Best CPA Network

When agents hear that 85% of people do online research before they buy insurance (Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America), they want to know how to get a piece of that pie.

Getting an insurance website ranked in popular search engines like Google and Yahoo! is a surefire way to get in front of those online prospects. The process of improving a site’s rankings is called search engine optimization, or SEO.

• How does SEO work? Every expert has their own opinion. The formulas that search engines use to determine page rankings are closely guarded secrets. So no one outside those companies knows exactly how to get to the top of the search results pile. But most SEO experts agree that the way to improve rankings is to have lots of good content on the site, and plenty of links from other sites.

What to Know BEFORE Optimizing The Website

• Trust an expert

The “rules” of SEO change rapidly, and to optimize your insurance website effectively requires a lot of homework. Most businesses choose to get a professional SEO company to handle the heavy lifting. If you choose this route, expect to pay about $1,000 - $5,000 a month.

Be careful - there are a lot of scammers posing as legitimate SEO firms, so don’t settle on a company without speaking to referrals. If a company has a problem giving you the names of happy clients, they’re not worth any time.

• It’s a time commitment

Plan on waiting between 9 months to a year to see concrete results. Most SEO campaigns fail because the business owner pulls the plug before it fully gets off the ground. If you’re committed to building leads through SEO, don’t expect to see results right away.

• It’s an ongoing process

Like most marketing campaigns, SEO is not something you just set up once and walk away from. Once you get good website rankings, you’ll need to add keyword-rich, useful content to your insurance website on a regular basis.

Is SEO Worth It for You?

Search engine optimization is a lot of work, so a solid search campaign comes with a big price tag. It’s best suited for businesses with the resources to spare. The big question is: will the results justify the cost?

Eager to start driving search engine traffic to your website? Before dropping money into a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign, make sure to fully think it out.

Successful pay-per-click is more than placing a winning bid. It’s about writing effective ad copy to encourage people to click. And importantly, it’s about sending the people that click on your ad to the RIGHT kind of web page.

Why Are Landing Pages So Important?

A landing page is the web page where people are directed from a specific online campaign to. To make a PPC campaign a success, you will need to send people to an effective page that follows through with the promise of the advertising message.

Here are a few pointers:

• Create a unique landing page for each campaign.

A BIG mistake that insurance agents make is they send all their PPC leads to the same page. Or even worse, they send all that traffic to just their homepage. Why is that such a problem?

Because people who click on your ad expect to instantly see information related to the offer. That’s the only reason why they clicked. They don’t want to know more about you, or read the generic copy on a homepage. They’re looking for a specific answer to a question, or solution to a problem. A generic page just won’t cut it - when they see it, they’ll hit the back button, fast.

• Keep the headline consistent with the offer.

A targeted landing page needs a headline that relates directly with the offer the prospect has just seen. Otherwise people will get confused and click away.

• Link to educational content elsewhere on your website.

Once prospects click the PPC ad, they won’t all be ready to fill out a form. But they may want to learn more about health insurance. Give them a way to educate themselves by linking to relevant and informative pages on the site.

• The opt-in form should be “above the fold”.

Don’t slow motivated prospects down by burying your form at the bottom of the page. Online shoppers lose patience fast - so they shouldn’t have to scroll to get to the form. Keep it in the top portion of the screen.

Remember, the best way to convert more visitors into leads is to keep the promises you make in online pay-per-click advertising… and getting them to the info they want fast.

The Internet is a great tool for delivering timely, changing information. It lets you attract attention from the RIGHT kinds of people and direct them to your insurance website where they can use the quote engine. Think about it… who would you rather spend time and energy on? People who’ve gone online to actively look for insurance, or people you’re pulling out of the phone book? Which one is further down the sales process?
Search engines are trying to give people the best matches to their search as possible. The practice of getting search engines to consider a website a good search result is called search engine optimization - or SEO.
The best way to optimize an insurance website for search engines is to make the pages relevant.
So how do you go about making pages relevant? Theories abound on this, and every expert has their own opinion. But in a nutshell, the three most important tips are:

• Have good, relevant content that targets the keywords people are using to search for insurance in your area. Remember, Google prefers content that real people will find useful.
• Links. When a third party links to your website, someone is vouching that you’re a credible resource. The more people who link to a site, the better the chances of getting it higher website ranking. Not all links have the same value, though. Be careful of “link farms” that are long lists of links and don’t offer any value to searchers. This type of linking can actually hurt rankings.
• Accessibility. Where do you keep the most helpful information for consumers on the website? It should be designed to be easy to find. If you can, link to it from the homepage.

The bonus of making web pages relevant and using SEO techniques is that it’s better for online prospects. Delivering targeted content based on search terms helps visitors get the answers they were looking for.

Remember that this is just a simple overview of the search engine optimization process. People pay big money to have private firms handle it for them. And search engine optimization is not a “quick fix” marketing strategy. Experts say you should plan on SEO taking up to 9 months to see any real results.