Welcome to the Guide to Insurance SEO.
Insurance is one of the most competitive industries when it comes to online marketing. Why is this? There are a few main reasons – the insurance industry has the highest CPC (cost per click, a measurement of competition and search volume that is associated with PPC, and is also an indicator of the competition within the SERP) of any industry. This is due to the fact that there are thousands upon thousands of competitors – all wanting the same clients. Your insurance agency is not just competing with other local insurance agencies, you’re also competing with big insurance carriers (State Farm, Liberty Mutual, Progressive, etc.)
Another reason the insurance industry is so competitive is due to the fact that large insurance companies – such as Allstate, Geico, and State Farm – have a “monopoly” on the keywords for insurance on Google. These keywords include “car insurance”, “car insurance quotes”, and “life insurance”. This makes it next to impossible for smaller insurance agencies to rank for general and competitive keywords.
The third reason is that insurance agencies have trouble creating unique content. Without this content, it is nearly impossible to be ranked for Google. Creating quality content brings in leads to your insurance agency website.
How To Improve SEO For Your Agency Website
It is important to remember that internet marketing is constantly evolving – every month, every week, every day, every hour. This means that SEO is an ongoing practice. Internet marketing trends evolve, and so will keywords.
Know that most modern SEO strategies are mainly focused on providing customers with quality content. This could be a detailed blog post discussing Employment Practices Liability Insurance, or a downloadable PDF highlighting important information about your auto insurance policies.
Blogs are great tools for increasing site traffic, generating lead conversions, establishing industry thought leadership, and promoting brand awareness. You can write about hot, current topics about the insurance world – such as health insurance, employment practices liability, cyber breaches, and more. Stay updated on trending insurance topics by following hashtags on Twitter or signing up for Google Alerts.
You’ll also want to avoid, the 5 Biggest Insurance SEO Mistakes.
Use Backlinks
A backlink is a link one website gets from another website. Backlinks make a huge impact on a website’s prominence in search engine results. They are incredibly helpful when improving a website’s SEO ranking. Search engines calculate rankings using multiple factors to display search results.
Leverage the people that you work with. For example, if you work with a local lawyer, you could use a quote from them for a blog post. When your blog is published, the lawyer may share your blog on their social media pages. This gets you and your agency more exposure.
Create Rich Media Assets
Creating rich, aesthetic media such as images, videos, power points, and spreadsheets can help with gaining quick rankings. If you want to bring in additional traffic from Google’s image results, then implementing and optimizing alt text is crucial. An alt tag, also known as “alt attribute” or an “alt description,” is an HTML attribute applied to image tags to provide a text alternative for search engines.
Make sure to include accompanying texts with your infographics. The text with your infographic shouldn’t repeat what’s included in the infographic word-for-word. Try expanding on some of the points featured in the infographic.
Be aware of the file sizes when uploading images and videos. There is nothing more annoying than waiting for a website or blog to load. Ensure that your images are no bigger than they need to be, compress your images when possible, and test your site speed using Google’s PageSpeed Insights.
Produce high quality visuals. Make sure these visuals and media assets engage readers/potential clients. This can impact your site’s SEO performance.
Helpful SEO Sites
Here are a few websites and plugins that can help you with SEO:
- Yoast.com – Yoast can help you with your agency’s website optimization, through their widely used SEO software or through their online SEO courses.
- SEMrush – SEMrush offers solutions for SEO, PPC, content, social media and competitive research. It is used by millions of marketers worldwide.
- Moz.com – Moz builds tools that make SEO, inbound marketing, link building, and content marketing easier.
Work With A Marketing Agency
When you’re running an insurance agency, you are running in many different directions. You may be responsible for sales, operations, and accounting besides your agency’s marketing. It can be difficult to stay on top of trending topics and hard to find the time to teach yourself SEO. This is why it can be critical to hire a marketer for your agency. Many marketers are very familiar with SEO. Investing in your website = investing in your agency.
SEO can bring website visibility to some of the most profitable search terms, but bad SEO can make your marketing a money pit! Learn more about How Bad SEO Hurts Your Bottomline (And, How To Fix The Issues).
Why Work With a Local Marketing & Consulting Agency?
NYB Creative’s marketing support ranges from full service marketing management to one-off website builds. Marketing is holistic. A website will not operate without being fed, and we make sure that what you are feeding your website has value to your business in the long-term. We get to the root of your marketing and offer pragmatic advice to get your business to the next level.
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