When was the last time your agency’s website was updated? Do you envision a dynamic website with flashing text? Are you embarrassed to share the address of your agency website with someone? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then it might be time to redesign your agency website to attract new clients and grow your business via the internet.
The internet traffic is invisible and moves at the speed light under your feet and above your head. Consumers are searching for lower premiums, better services, or a combination of all three. These visitors will find your website through billions of internet searches. Your agency website is like a magnet. Your magnet’s strength depends on many factors, including how you market your site and how well your site is connected to the rest. Also, search engines can see your website differently. This article will discuss the content on your website and how you can improve it to increase search engine traffic.
Content goes beyond words on a webpage – it is the KEY words of the page.
Traffic patterns are greatly affected by the words you use on your website. Look at the current website of your insurance agency. Does the content still have value? Is it changing? Does it provide any information or just fill in the space between the header/footer? Search engines save a page snapshot from search engines by storing the words on the page.
You need to think like a consumer searching for information about insurance. What are they searching for? What keywords and phrases are they searching for? What search terms can be used in different ways?
If someone searches for California car insurance, one variation of their query could be “California auto insurance”, or “car insurance in California”, or “car insurance in California”, or “CA auto insurance”, or “cheap California car insurance”, among many others. These search terms can be repeated at different points on your page. Search engines will give more emphasis to pages that contain exact matches for search queries, particularly in the title tag. This HTML tag controls the text at the top of your browser window. Optimizing for long-tail keywords is a great way to increase traffic to your website.
Chasing long-tail – Web pages with effective geographically targeted content
We now know what long-tail terms are. Let’s dive deeper into optimizing your agency website for them. Let’s go back to the California car insurance example. Let’s go one step further and put the “consumer cap” back on. We will do another search. You are a Los Angeles resident and you want to find a local agent to insure your car. What are you looking for? What would you search for?
Now you can add geographic targeting to your search criteria. You can narrow your search to exclude San Jose, Sacramento, and San Diego agents by searching for insurance agents in a particular location. These are the search terms you want to rank well in the search engines if your insurance agency is in Los Angeles. These local leads are from car-owners, so they’re the perfect lead. The best part? These leads are completely free! Search engine traffic is free and just as valuable as car insurance leads. This is the beauty and power of organic search engine traffic.
Make your website an insurance agency on the same level
Online and direct insurance companies offer a way for consumers to avoid being bombarded with advertising from sporting events or constant TV broadcasts. Search engines on the internet are not biased towards one insurance company. It is just about positioning your agency website in a way that gives you the best chance of success.
Google searches for “car insurance”, returns over 100,000,000 results. The top ten listing are all from the major players, such as Allstate, Progressive, Geico, and Geico. These sites are authority sites with large incoming links to their sites. This is to be expected. According to Yahoo, Allstate has more than 100,000 inlinks to its domain. This level of competition is impossible for your agency, and should be avoided. Your agency can only sell insurance to California residents if it is licensed. It would be wasteful to market your agency website outside of California.
You can compete with larger companies by using the geographical targeting techniques mentioned above. Focus on your local area and the surrounding communities. The state/states you are licensed to write in is the most broad target. You can get your agency website to the top of search engine results by optimizing it, doing keyword research, and using a targeted linking strategy. This will allow you to maximize your internet presence and attract qualified traffic. It will also help you get more clients and sell more insurance online.
