HOW TO BUILD AN SEO STRATEGY THAT DOMINATES THE INSURANCE MARKET

Insurance companies have a unique set of goals to achieve through their websites. With so many companies out there, the competition is very stiff. The websites have quote tools, quote comparison options, and even package information. What you have to do is get the attention of your audience and convince them to ask you for a quote or use the tools on your site so you can convert them into customers. To get them there, you must have a strong SEO strategy, or they may not find your insurance website in the first place.

Preparing to Build a Strong Insurance Website SEO Strategy

SEO will give you a great edge when competing with other insurance companies. If your insurance SEO is done right, you can win the war for traffic and outperform your competitors. This means properly utilizing highly competitive insurance-related keywords on your website and even outside of it.

To prepare for building a strong SEO strategy, you must do the keyword research. This can be done using the Google Keyword Planner. You can also check out the related keywords in Google when you perform a relevant search to see what people are looking for.

Once you have your keywords, you need to map out your content so you know where it is going to go. Make sure there is no duplicate content and that the topics are as diverse as possible. Even a related topic can lead to accidental duplication. When determining what content is needed, think of the questions that customers frequently ask. Write blog posts and articles relating to those frequently asked questions. People come to insurance websites for answers, so give your visitors what they’re looking for.

Crafting an SEO Strategy for Your Insurance Website

Once you have mapped out the content, it’s time to write it and integrate it into your website. However, make sure that the content isn’t the only thing you lean on. An effective SEO strategy has many moving parts. Link to authoritative websites in some places throughout your content, but don’t do it too much. You must also make sure your pages are linked to each other. Internal linking is an important part of ensuring search engines index every nook and cranny of your website.

You can also use the following checklists to help you ensure your insurance website is competitive.

For on-page SEO:

• Have a keyword in your page title
• Make sure there are headings tags throughout (H1, H2, H3, etc.)
• Keep track of the website’s bounce rate to see what percentage of users are leaving quickly
• Create a sitemap and submit it to Google
• Necessary duplicate content should have canonical tags

In addition to your on-page SEO, get some high-ranking websites to link to you. Don’t create a bunch of links yourself because that can look spammy. People used to go to directories and create inbound links to their websites in order to add some “link juice.” Google catches on to tactics like this. If they see a tactic as spammy, it gets classified as a black hat SEO move that you just want to stay away from. Sure, there are times you are going to create links to your site, particularly when you list with sites like Yelp. However, you don’t want to go and create a hundred links in a week. It’s best if it happens naturally.

One way to encourage organic links is to create a blog. If you provide people with valuable content on a regular basis, they are more likely to share the website. The topics should be interesting because visitors won’t share boring content or content they’ve seen before.

The Power of Social Media

You also want to make sure you use social media. Put social media share buttons on your website so your pages and blog posts can be shared. You want your content shared on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and wherever else your visitors want to spread it around. It’s much easier for them when they have buttons, especially when accessing your website from their mobile devices.

In the meantime, make full use of your own social media accounts. When there’s an update, let your followers know about it. When a new blog post is posted, share it. Not only does posting updates, deals, valuable tidbits of information, and blog posts keep your audience informed, but you encourage your audience to share the information. This can grow your following over time. A larger following means more shares. More shares mean more business. Overall, everything you do on your website and off of it fits together like a puzzle. You just have to make sure you create a plan, document the plan, and follow it. Skipping a step or not doing everything in a specific order can have a negative impact on your SEO efforts.

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6 MOST IMPORTANT SEO RANKING FACTORS FOR REAL ESTATE WEBSITES

Search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t only about content with relevant keywords. Although this aspect of SEO carries a lot of weight, more goes into a strong SEO strategy for real estate websites. When you want results, you must look deeper into the website at components like the URL, social media utilization, organic backlinks, and the overall structure of the website. It doesn’t even stop there, which is why it’s important to know the following list of important ranking factors for real estate websites.

On-Page SEO for Real Estate

On-page SEO is where you will utilize your keywords. You need to have keywords in the content but also in the title tag and meta description. You can also use keywords in the alt tags of images. This is called “image optimization,” and it’s important because search engines can’t see images. Search engines rely on alt tags to properly index an image.

Search engine algorithms also prefer fresh content. This can be achieved by updating content as needed and posting regular blog posts to the website. As you refresh content and post new content, it is good to make sure you link internally to other pages on the website. This creates a hierarchy that visitors and search engines can follow.

The Website’s URL

It is good to have a keyword in the URL. This is an on-page SEO strategy that’s important. To do that, make sure the “slug” after the .com in the URL is the page title. If the page title contains the keyword, you’re in business. This sends a positive signal to Google.

Outbound Links

Another important element of on-page SEO is the outbound links. Find an authoritative source and link to it. It’s a way to send a user to another site to learn more about a subject. Why do you want to do this? It’s because it’s a Google trust factor. Make sure these links are used in moderation because too many can hurt your own PageRank. Diminished PageRank hurts your real estate website’s search visibility.

Off-Page SEO for Real Estate

Off-page SEO involves tactics that are carried out outside of the website. Obtaining inbound links is a good strategy because they show that other websites have trust in your website. However, you want to make sure that these links are acquired organically. Registering with business directories can hurt you more than help you. This has made the directory an obsolete link-building tactic. Think about quality over quantity when it comes to links. As a real estate website, many of your links will happen naturally because people will share property listings from your website. Most of these shares occur over social media.

Social Media

When using social media to give your real estate business an online boost, don’t rely on just Facebook. Make sure you have a Google My Business page, engage on Twitter, use Instagram, and make an impact in the world of social media so people will share your content. Shared content means more traffic. More traffic translates into a better ranking.

Real Estate Website Structure

Of course, the website coding needs to be clean. A good web designer will ensure there isn’t a lot of “junk” in the code that can bog down the website. A good web designer will also make sure you have a sitemap that helps search engines index all website pages. There are also some trust factors that must be included. Some of those factors include:

• A thorough “About Us” page
• Social media accounts that are active
• A domain name that is at least two years old (this comes with time)
• Whois info (website registration) that matches your contact info
• Check incoming links occasionally to make sure they are trustworthy so you can eliminate those that aren’t
• Not too many outbound links throughout the site
• A mobile-optimized website so it can be viewed on any device
• A domestic server
• Google Search Console integration (verification counts)

These aren’t all the trust factors, but they are very relevant to real estate websites and should be taken into consideration.

SEO Checklist

If you really want to dive deep into SEO for your real estate website, you can look at an SEO checklist. The list has approximately 200 items that include everything from domain length to duplicate content on the same website. If you can hit as many of those points as possible on your website, with those described in this article being those you want to target first, then you can greatly improve your website’s ranking.

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5 SEO TIPS TO MAKE YOUR BLOG A MASSIVE SUCCESS

Blogging is a key component of any digital marketing strategy. A blog can be an extremely powerful way to promote your business’s website, or it can be a business venture all on its own.

Blogging is a powerful way to deliver quality content and establish yourself, your company, or both as a thought leader in your field. Blogs have helped countless online personalities and businesses to garner much success and notoriety.

Here are just a few things you can focus on to give your blog an edge with SEO.

Get Your Own Quality Hosting

Step one in creating your massively popular blog is getting your very own domain name and hosting. If you do a quick search for blog hosting, you’ll come across countless links that promote free hosting. Ignore these.

Free hosting is great for someone looking for an outlet to write about a hobby or post pictures of family outings. However, if you’re serious about using your blog as a marketing tool or even as a business venture of its own, avoid these free hosts.

Imagine you’re reading a blog that is full of decent content but is covered in ads and logos from the free site it’s hosted on. It’s likely you won’t perceive this blog or its writer as an expert in the field it’s discussing.

You’re not alone. Most searchers view these blogs hosted on free domains as lower in quality and authority. Surely, someone that is an expert on a given topic would have his or her own domain. If searchers don’t take your blog on a free domain seriously, you can trust Google will avoid directing traffic your way.

Purchase a branded domain name and secure hosting. You’ll legitimize your blog as a trustworthy source on your topic.

Always Focus on Valuable Content

If you’ve done any amount of reading on SEO, you know that content plays a vital role in gaining site authority. Keep in mind that Google’s main mission on the web is to direct its millions of users toward the most valuable and relevant content.

Your blog’s content should aim to answer questions on your topic and deliver insight relevant to the problems of your target audience. Although blog content is typically a written post, you can also leverage various content types, like:

• Original Videos or Vlogs
• Audio Recordings and Podcasts
• Pictures

As always, original content is key here. Get into the mind of your ideal reader. What questions does he or she have? Use this thought process to develop valuable, original content that the search engines can point users toward.

Produce Regularly

One of the best ways to build a solid blog following is producing quality content consistently and regularly. Posting regularly lets your readers know when they can expect additional content and tells Google that your site is active. Google crawls a site with much less frequency when it believes it to be inactive.

In addition to conditioning your readers to look for your content and letting Google know your site is active, producing regularly is also a fast way to build a library of valuable content. The more quality posts you produce on your blog, the higher your authority in your field will rise.

Use Internal Linking

As you begin to produce high-quality content more often and build up a solid collection of content, you can give context to new posts by linking to previous blog articles. Not only does this add content to your newer posts, it also directs readers to older posts they may have missed but would be interested in reading. These internal links also help build up your authority and boost the SEO of your previous articles.

Utilize SEO Plugins

There are multiple SEO plugins you can leverage to create more optimized blogs posts. These plugins perform an analysis and aid with selecting keywords that you can base your posts on. Most of these plugins will also help ensure that you put keywords in optimal places, write optimized meta descriptions, and proper keyword density and focus.

Optimize Your Headings

Including optimized headings on your blog posts help readers easily navigate your content and gives you an SEO boost. These headings make it easier for search engine bots to understand the major points and topics of your post. This is especially true for longer blog posts.

Blogs can be powerful tools for SEO and digital marketing. Whether you’re blogging to improve the authority of your business’s website or you hope to make the blog itself your new business venture, if you keep these above tips in mind, you’ll be well on your way to a successful blog.

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