How
to improve SEO results for "Insurance related Web
sites"
by
John Alexander
Whether
you're talking about home insurance, auto insurance, business
insurance or farm insurance, when you visit some insurance
sites, the general topic tends to be pretty dry. I am not
meaning to be a little too harsh here on the insurance
clients, I actually enjoy building insurance promotions. I am
just stating a fact that even my own insurance broker related
to me. By it's very nature, "insurance" is kind of a
boring topic with not a lot of emotional appeal, but it's up
to us, the search engine marketer to change that. It's up
to us to find ways to make the topic appeal. It
really does NOT have to be boring at all!
What
works well for Insurance sites? Here are just a few
suggestions to get started.
The
ideal approach is to create an informational site which
is "loaded" with quality information related to your
target audience. If it is "farm Insurance" you'll
approach it with content of interest (I mean of real
interest) to farmers. For "home insurance" you
want to write content for the home owner. For "auto
insurance", you want an audience who might be interested
in getting an insurance quote but they must be, vehicle owners
first.
The
"Informational Approach" is a great place to
start.
Create
a site filled with quality informational content.
Consider
creating:
Tread
very lightly on the selling angle....and deliver lots
of useful free advice. One of the reasons this approach works
so well is because you know that most people love to use the
Internet for gathering facts, research and advice.
Depending
on who your client is, you may want to build content that will
start with their own general theme but then expand on it. For
the sake of an example, let's work with auto insurance. One
likely objective, might be to increase traffic to a site that
is meant to generate leads or perhaps the visitor is supposed
to fill in a form to get an insurance quote. With this
approach you want to make this the smallest and most
inconspicuous element.
Resist
the urge to promote it the same as 99% of the competing sites
do.
For
Auto Insurance - Who's the target audience?
We
are trying to attract a target audience that "owns an
automobile" or someone who "drives a vehicle"
and therefore, they may need to insure it. What type of
articles and content might be appropriate here? Often at best,
all you'll find are insurance sites that are those relating
information "about their business", or the
"history of their business" or perhaps a page
spouting some sales pitch about how they "guarantee the
best rates." These will not generally serve your target
audiences interests. The visitor needs to find content on the
site that is interesting, useful and appealing to them.
1. So start by creating an idea list of topics that might
attract a vehicle owner.
Create
your own list and make it unique. Remember that you are not
just bound to promote "insurance" as a subject. Your
ideal audience is simply someone who owns a car and may need
insurance. Furthermore, you may need to optimize regionally if
your client is only interested in business from the local
state or province.
Write articles and choose topics based on "high
interest" content.
Here are a few thoughts:
-
How
about articles on topics like auto detailing
-
How
to do various types of body work
-
Tips
on safe driving
-
Tips
on buying a car
-
Advice
on selling a car
-
How
to save money by tuning up your own car
-
Price
or feature comparisons on new cars
-
How
about expanding on the safety theme and include info for
campers or house trailers
-
How
about offering commentary on "local news"
related issues for driving
-
Why
not create a few articles on the topic of "classic or
show cars?"
-
Create
an article offering advice on how to handle yourself if
involved in a car accident
-
How
about safety checklists
-
Free
tips on preventing car theft
-
Advice
on winter driving
-
Give
it some thought, there are plenty of ideas
Thinking
outside the box, also work to identify other markets beside
these that could also mean additional business for the
client?
How
about "motorcycle insurance" or "truck
insurance" or "marine insurance?"
Do
you deal in "snowmobile insurance"?
Each
of these additional suggestions provides a wealth of many
possible topics that you could build volumes of free but
useful quality content on.
Wordtracker
Research: How do your chosen topics compare with real-time
demand?
As
usual, work to identify high performance topics using
Wordtracker. It is extremely important to keep your target
audience in mind for each article. Whether we are trying to
attract fleet operators, truck drivers, purchaser of a new
vehicle, parents of teenage drivers, motorcyclists, or
whoever.....we really want to fine tune our optimization for
the right audience.
If
you need some creative insight on researching your real-time audience
behavior within Wordtracker, be sure to see my short e-guide
called Wordtracker
Magic where I reveal my favorite methods for tapping into
the very best "windows of opportunity" in mere
seconds, instead of spending hundreds of hours of research.
The techniques here are often eye-openers for those who are
looking for original ideas to attract the ideal target
audience.
2.
Next build the site with easy access to ALL articles right
from the front or home page.
Avoid building complicated tables and make sure each page can
be easily crawled by search engine robots.
Ideally,
look for topics that may be perfect to build several similarly
themed pages around. Let's say, that using Wordtracker, you
had found that there was a real high demand for the topic of
"fender repairs and paint touch up".
Note:
The point is, you find one popular topic that several
high demand keyword phrases may also relate to. In the example
above, if you found that "fender repairs" was
popular, you might break it down as follows:
Example List:
-
Buick
fender repairs
-
Oldsmobile
fender repair
-
Repairing
your Toyota fender
-
body
work for Jeeps
-
repair
fender damage on your vehicle
-
fender
repair and matching paint
-
Pontiac
fender repairs
-
Volkswagen
fender repair
-
body
work for Chevrolet
-
repair
your Camaro's fender
Assuming
that "fender repair" and "body work" were
in high demand, each of these phrases could be optimized for
in a series of different articles. Each article could be a
do-it-yourself guide on fender repair for each specific type
of vehicle. Each page is therefore going to have different and
original content.
Warning:
Do not just copy
large bodies of text or content and try to re-use it on
different pages. You will get far better results by creating all
original content. Focus on creating truly valuable
articles and content that are worthy and useful to the reader.
Avoid the danger of duplication - do not create content which
is "too similar" and may get you penalized. Your
goal is to create lots of useful content that you can be proud
of, which in turn will attract your ideal target audience in
to your site. There is no penalty for creating quality
informational content that delivers value and is also truly
relevant for a researched keyword phrase.
3.
Search engines love original, useful content -
yet also it creates new gateways into your Web site too!
In the bulleted example list above, you could create 10
"tutorial" gateway information pages which act first
(by being found to rank high for a popular search term on
major search engines) and secondly, (each page is really
loaded with useful tutorial content which in itself counts as
quality advice) and thirdly, you can then carefully build in
clickable text links that will allow your new visitor traffic
the option of traveling throughout the site.
| Also
note that if your true objective is to gather
insurance leads or auto insurance quotes, you might
try using simple one liner text ads. These work quite
well if you come up with simple but appealing copy.
The example to the left is an example which is not
really a link, but gives you the general idea. |
Are
You Paying Too Much For
Car Insurance?
Click
Here to find out
INSTANTLY |
In Summary:
Emphasis in this one technique is simply to offer really good
or useful content. The do-it -yourself car care audience
will probably own a car or at least wonder if they indeed have
the best insurance rate. Everyone likes the idea of being able
to obtain an "instant quote." The key is always to
focus on what the target audience really wants, instead of
rendering dry, boring old "mission statements" or
content that is written strictly from a sales perspective.
One
of the Internet's best kept secrets is how to research
"behaviors" instead of keywords. (See
Wordtracker Magic)
In
conducting your Wordtracker
research, be certain to investigate and identify as many
strategies as possible. All you really need, in order to get
good to "exceptional results" is just one really
good high demand topic, with a number of high KEI keyword
phrases related to that same topic or theme. Understand what
your ideal target audience is REALLY searching for and then
give them what it is that they want, right up front.
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About John Alexander
John Alexander is Co-director of Training at Search
Engine Workshops offering live, SEO Workshops with partner
Robin Nobles. Grab
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