1. Keywords: I know you’ve heard all of this before but you should know the importance of keywords to your web strategy really can’t be understated. Do the keyword research. Find out what terms people use to find the insurance products you sell. Forget about what you and your staff use. You’re prejudiced insurance professionals.
2. On-Page Optimization: If your website isn’t set up properly the search engines won’t know what your trying to say. Pay attention to headers, title tags and meta descriptions.
3. If It’s Too good to be true…: Any promise to rocket you to number 1 on Google probably sounds too good to be true. It is. Here is what Matt Cutts of Google has to say about it.
4. Links matter: Think quality over quantity. Volumes of low quality articles will continue to deliver a diminishing return. If you want real results write REAL articles that establish you as an authority and add value to the world wide web. Ahh, but writing articles isn’t all. Its the links in the articles, where they originate and the pages they link too that will make the difference. Try to place your articles on high-ranking (PR3 or higher) sites that are relevant to your business. Maybe even a .highly trusted TLD like .gov, or ,edu site. The more relevant the site and the higher the PR the more trusted your site becomes.
5. Business People Use Google: Business people DO use Google and the other search engines to look for resources and to actually buy things. A recent Marketing Sherpa study showed that of business owners making purchases of $5,000.00-$10,000.00 3.7% make a same day decision, 15.6% make a buying decision within 2 weeks, and 57.8% of them decided within 90 days. In the early stages of looking 65.3% use a search engine versus 21% a vendor site. In the negotiation and buying stages those numbers change to around 42% search engine and 28% vendor site. Their favorite search engines are Google (85%), Yahoo (7.5%) and MSN (2%).
6. Content Content Content: Don’t sacrifice quality for quantity but more quality content you develop and post the more quality links you build back to your site. Don’t be afraid to outsource some of your content creation. Ideally, you post a new blog to your main site daily, you post a blog to a micro site daily and write at least one, or two high-quality articles per week. Use a writer who understands insurance to supplement whatever you do in-house. Remember quantity is good as long as its high quality content.
7. Social Media…its not just for kids: When we talk about content we are also talking about social media. Your social media effort should be attached to an overall marketing strategy The key search terms for which you are optimizing your website are targeting a certain persona. Well, your social media strategy should be targeting the same people. Post things that are of interest to the people with whom you are trying to build relationships. Don’t jump on Linked-In, Twitter or FaceBook and start telling people what a wonderful insurance professional you are. Instead find out what their interests are and provide them with content that will help them, or that they will enjoy. They idea is to start the relationship (know), provide high-quality, helpful information (like), and provide them with an opportunity to access your services when they are ready to buy (trust). Know, like, trust.