Is your insurance agency better off focusing on search terms which yield thousands of searches each month or merely a few dozen searches each month? The answer to this question lies within your budget, expertise and business goals.
To determine this, ask yourself the following questions: 1.
Have you determined if Insurance Agency SEO is a key component of your insurance agency marketing plan? Or, if you're an insurance company or other type of insurance entity, have you determined if your Insurance SEO will be a key component of your 2011 web marketing plan? 2.
How long do you intend to invest in your Agency SEO and how important is it to your ongoing web marketing strategy? 3.
Are you going to leverage organic Insurance SEO, PPC or both? 4.
Do you have internal resources to do this (if you're assuming your existing technical in house resources can do this, you may not be correct)? 5.
Or are you intending to outsource this campaign? 6.
Have you established a budget if you do not have the internal resources or intend to outsource your Insurance SEO? 7.
How will you measure campaign efficacy? Will you dominate less competitive long-tail keyword phrases and be highly selective in directing traffic, or will you target higher volume keyword phrases? 8.
How will you measure conversions for either or both approaches above? 9.
How long will it take to achieve Google page one rankings (currently that is about 70% of the market, thus the use of that search engine name specifically)? 10.
Is your insurance agency or insurance broker book of business horizontal or vertical, and how much traffic do you need? 11.
What is the price point, margin and conversion rate expected? 12.
Are you taking a shotgun approach and hope to drive large volumes of visitors to your website, or are you taking a sniper approach and wish to drive and target highly specific types of traffic? 13.
Will you dedicate specific landing pages for specific Insurance SEO initiatives, and if so, how will those be created? 14.
Is your insurance agency website ready to capitalize on SEO, is your website current, professional with relevant and compelling content? 15.
Does your agency focus solely on B2B, or are you also targeting B2C, and are there any reciprocally beneficial campaign opportunities in this situation? 16.
If people start talking about search engine results on page two or page three, are you aware that these generate almost no traffic? 17.
Does your insurance agency website have a clear call to action? Even if web traffic is dramatically increased, your insurance website needs to capture these opportunities.
18.
Is your call to action easily visible for all insurance agency prospects to see? Call to action examples: Click here to sign up for our newsletter; Click here to register for our workshop; Click here to contact us for our insurance agency case studies.
19.
Will your unique value proposition be immediately understood by website visitors? 20.
Lastly, have you separated on page and off page SEO initiatives? You need a web marketing plan for both, they are very different.
Before embarking on an SEO initiative, ask these questions and determine if you will target and dominate less competitive keywords or focus on higher volume more competitive keywords.
If your agency intends to outsource make sure your Insurance SEO vendor can answer your questions completely, with verifiable results to validate all claims.
In any emerging industry like search engine optimization, it's important that clear and accurate expectations are established, and that you understand the budget, timeframe and expected results before you embark upon your campaign.
For most agencies, the general expectation should be page one search engine rankings in as few as 60 to 90 days.
To determine this, ask yourself the following questions: 1.
Have you determined if Insurance Agency SEO is a key component of your insurance agency marketing plan? Or, if you're an insurance company or other type of insurance entity, have you determined if your Insurance SEO will be a key component of your 2011 web marketing plan? 2.
How long do you intend to invest in your Agency SEO and how important is it to your ongoing web marketing strategy? 3.
Are you going to leverage organic Insurance SEO, PPC or both? 4.
Do you have internal resources to do this (if you're assuming your existing technical in house resources can do this, you may not be correct)? 5.
Or are you intending to outsource this campaign? 6.
Have you established a budget if you do not have the internal resources or intend to outsource your Insurance SEO? 7.
How will you measure campaign efficacy? Will you dominate less competitive long-tail keyword phrases and be highly selective in directing traffic, or will you target higher volume keyword phrases? 8.
How will you measure conversions for either or both approaches above? 9.
How long will it take to achieve Google page one rankings (currently that is about 70% of the market, thus the use of that search engine name specifically)? 10.
Is your insurance agency or insurance broker book of business horizontal or vertical, and how much traffic do you need? 11.
What is the price point, margin and conversion rate expected? 12.
Are you taking a shotgun approach and hope to drive large volumes of visitors to your website, or are you taking a sniper approach and wish to drive and target highly specific types of traffic? 13.
Will you dedicate specific landing pages for specific Insurance SEO initiatives, and if so, how will those be created? 14.
Is your insurance agency website ready to capitalize on SEO, is your website current, professional with relevant and compelling content? 15.
Does your agency focus solely on B2B, or are you also targeting B2C, and are there any reciprocally beneficial campaign opportunities in this situation? 16.
If people start talking about search engine results on page two or page three, are you aware that these generate almost no traffic? 17.
Does your insurance agency website have a clear call to action? Even if web traffic is dramatically increased, your insurance website needs to capture these opportunities.
18.
Is your call to action easily visible for all insurance agency prospects to see? Call to action examples: Click here to sign up for our newsletter; Click here to register for our workshop; Click here to contact us for our insurance agency case studies.
19.
Will your unique value proposition be immediately understood by website visitors? 20.
Lastly, have you separated on page and off page SEO initiatives? You need a web marketing plan for both, they are very different.
Before embarking on an SEO initiative, ask these questions and determine if you will target and dominate less competitive keywords or focus on higher volume more competitive keywords.
If your agency intends to outsource make sure your Insurance SEO vendor can answer your questions completely, with verifiable results to validate all claims.
In any emerging industry like search engine optimization, it's important that clear and accurate expectations are established, and that you understand the budget, timeframe and expected results before you embark upon your campaign.
For most agencies, the general expectation should be page one search engine rankings in as few as 60 to 90 days.