SEO for Insurance Brokers is the process of optimizing your website for higher rankings on search engines. Here we take you through the important aspects of SEO for insurance brokers.
Did you know close to 70% of customers search for insurance online before contacting an insurance broker physically? In today’s world where the Internet (read Google) has become the first source of information for people, you can’t ignore the importance of online visibility. Many insurers equate having a website with online visibility. That isn’t the case as you must feature on top of the search results to become a serious player in the competitive online market.
Whether you operate locally or nationally you face steep competition from other players for online visibility. The first three links on the search engine results page attract more than 65% of the traffic. If your website doesn’t rank high, you are ceding territory to your competitors. Investing in Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the answer to this challenge. SEO for insurance brokers can help you rank high on the search engines, and you can leverage this in acquiring new clients.
Does DIY SEO Work?
Though most insurance brokers are aware of the importance of SEO, they choose the wrong path. Some opt for agencies that quote the lowest (and often unbelievable) rate for insurance broker SEO while others opt for the DIY route. If you choose an SEO agency on price alone, you will get what you pay for! In other words, they cut corners and focus only on the basic strategies which would yield limited returns.
The DIY route might sound like a better proposition but isn’t the way for any insurance broker for two reasons. First, you are likely to lack the skills and knowledge to run a rewarding campaign. Secondly, you can’t dedicate time to your digital campaign and focus on your core business at the same time. You need an experienced SEO team to manage your campaign, a team that has expertise across the board and improves your ROI on online marketing.
What Should SEO For Insurance Brokers Include?
Now that you are aware of the benefits of SEO and the importance of working with an agency, you might start looking for one to manage your campaign. You must be choosy as there are hundreds of fly-by-night operators in this trade. The team that you choose must have expertise in insurance broker SEO with an inherent knowledge of the opportunities and challenges in this business.
A successful SEO strategy for insurance brokers relies on multiple factors. This includes your on-page SEO and off-page SEO campaigns. It also includes understanding the needs of the end customers and their constantly changing search behavior. At Cyrusson Inc. we specialize in SEO For Insurance Brokers and manage accounts for dozens of clients in this business. Our SEO services include everything that you need as an insurance broker. Let us walk you through the various stages of our insurance broker SEO campaign.
SEO Audit & Research
We begin optimizing your website with a comprehensive audit. Poor site structure, plagiarized content, dead links, and lack of mobile compatibility are major obstacles to a website’s SEO strategy. Our core objective at this stage is the identification of red flags and fixing them before we start optimizing your website for higher rankings and organic traffic.
This is followed by research where our team would work closely with you to understand your business model, and your target audience and carry out a competitor analysis. These are important steps that are often overlooked but are key to search engine rankings and traffic growth. We also set short-term and long-term goals for the campaign at this stage and agree on the deliverables. Though we set goals we never guarantee results, which is the biggest lie told by some freelancers & agencies in the SEO business.
Site Structure & Navigation
Did you know poor site structure and navigation can hurt your website’s ranking? Your site structure is one of the pillars on which your SEO campaign stands. Your website’s structure should have an easy and logical flow where users can easily find the information and content they are looking for. As part of our SEO campaign, we work on the site structure and navigation to improve the user-friendliness of your website. If your website lacks SEO-friendly URLs we fix them.
Internal links are another area we have our eyes on. Dead links and poor internal linking can hurt your SEO campaign badly. It can also result in a poor experience for the user and increase the bounce rate. As part of our on-page SEO strategy, we fix 404 (broken links) errors on your website. Our team uses advanced tools to scan through your internal links and fix the issue. The idea is to let users discover value in every page they arrive at using internal links on your website.
Mobile-Friendly Design
Almost 60% of internet traffic is generated through mobile devices. This number has constantly increased for the last one and half decades. Mobile-friendliness is one of the most important signals in Google’s latest search engine algorithm. Sites that aren’t mobile-friendly irritate users on mobile devices as they are hard to navigate. They also hurt your SEO score. If you haven’t updated the design for years, chances are your website wasn’t designed for mobile users.
We have a dedicated design team that can fix this problem by integrating responsive design. This web design philosophy ensures that the website adopts the screen size and resolution of the devices your customers are using to visit your website. This improves user experience and time spent on the website which helps in improving your rankings.
Keyword Research and Implementation
Once the goals have been set the next important step in insurance broker SEO is keyword research. Keywords are the basic hook that attracts traffic to your website. We have expertise in in-depth keyword research and discover high-value and low-competition keywords to target. These are low-hanging fruits that offer results in a short time and increase your traffic and online visibility. They attract qualified leads to your website and help you generate more sales. Our team targets short and long-tail keywords including conversational ones to improve traffic for voice search.
Sitemap Creation & Registration
If you lack a basic understanding of SEO, you aren’t likely to be aware of its importance. However, XML and HTML sitemaps play a decisive role in how your website’s pages are indexed on search engines. A sitemap lists all the URLs of your website, and it makes Google crawl and index your website. Our team would create your sitemap and register it on Google Search Console.
Meta Title and Description Optimization
Title tags and descriptions are important for your website’s ranking on the search engine. This is the information that appears as snippets in the search results. If they grab the attention of the users, your website will attract organic traffic. Your title tags and description should fall within Google’s character limit or relevant information won’t be visible to your users.
Inserting relevant keywords in the description and title also improves your rankings. For instance, if the title reads “Car Insurance Broker in Chicago” the user at once knows who you are and what you do. Similarly, the meta description should offer users a glimpse of what they expect to find on the page. Our team writes catchy titles and descriptions that grab eyeballs apart from improving your SEO score.
Content Optimization
Its often said “content is the king” in SEO but sadly many insurance broker websites treat it as a “deposed king”! All efforts on keyword research and other on-page marketing strategies would go down the barrel without a strong content marketing approach. We work on a comprehensive content marketing strategy that includes content on your website and those that are posted on other platforms to generate backlinks on your website.
Our content team can create expert blogs and articles on the most relevant topics in the insurance industry. By posting regular blogs on your website and posting content on high-traffic websites you would build your authority. This serves as a signal of the value of your website and improves your rankings.
Local Search Optimization
Most of our clients target a small geographic area and this is important for any insurance broker barring big companies that target users nationally. For instance, if you are a broker in Chicago, you’d want maximum traffic to your website to come from people in the city and nearby areas. We have expertise in local search optimization and drive local traffic to your website. Using the right combination of keywords and listing on local business directories we improve the quality of traffic to your website for higher lead conversion.
Google Business Profile Optimization
Small insurance brokers often target small geography. You’d like your target audience to find your address on Google maps along with your contact details. This is where your Google Business Profile (GBP) plays a key role. We set up your GBP account filling in all the relevant information about your business with your contact details. GBP is an important ranking signal in local search results. By having your verified profile on Google your business name, address, and contact details would appear on local searches for insurance brokers.
Competitor SEO Tracking
Your SEO campaign doesn’t run in isolation. You are constantly fighting for rank and traffic with your competitors. Keeping an eye on your competitor is the prerequisite to staying one step ahead of them. Along with all the on-page and off-page tasks we undertake in your optimization project, we also track your competitors’ campaigns. We study their strategies and methods which help us in outsmarting them.
Final Thoughts
Search Engine Optimization is an ongoing process, and it isn’t a one-time project. Your competitors are constantly optimizing their websites and you need to follow suit to stay ahead in the game. SEO for insurance brokers requires inherent knowledge about the business and how its customers interact with the brokers online.
Strategies that worked in the past have started showing diminishing returns. It is important for your website must be optimized based on the constantly changing customer habits and search engine algorithms. DIY campaigns won’t don in this fast competitive world where every insurance broker fights for higher rankings on search engines.
At Cyrusson Inc. we are a boutique digital marketing agency that specializes in insurance broker SEO. Our team stays updated with the latest trends in SEO and caters to your unique needs. Let us handle your SEO campaign as you focus on converting leads into loyal customers. Hire us and we will show you the real ROI with SEO for insurance brokers. Contact us today – send us an email or call us to book a free consultation today!