days to be approved, but the listing allows images and categories important to be ranked in the search engines.


Is your business listed with all of the important local business directories? Our SEO team at Insurance Website Builder can always make recommendations to make your insurance agent website more visible on the internet. Call us today at 1-800-383-3482 for more information.

22 Ideas for Compelling Content When You've Got Writer's Block

Everyone gets writer's block at some point. So how do you write blog posts when you don't know what to write? Here's a great infographic with 22 ideas to break out of that writer's block and create compelling content.

#4 is my favorite: Interview someone.

Like this infographic? Get more content marketing tips from Copyblogger.

Twitter Reaches 500 Million Registered Users

Twitter exceeded 500 million users registered and keeps growing with 10 new users per second, according to the tracking website TwopCharts.com.

Even though Twitter has not yet confirmed the number, Twopcharts.com has been using Twitter’s data to calculate the number of registered users the social network has. The third party site looks at ID numbers associated with each account, which are unique and appear to be sequential, starting with number 1 in 2006 when the micro blogging site started.

It is expected that Twitter will reach 600 million registered users in mid-June 2012.

While Twitter has a little bit over half a billion users, Facebook is expected to reach the 1 billion mark in the next couple of months. Google+ has more than 100 million users.

Are you or your business taking advantage of Twitter? Our SEO team at Insurance Website Builder can help you optimize your insurance websites as well as your Twitter account. Call us today at 1-800-383-3482 for more information.

https://twitter.com/InsWebBuilder