Like every service, today’s consumers rely on digitized searches to get the best insurance matches. In a large competitive market like the insurance industry, search engine optimization (SEO) practice is compulsory to reach as many potential clients as possible. Search engine optimization for insurance companies is critical for local and international companies in achieving and maintaining a strong organic presence to facilitate the website’s visibility. A good SEO strategy also adds to the relevance of the insurance company enabling it to stay competitive in its search for new prospective clients.
Is an SEO Agency Necessary?
Why have an additional workload when you can hire a sales and marketing employment agency to do all the hard work? Hiring an SEO agency is essential because they help businesses optimize for the most crucial search ranking signals. These companies can detect which ones to go with since some are more important than others, something an insurance company cannot pull off on its own.
Working with an SEO agency also allows running the insurance company undistracted while leaving the SEO and marketing focus to it. Other advantages of partnering with an SEO agency include:
- SEO agencies offer more expertise on pro strategies.
- SEO agencies offer long-term help for business insurance services to improve technical SEO.
- They offer fully optimized content with keyword targeting.
- They offer constant monitoring for site problems, errors, and algorithm penalties.
- SEO agencies provide meta description optimization for better click-through-rate.
- Good SEO agencies offer case studies based on past experiences with similar insurance companies.
SEO Insurance Services
A successful search engine optimization for insurance agencies relies on multiple factors. SEO auditing is the first step to a successful plan. Maximizing the insurance company’s presence in relevant search results is important. SEO audits are used to evaluate and identify factors that hinder the company’s ability to rank top in search engine result pages (SERPs). It is, therefore, a standard procedure that should be carried out regularly.
An SEO audit should be comprehensive to cover both structural and content components. It should also be easily understandable with the business’s online objectives as the guide to help detect hindrances to their achievement. Once you detect the issues, the recommendations made must be actionable. They should, without a doubt, meet the objectives of the business.
There are 3 critical parts of an SEO audit:
- On-page SEO. It consists of controlled site elements that affect SERPs ranking, most of which is the content. The factors include duplicated content, broken images, missing alt tags, title tag issues, meta descriptions, broken links, low word count, incorrect language, temporary redirects, or too many links.
- Off-page SEO consists of actions taken outside the website to impact SERPs ranking. These include branding, content marketing, reviews, social media, link building, and content syndication.
- Technical SEO deals with the mechanics behind your site. These mechanics include page speed, structured data, site security, mobile optimization, an organized website structure, and robots.txt files.
An information architecture (IA) audit analyses the information already available on your website and what needs to be added. The analysis impacts search engine optimization for insurance agencies by including how to structure the entire data to improve user experience. User-friendly information increases traffic to the insurance company’s website, eventually growing revenue. A simplified approach to an IA audit is to gather existing content, analyze the content for duplicates, gaps, or possible information improvement, and then add the metadata, which is the final step.
Keyword research and implementation is an important search engine optimization for insurance companies as it helps analyze and find search terms that prospective insurance consumers enter into search engines. It is critical to note that you should create content around what people want to discover, not what we want to tell them. A keyword search uncovers the best keywords to target and provides insight into queries asked by your target audience that need answers. This knowledge enables your hired SEO agency to come up with timely consumer information increasing your website’s visibility, clicks, and traffic.
Title tags and meta descriptions are a perfect way to summarize the main idea of your web page. These two inform Google, search engines, and users about your website’s topic. Title tags and meta descriptions determine the users’ interest in your website. When clearly stated, they can greatly impact your website’s visibility and click-through rates.
Optimizing the business profile is a service that SEO agencies also offer to improve search engine optimization for insurance agencies, which is achieved by using an optimized Google business profile. Here, existing and prospective consumers can visit your website, call you, discover you in keyword searches, research your products and services, and more.
A local SEO strategy is crucial to improve business visibility, especially for local insurance companies with a physical location. These searches appear when consumers add ‘near me’ to their search. A good example is an auto insurance group.
HTML and XML sitemaps creation are essential components of SEO services. A sitemap document contains a list of pages on your website that you have allowed Google and other search engines to index. While HTML and XML are vital for an SEO strategy, HTML sitemaps are created for humans, and XML sitemaps are created for search engines.
An XML sitemap acts as your website’s map, enabling Google to find all essential pages on your website quickly. It also enables search engines to understand your website’s structure. An HTML sitemap enhances the user experience by making navigation through your pages easier. They are also a good way for lost users to get what they want. Improving user experience improves the ranking on your site since search engines reward user-friendly sites, a perfect way to improve search engine optimization for insurance agencies.
SEO and content promotion are perfect for online success. Both must go hand in hand for any online business to thrive. Content promotion involves creating relevant content to attract new prospective consumers. SEO analyses the needs of the consumers through their searches. Therefore, integrating SEO in content promotion gives your business the upper hand in providing them with relevant content at the right time.
Important SEO Strategies for an Insurance Domain
search engine optimization for insurance agencies must exercise several essential factors to succeed.
1. Keyword Research
The ultimate aim of incorporating SEO for insurance companies is to optimize visits to the website by ensuring the content is relevant to the consumers’ needs. Keywords are crucial in directing consumers to your website. These are the words and phrases consumers use when looking for answers online.
Terms like car insurance companies or motorcycle insurance companies may seem insignificant, but they can make a huge difference as they help inform your marketing strategy. Keywords research also helps identify your service’s or product’s target audience and needs as a guide in building a target client profile and further segmenting your overall market based on identified factors.
2. Understand Keyword Search Intent
It is not enough to conduct a keyword search and develop a list. It is essential to review the search results as you try to understand how they have been interpreted by Google. Say someone wants to learn more about roof insurance but is not ready to buy. If you create content based on costs incurred when insuring roofs, your content will not align with the user’s intent. The four primary types of search intents are;
- Navigational intent: This is when the users already know what they are trying to find and are just using the search engine to find it.
- Informational intent: These are searches done by people looking for information to deepen their understanding of a particular topic.
- Transactional intent: These searches are done to buy a specific product. For example, searching for a car insurance agent to get your car insured.
- Commercial Investigation intent: These searches are done by people willing to buy a particular product but need more time to compare the available option
3. Create Relevant Content
Creating suitable content is a good way of maximizing search engine optimization for insurance agencies. Insurance is not always easy to understand, and people with questions always go to Google for answers. As an insurance firm, you should take advantage and provide high-quality and informative answers as your website’s content.
Keeping your content relevant will increase your Google rankings and enable users to find your website easily. It is one thing to be noticed by users, but it is another thing keeping them there long enough. It is, therefore, important to have a user-friendly website whose structure is easy to follow and whose content is worth the users’ time.
4. Ask for Client Reviews
Many prospective customers rely on customer reviews to determine whether to purchase a business service or product. Having a good number of positive reviews from satisfied clients can improve search engine optimization for insurance agencies. Verified reviews are perfect endorsement packages, especially for a target consumer population. Reviews increase the website’s traffic generation bringing in more prospective clients.
5. Maintain Website Security
No one would want to be associated with an insurance company whose website is not secure. Everyone enjoys privacy and confidentiality. Unsafe websites are not user-friendly. Your content will not be as relevant because prospective clients will leave your site anytime they get notified that it is not safe. It will also affect client reviews because most clients will not even have time to read through and leave a review.
Eventually, Google rankings will go down, which could negatively impact the insurance company. Installing a secure sockets layer (SSL) on your servers ensures the safety of all the available data.
6. Create a Mobile-Friendly Website
In this digital world, over 60% of Google searches are done using mobile phones. Clients use mobile devices to search for and purchase insurance packages. Websites that aren’t mobile responsive make it difficult for clients to access their information. Such clients opt to move on to the next available mobile-friendly website. Google has prioritized mobile-optimized web pages, which should tell you how valuable this feature is to your website.
Ensure that you have a fast-loading website. Many clients use their mobile phones for fast access to information. Opening a slow-loading website will only quench their interest, causing them to leave your site searching for a fast-loading site. Improving the mobile functionality of your website will help you meet the expectations of mobile insurance consumers and increase your website’s ranking on Google.
7. Build a Good Website Structure
A good web design improves search engine optimization for insurance agencies. It is one of the essential factors that Google considers when ranking your website. A good website structure consists of organized content that is easy to follow, linked, and informative in line with its topic.
A good website structure consists of pieces that fit and flow perfectly, functional links, and organized URLs. Additionally, they should offer a good user experience by making it easy for users to navigate through the content, a plus in search engine optimization for insurance agencies.
8. Consider Paid Advertising
While SEO techniques take time to grow, pay-per-click (PPC) ads are business advice that can get your insurance ranking top fast. It is done by bidding on strategic keywords. Once you place a bid on the keyword, you only pay the fee when someone clicks on the link displayed on the search engine. PPC ads offer an extreme level of control, making them perfect for any business.
SEO for insurance companies is competitive. To remain at the top, you must keep changing your SEO strategy to facilitate evolved search engine algorithms. Ensure to stick with what is working at that particular time because SEO practices keep evolving. Updating practices will ensure your insurance company reaches more customers, sells more insurance policies, and has a high ranking on search engines.
