24Dec
The 10 best tips to improve the SEO of insurance agencies

Effective insurance agency search engine optimization can help drive traffic to your website, generate inbound leads, and increase the health and credibility of your insurance website. Let’s go over these top 10 tips when it comes to improving your insurance agency’s search engine optimization.

  • Know your keyword phrases

Keywords, which are technically keyword phrases, are short phrases of three to five words that your prospects may use when searching for insurance products and services. For example, commercial insurance in ohio, Charlotte Employee BenefitsY new jersey truck insurance, are keyword phrases potentially applicable to your agency. To create a list of these phrases, there are many free tools and techniques that your agency can use. For example, Google AdWords and Keyword Planner will help you determine the number of searches, per phrase, for your preferred keyword phrases. It will also recommend similar phrases for you to consider. There are many other free and paid tools such as Moz Keyword Explorer and SEOBook Keyword Tool.

  • Check the websites of other insurance agencies

Many agencies and brokers don’t do a great job with insurance search engine optimization (insurance SEO). That said, it may be helpful to research other insurance agency websites to see if your agency can get keyword phrase ideas. To do this, simply navigate to the website of another agency in your state and View source codeand search for (Ctrl F) to goal. Or you can install a free toolbar from Moz or SEOBook to simplify this process.

  • Social Bookmarking and Google URL Submission

Once your agency has optimized your website for SEO, be sure to submit any unranked pages to Google using Google Webmaster Tool – Submit URL. And, to better ensure your pages rank, add them to prominent social media platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+.

  • Keyword phrases in titles and subheadings

Creating headings and subheadings on a web page that include your preferred keywords will help search bots and human readers scan your content more easily. If they find relevant keywords in your subheadings, they are more likely to read the entire article.

  • Alt Image Tags and Header Tags

The title of a page appears on the search engine results page. The main header will appear when viewers open the page, similar to a headline in a magazine or newspaper article. Focus each web page on a specific topic and key phrase. Your title and headline will be indexed by the search engine and seen by prospects. You will increase the chance that viewers will open your article instead of an alternative article. Be sure to limit each page to a maximum of three keyword phrases. Both your prospects and search bots will be looking for well-organized and focused content, so keep your content optimized and relevant.

  • Dynamic content, not duplicate content

Search engines like to see new content while their search bots are scanning your insurance agency site. Adding dynamic content with a blog, video, and article post will help your search engine optimization efforts. Make sure your website is not using duplicate or repetitive content. If you bought a site from a provider that offers repetitive content, rewrite all of your content as quickly as possible, or your rankings will suffer.

  • word density

When it comes to word density, you should repeat your phrase, a reasonable number of times. There are many opinions on word density, ranging from 4% to over 10%. In general, a simple rule of thumb should be, when reading your content, it should read well for your website visitors first and search engines second. Beware of “keyword stuffing”. When writing a page, focus on the topic, not the keyword phrase. By following this process, I find that my keyword density is usually in the 5% to 8% range. For example, if you’re writing about Florida flood insurance, it’s okay to repeat that phrase 4-5 times in 150 words, but not 10 times. You need to include the phrase in the page name, page title, description, and header tags as mentioned above.

  • Bold, italic, underline, links

It’s good to bold, italicize, or underline your keyword phrases, but do so within a reasonable writing context on your pages. Links can also be useful, linking to other pages within your website or, conversely, linking from other pages to your preferred pages. Don’t confuse this process with “link building” schemes. Many agencies have been led astray by SEO link building scams, such as link farms. Any external links to your insurance agency site must come from high-quality, relevant sites.

  • insurance videos

Website visitors are 80% more likely to watch videos than read your content, and web pages that contain videos are weighted by search engines. And if your video has a longer view time than other websites in the same search results, then your ranking will improve even more.

  • SEO tracking

There are tons of tools available to track insurance search engine optimization. Many are free, most are inexpensive. From Moz to SEOBook to WebCEO, your agency can choose from dozens of highly functional options. That said, you’ll need to be familiar with the tool you select and run and measure the reports on a consistent basis (monthly should suffice). And it goes without saying that every agency should have Google Analytics loaded on their website to track overall traffic, traffic patterns, search engine referrals, and social media referrals to their website.