insurance agency search engine optimization

13 years ago

Funny, I am an agent and just registered here to learn more about internet marketing for our agency. Your right, finding a good SEO company is tough and expensive, but from what I see there is opportunity because the big agencies are actually not even doing SEo or they are doing it wrong.

Thanks
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keenstyle1 13 years ago

Yes I have seen the same kind of potential. The proof is in the pudding though, if you google the type of marketing you need, the firm with the true SEO strategy will come up high in the rankings. If I was an auto dealer and I wanted to find an online marketing firm, i would type something like "auto dealer internet marketing " so if your an agent just do the same.
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stodog77

13 years ago

Why buy them when you can generate them for cheaper? It still amazes me how many businesses are behind the curve when it comes to online marketing and advertising. In the grand scheme of things online advertising is still a baby, so now is the time to get in, learn it, and implement it.

As far as SEO companies it is very tough to find a quality SEO company. Even large agencies can be crap. I talked to a company that I am working with now. They were charging him $12K per month. Granted they did a nice job, but I can almost guarantee that they were outsourcing the work for a fraction of the cost and basically having a project manager oversee it as well as many other projects.

Best thing to do is learn it yourself and then you will be better suited to pick a good outsource company. In fact there are a few good ones on here.

Thanks
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sector9 13 years ago

12k a month? The problem that I see is exactly what you're talking about. SEO companies with sales people will outsource their SEO to India. So the links that they place or create are on websites that the SEO firm doesn't own, so who's to say theses shady sites wont be shut down,flagged, etc.

I agree, buying leads is a joke, I am educating myself in order to find the best seo firm so I don't get had.
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myob 13 years ago

Insurance companies, as with many other niches, are continually being hammered with SEO wannabees, which is making it difficult for professionals. What I have found, however, is these companies now tend to be more receptive to SMS texting. Hardly anyone is even mentioning that. It's an easy approach, and when insurance companies see results, you have positioned yourself as "the" expert and sell more advanced marketing products and services such as SEO and mobile marketing technology.
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- sector9 13 years ago
  
  Text Who? I don't understand
  
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  keenstyle1 13 years ago
  
  What ever you do, just don't sign a long term contract! That's where you get screwed, sever companies will take that legal binding contract and sell it to a finance company to get the cash up-front, So everyone gets paid, with no reason to care what you think
  
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  myob 13 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by sector9
  
  Text Who? I don't understand
  
  Essentially, when prospects want an insurance quote, they send a text message. The insurance agent responds with either a quote or link to website. This prospect is a lead which can be marketed to with updates, tips, etc throughout the sales sequence. It has been a powerful and effective tool for sales agents particularly in real estate and insurance for years. This is discussed quite frequently in the Offline Forum.
  
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  sector9 13 years ago
  
  It sounds ok, but when the prospect wants a quote, he has to find you. You might be talking about buying leads and then texting them.
  
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  myob 13 years ago
  
  Conversions from SMS texting are dramatically higher than "traditional" marketing. When insurance companies see these kind of results for conversions, the next step is to sell them on your SEO services and other more advanced marketing systems and technology for generating those leads. When it's all combined and optimized, you've got an unbeatable competitive advantage in any market.
  
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Digital Traffic

13 years ago

What type of insurance leads are you looking to generate?

Thanks

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stodog77

13 years ago

If you are a local company you are usually not looking at extremely tough competition. As a matter of fact in a lot of cases you are looking at no competition at all.

Here is what I do when I deal with a local company.

1) Local Listings (Google Places, Yahoo Local, Bing, City Search, Yellow Book ect)

Submit your site to a bunch of local directories including Yahoo and Bing. Let them marinate for a bit, and wait for Google to index them. It is also good if you get a few of your customers to write reviews on the sites which have direct data feeds to Google Places. Also do a video, and maybe throw in some Doc sharing sites. Make sure the business address is somewhere in the body.

Next when the listings mature, start a Google Places listing. If you already show up in their data feed sites, you become more of an authority and have a greater chance of getting into the first page listings (7 box/3 box)

2) SEO

Take all the top keywords in related to your business (I.E- Car Insurance, Auto Insurance, Home owners, ects). Usually Google Keyword Tool does the job. What I will do is pick the top 10 keywords as far as searches. I will then ad them to an excel file.

Take all the areas + counties you do business and ad them to the end of each keyword. Ex:

Car Insurance Doylestown PA
Car Insurance Buckingham PA
Car Insurance Warrington PA
Car Insurance Bucks County

Once I have all the keywords laid out in a spread sheet, I throw them int Market Samurai ranking module to check where they rank if at all, and this also gives me a base.

Next I make sure that my on site is good. I make sure the top keyword is somewhere in the title.

Car Insurance Agency Doylestown, Buckingham, Warrington PA

I also try to put the address and something such as "We serve the following areas: Doylestown, Buckingham, Warrington, and all of Bucks County" on the homepage.

Next I start backlinking. I hire my guys to optimize each term.

3) Craigslist

Most of your local brick and mortar type businesses can be advertised on Craigslist and believe or not you can get a ton of leads from it. Get yourself a couple phone verified accounts and post an ad or two in the appropriate section. Make sure you variate your titles and content. Throw as many keywords in that ad as possible so when people do searches they find you.

Follow these steps and you will have plenty of leads coming in from your online efforts.

Thanks
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Digital Traffic

13 years ago

This warrior obviously "Gets" how to capture local leads.

Well done.

Originally Posted by stodog77

If you are a local company you are usually not looking at extremely tough competition. As a matter of fact in a lot of cases you are looking at no competition at all.

Here is what I do when I deal with a local company.

1) Local Listings (Google Places, Yahoo Local, Bing, City Search, Yellow Book ect)

Submit your site to a bunch of local directories including Yahoo and Bing. Let them marinate for a bit, and wait for Google to index them. It is also good if you get a few of your customers to write reviews on the sites which have direct data feeds to Google Places. Also do a video, and maybe throw in some Doc sharing sites. Make sure the business address is somewhere in the body.

Next when the listings mature, start a Google Places listing. If you already show up in their data feed sites, you become more of an authority and have a greater chance of getting into the first page listings (7 box/3 box)

2) SEO

Take all the top keywords in related to your business (I.E- Car Insurance, Auto Insurance, Home owners, ects). Usually Google Keyword Tool does the job. What I will do is pick the top 10 keywords as far as searches. I will then ad them to an excel file.

Take all the areas + counties you do business and ad them to the end of each keyword. Ex:

Car Insurance Doylestown PA
Car Insurance Buckingham PA
Car Insurance Warrington PA
Car Insurance Bucks County

Once I have all the keywords laid out in a spread sheet, I throw them int Market Samurai ranking module to check where they rank if at all, and this also gives me a base.

Next I make sure that my on site is good. I make sure the top keyword is somewhere in the title.

Car Insurance Agency Doylestown, Buckingham, Warrington PA

I also try to put the address and something such as "We serve the following areas: Doylestown, Buckingham, Warrington, and all of Bucks County" on the homepage.

Next I start backlinking. I hire my guys to optimize each term.

3) Craigslist

Most of your local brick and mortar type businesses can be advertised on Craigslist and believe or not you can get a ton of leads from it. Get yourself a couple phone verified accounts and post an ad or two in the appropriate section. Make sure you variate your titles and content. Throw as many keywords in that ad as possible so when people do searches they find you.

Follow these steps and you will have plenty of leads coming in from your online efforts.

Thanks

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sector9

13 years ago

You're right. I do not want to sign a long term contract. The only insurance niche marketing firm I have found to so far is Pantera marketing, the other ones have 3 different sales people calling me all day, that's why in the end it makes better sense to educate myself before doing anything, wan't to start out doing it right from the get go.

Or just buy someones book of business.

Thanks

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keenstyle1

13 years ago

Everything you're saying is right but:
Here's the problem with Local based keyword terms. People looking for insurance Aren't typing them in. They are typing in "Insurance" Commercial Auto Insurance" etc. They don't care if they deal with a local agent or not, or they just aren't search savvy.
You have to do the SEO campaign on a national bases even if your not licensed in all states.

Having too many leads from states you're not licensed in is a good problem to have, you can always work out a cost per lead program with agents in other states.

Thanks
1 reply

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stodog77

13 years ago

Originally Posted by keenstyle1

Everything you're saying is right but:
Here's the problem with Local based keyword terms. People looking for insurance Aren't typing them in. They are typing in "Insurance" Commercial Auto Insurance" etc. They don't care if they deal with a local agent or not, or they just aren't search savvy.
You have to do the SEO campaign on a national bases even if your not licensed in all states.

Having too many leads from states you're not licensed in is a good problem to have, you can always work out a cost per lead program with agents in other states.

I totally disagree with you. People are definitely searching on a local level for these terms. Just do a simple search with Google keywords and you will see this to be true. Now the data in Google keyword tool is usually skewed but it gives you an idea.

Also remember when you create a Google places listing, the searcher doesn't have to put the geo location in the search field. Google reads their IP location and matches it to the geo location. So you can search "Car Insurance" and most times local agency listings will come up.

For example take a look at a company like Service Magic. They do around a billion dollars in revenue per year. All from lead gen. You know how they dominate like that? Do a search for any type of service. For example "Roofer Philadelphia" or "HVAC company Philadelphia". They show up on PPC, and organically. Do this in 1,000 cities and guess what? Total domination. They understand the power of local marketing and local search.

I used to run a pretty large SEO firm, and I am just telling you from experience. Local search and geo targeting your keywords is very powerful.

Now when you are talking about local vs nationwide lead gen you are talking about a completely different ball game, but this doesn't mean that you can't geo target keywords and campaigns.

Thanks

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Money on the Side

13 years ago

Wow...I haven't had a problem getting local insurance companies ranked on Google Places and below on page #1. I do know that some have thousands of backlinks built and it sometimes looks hard to compete with, but the fact is, when they have thousands of links, they are usually PR0 or PR1 links at best. If you counter with some high PR links and some reviews from various sites, you should be able to get there pretty easily.

Thanks

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insurance agency search engine optimization

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