Insurance Agent Web Power

What Kind of Internet Marketing Should Your Insurance Agency Be Doing Right Now?

I’m going to vastly oversimplify the exercise of choosing internet marketing components by making these assumptions:

• You know your insurance agency’s target customers, your key products, and your geographic marketing area;
• You have decided upon which traditional marketing programs you will use -direct mail, print advertising and the like;
• You have a budget for marketing and you know how much of that budget is available to you;
• You also know which programs will be implemented in-house and which ones will be outsourced.

So it’s August already…and your insurance agency is coming up a little short on some sales commitments that could cost you some contingency income and maybe some other preferential treatment from one or more of your insurance companies.  Your problem is short term in nature and you need a short term fix.

For most agencies, the main internet marketing options are these:

• Email marketing (in the short term, this would be confined to your current list)
• Local Search Optimization
• Organic Search Optimization
• Social Media Marketing
• Pay-Per-Click (or PPC)

On a relative basis, the costs for reach line up something like this:

Since we assumed you know your insurance agency’s available marketing budget, you may be able to rule out an option or two at the outset.  But budget aside, each program has different lag-time to sales and each program has a different sales production curve as you move to and through program maturation.   The next illustration shows the different lag times as you move through implementation phases:

This should make your choices fairly easy.  In the short term, Local Search Optimization and Email Marketing are probably your best bet.*  If you don’t have a good email list, one that has been updated, then your option may winnow down to just Local search optimization.  But September is right around the corner and your insurance companies, if they haven’t already done so, are going to start talking to you about marketing plans and commitments for next year.  So it’s a good idea to also consider the longer term sales potential of some of these programs.  Relative to each other, that potential over time looks like this:

When you have the luxury of time, return on investment (ROI) should enter into your decision criteria.  The chart below shows ROI ranges for both social media marketing and SEO.  There is some risk associated with each tactic for multiple reasons (I may blog about that later, if someone asks me to).  But the range of risk is something like good-to-great as opposed to horrible-to-good.  Risks associated with SEO and social media marketing are something most of us can accept and still sleep at night.  PPC would appear to be another matter.   PPC can produce acceptable ROI, but because insurance keywords are so expensive, pay-per-click ROI is unacceptably low for many insurance products.

*although as your short term gets shorter your only option may be to purchase leads

Putting the Role of Your Agency Information, Website, Blog, and Local Search in Perspective

A picture is worth a thousand words, as the old saying goes.  In my case, a picture is worth about 10 webinars, 2 guides, 8 blog posts, 3 newsletter articles and more emails and conversations than I could possibly recount.  For years, I have tried to impress the importance of consistency in your basic agency information across the vast internet – and it is possible, in fact very manageable, to control the appearance of your insurance agency name, address and phone number in web directories and local search engines.  Through numerous blog posts, guides and  webinars I have tried to put the relationship and synergy between local and organic search results, your insurance agency website and blog, and now social media, into a comprehensible context.

And now, courtesy of Mike Blumental’s blog on Google Maps and local search, comes this infographic.  Kaboom!  All the many years of trying to communicate how all these work is captured in one tidy graphic.  It does a nice job laying out how the various manifestations of your insurance agency’s web presence fit together and it does a nice job integrating the concepts of search and social.

You can skip on over to full post on Blumental’s blog for a full explanation of the diagram, and I recommend it, but here are a few essential points captured so cleverly in this one image:

• The rings closest to the center of the ‘web equity wheel’ are most within your control – so control them
• Make sure your business name, phone number and website domain name don’t change  – that’s at the very center
• In the second ring, keep track of user names and passwords that access your directory listings and accounts where your business information appears.  I cannot tell you how many insurance agents had a (former) employee set up their Google Places account, later to find they cannot access their information to correct or update it.
• Insurance agency owners and managers should have complete control of your website and blog, so no excuses for not getting your basic business information right here, and no excuse for not promoting the kind of information about your products and services, the way you want.
• N.A.P., as it appears in the third and fourth rings out, refers to your agency name address and phone number, which also appears in the very center of the diagram.  This information shows up again to highlight the importance of controlling this information at the headwaters – those data providers that populate (hundreds and hundreds of) directories and local search listings downstream.  Again I say, to those insurance agents who represent Progressive, take advantage of their List Agent program and will make quality controlling your N.A.P. information a *lot* easier

I’m going to stop there since there is already a thorough explanation of the diagram at Mike Blumenthal’s blog.  But you get the picture (heh, heh, no pun intended).  A few questions I’d like to leave you with:  1.  What kind of progress have you made building your agency’s web equity?  Are you stuck in the middle?  2.  If you are working on your social media presence in rings four and five (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.), have you skipped over some of the details in the inner rings?

I don’t like to use this blog space as a commercial for Confluency Solutions, but I couldn’t help it this time.  In a  recent video blog post Google’s Matt Cutts answers the question:  what are the three things you would do to optimize SEO for 2011.

Number 1: Optimize for speed; it is a page rank factor, but more importantly, all evidence shows that, when web pages load quickly, site visitors do more on your site, resulting in better ROI.  Confluency has done a lot of work over the last 12 months, making our sites faster and faster.  Right now, nearly all of the websites Confluency has engineered rank in the top 1% of the fastest websites in the world.

Number 2: Make sure everyone in your organization understands good content management practices and make sure you are using good internal linking strategies within your website. Confluency recently added an automatic linking feature within our website CMS to further improve internal linking and we just kicked off a new process to make it more simple than ever for agents to understand and engage in sound content management practices, all at the cost of 20 minutes a week.

Number 3: Engage in social media marketing.  Social media activity can result in direct traffic to your insurance agency website and will also mean occasional back links to your website, which is good for SEO.  Confluency has long provided guidance to the agents we work with on using social media as a business branding and marketing tool and we are now rolling out a service to provide social media marketing directly for those agencies who want those marketing initiatives handled for them.

Three for three.  Not bad for a day’s work

A couple of days ago, Attorney General Eric Holder announced the arrest of 125 crime family figures in what the FBI is calling the largest mob round up in history.  Every now and then, a major news story reminds us that often, law enforcement is working quietly for long periods of time, building up to a major disruption of criminal activities.  The announcement made me wonder if we won’t soon here a similar announcement heralding the curtailment of spam and near-spam web trickery.

For your consideration (as Rod Serling used to say), point one: Google has recently undertaken a manual audit of Google Place Page reviews.  Many speculate that the audits are a precursor to an algorithm change to recognize and clean up spam reviews.  Reviews, positive or negative, have been a big factor in Google’s local search algorithm.  Because of that, Place Page reviews have been targeted by spammers who post false reviews to influence search results, in violation of Google’s terms of use.  The large number of obviously fake reviews that have proliferated over the last few years has finally prompted Google to take action.  That first step is human review and a possible and likely outcome may be a blended machine algorithm and human audit process.

For your consideration, point two: Back in November, a new search engine launched named Blekko.  Blekko was built in response to the increasing amounts of spam showing up in Google search results.  We’ve all seen useless and unremarkable websites show up at the top of search, and searches related to insurance services are no exception.  Google is clear on their mission to promote sites with the most useful, relevant content.  But, through ignorance or willfulness, website owners still employ tricks to fool Google’s algorithm and gain search visibility.  When Google discovers spam SEO techniques, it levies severe penalties against offending websites.  But that doesn’t stop website owners from trying to out game Google’s algorithm – especially when spammy techniques work.  There is a growing consensus that Google is loosing the battle.  That’s why Blekko’s search results will depend on human input to determine search rank.

For your consideration, point three: Among the initial investors in Qwiki, another new search engine promising a ‘search experience’ are a co-founder of Facebook and a co-founder of YouTube.  Will Qwiki become a major search player?  It’s worth keeping an eye on, but take a look at the introduction video on their home page and notice the reference to curated information.  Yet another search service recognizes the short comings of purely algorithmic search results.

So are we on the cusp of an internet ‘mob’ round up?  I think so, although the bust may not be so sudden and dramatic as the January 20 AG announcement of the real mob round up.  But the trend seems set:  expect more human intervention in all search results.  The message for those of us that own websites?  Google’s mantra, that quality content counts, may actually become more true than ever.

Local Search:  Reviews are More Important than Ever for Your Insurance Agency

Let me just start by beating that dead horse for a minute or two (children in the room, please cover your ears…).  Local search *has been*, *is*, and *continues to be* an important vehicle for most insurance agents who want to be found on the web.  Reviews *have been* an important factor in Google’s local search algorithm.  Reviews *are* an important ranking factor in the local search algorithm.  Reviews *will continue to be* an important factor in Google’s local search algorithm.  Agencies, even brand new enterprises, who acquire just a few legitimate reviews, tend to show up very quickly in top local (and now organic-ish) search results.

A few more insurance agents have claimed their local listings this last year, and thanks to some insurance company programs like Progressive’s ListAgent, local agencies are getting better visibility and new business through Google Place pages.  But most agents continue to lag behind in claiming their free local listings…and even those that do claim are not putting a process in place to routinely capture customer reviews.  And as noted in the preceding paragraph, those reviews continue to be important.  (OK, the children can uncover their ears, I’m done flogging the horse).  In fact, all evidence points to reviews taking on an even larger role in local search rankings.  And now that Google is blurring the lines between local and organic search, the influence of reviews on insurance agency web visibility now impacts organic search optimization as well.

Changes to the Google SERP

Back in early November Google started mixing local search results with organic results.  The local results don’t always display the same way and experts who watch local search closely haven’t yet fully digested the implications of recent changes.  But there is broad consensus that, to some degree, Google’s local search algorithm and their organic search algorithm have been consolidated in some areas.  This can be seen in the following SERP, where the top local listings (push pins) incorporate page titles and meta descriptions from websites (previously the domain of organic search and SERPs exclusively).

And sometimes, local search results show up in middle of organic results, as in the following example:

Google’s boardroom and on screen changes make clear that they are focused on making local and mobile services even more effective (partly in response to Yelp, Foursquare, and Facebook’s Check-in feature).  As part of this effort, Google has launched a new user review service called Hotpot and has quietly launched a full frontal assault on review spam, starting with Google Places’ reviews.  The review clean up effort has been bumpy for some, resulting in the removal of legitimate reviews for some businesses.  Google is working through both a manual review process and an automated algorithm to identify and remove suspect reviews.  Google has hinted at the increased importance of reviews in determining local search rank so it makes sense that they would want to exert a little quality control over them.

Specific, unique, well written reviews are less likely to be removed by Google – those reviews look less like spam, no matter what algorithm Google evolves to. Interesting and well written reviews will also result in more click-throughs from potential customers.  So, the best thing for your insurance agency to do is the same thing that’s always been the best thing to do:  encourage your customers to post reviews to Google, Bing, Yelp, or any other place your insurance agency’s local listing shows up.

How to Get Reviews for Your Insurance Agency

How do you do that?  The answer to that question just happened to have dropped into my in box in the last day or two.  I recently stayed overnight in an Asheville NC hotel.  One day later, an email showed up that looked exactly like this:

Notice the inclusion of Facebook and Twitter – the Hotel Indigo recognizes the importance of connecting with ‘friends’ wherever their friends might choose to congregate.  But also notice the Trip Advisor section:  the hotel is encouraging online reviews.  Insurance agencies should be sending similar emails each time:

a.  A new customer is brought on board

b.  Your agency quotes, but does not acquire a new customer

c.  At the end of most claim settlements

d.  After selected service transactions

The email should come from the agency owner or upper management.  Obviously, your agency isn’t going to encourage customers to leave reviews on TripAdvisor.   Rather, you should mix up Google Places (Hotpot), Bing Local, Yelp, or others.  Doing this will require a little discipline; you will need to set up a systematic process so that you review transactions and send a few emails each day.  It won’t take much time, and the rewards will snowball over time.

It seems like I’m on some kind of SEO Truth-Quest lately…last month I posted an article pointing out that CMS (content management system) is not equivalent to SEO.  I was driven to do that by claims I was hearing in the competitive space for insurance web marketing  that essentially amounted to this:  We give you CMS so therefore your site is search optimized.  If you want a summary of the article, it boils down to this:  NOT.

More recently, I came across some literature from an insurance company who is providing their agents with *free*, search optimized, websites.  It reminds me of an office Christmas party I went to years ago, during which we had to exchange token gifts with a co-worker whose name we drew from a hat.  My giftee wanted a Jaguar for Christmas.  I got her one – a toy, Match Box, Jaguar.  Hey, it *was* a Jaguar.  Likewise, there is SEO and there is SEO.  Robust SEO takes time, effort, and expertise, and as wonderful as it might seem to get SEO for free, you probably aren’t getting much; of course, if you really want to know if you are getting SEO value, take a look at your website analytics after a few months – that’s the proof.

There are levels to SEO, and I suppose someone can say they provide SEO, even at the lowest levels, but it seems disingenuous to me to claim search optimization without providing any details.  Below are four levels of website search optimization – I’ve started with the most basic level – some form of which I suspect the aforementioned free SEO really consists of.  But next time you come across a website provider who claims to deliver SEO for a price that’s too good to be true, go back and ask them which of these SEO components they are actually delivering.

Site Structure – This includes having a well organized website, including elements like xml site maps, good meta data, URLs and H1 tags, using canonical URLs and server header response tags where appropriate, highlighting the most important site content by keeping it near the top of your site map, and architecting a website for fast page loads.

Content – Unique content, for a variety of reasons, is king in web search.  Keyword research and optimization is important; for instance, if you have a choice between using the phrase ‘car insurance’ or ‘auto insurance’, in your page copy, which would you choose?  Hint:  one is searched on a lot more than the other.  You cannot optimize one page for everything, so a well SEOed website will use separate pages to concentrate on one or two keywords each.  Ease of editing and adding web content in and of itself isn’t an SEO practice, but it sure does make practicing SEO a lot easier, so I’m including it here.

Internal Site Linking – Some SEO practitioners view how well a site is linked within it self as accounting for 25% or 30% of SEO performance.  Confluency Solutions subscribes to that view – your most important pages should be linked to and from other pages within your website and different, keyword rich, link text should be used.

External Links or Back Links – Google and other search engines consider each third party website link back to your insurance agency website as a ‘vote’ for your website.  More weight is placed on what Google considers higher authority websites, but any legitimate* link will help improve your website’s search visibility.

SEO Today, Gone Tomorrow – Search ranking is extremely fluid:  your competitors** are changing their SEO and the search engines are constantly tweaking the algorithms that rank web pages for relevance.  More robust (and generally expensive) SEO monitors your page rank for key search terms, as well as your competitors’ and watches for changes in search engines ranking formulas; this leads to periodic modifications of your website.

Visitors are Nice But Conversions are Money – Put another way, 10 website visitors a month, all of whom become clients of your insurance agency is a better bargain than 100 website visitors, none of whom become customers.  Robust and full featured SEO will help you define conversions and make changes to improve conversion rates – and get the money.

I also notice that some insurance website providers will do a *free* evaluation of your current website.  (Geez, I wonder how that will come out?)  Again, you have to be skeptical about what you get for free.  At Confluency Solutions, we offer an SEO audit and road map, but it’s not free.  A thorough SEO evaluation can take 8 – 10 hours, and it’s hard to give that kind of time (and work product) away for free and stay in business.  Confluency’s SEO road map can be used to make improvements on an existing website or can be taken to a third party for implementation – it isn’t a sales trick to get you to become a website customer.  How much depth and specificity does a free website evaluation go into?  Is the information sufficiently detailed so you can improve your existing website or use the evaluation as a blueprint and have someone else build your website?  If it covers the elements itemized above, it will.  If not, it’s probably just a sales trick.

*Links you buy from an offer claiming to be able to deliver hundreds or thousands of back links aren’t going to be legitimate

**Competitors in this regard aren’t necessarily other insurance agencies, but rather, other websites competing for the same keyword.  These could be law firms, medical care providers or even directories.

Google’s introduction yesterday of Google Instant – suggesting search terms as you type – touts a time savings of 2 – 5 seconds deducted from type time for every search as a primary benefit.  But this new feature has a disruptive potential, that is, to significantly change the nature of the searches we do.

Most search terms are short and generic, using one or two words, such as ‘insurance’.   Short tail search terms tend to comprise 50% of search engine website traffic, but a disproportionately smaller share of  conversions.  The other 50% of search traffic are due to long tail search terms, consisting of phrases three, four, five word, or more in length.  Now, watch what happens when I try to search ‘car insurance’ with Google Instant:

Before I have even finished typing the word ‘insurance’ I am presented with a number of suggested searches.  Since I’m in Florida, I might choose the third suggestion; or since I am looking to replace my auto insurance policy, maybe I’ll jump to option four.  The point is, the 50% of searchers who are typing the quick and dirty one word searches are now bound to opt, sometimes, for the more precise longer tail terms.*

It has always been important for insurance agencies to have many different web pages, each optimized for different topics (keywords).  Blogs are great for this, but so are individual web pages for each of your insurance companies (take a look at suggested query four).  Now, with Google Instant, long tail search may become an even bigger factor.

*The reverse could also happen – people setting out to type very specific, long tail search terms, will be presented with shorter, more generic search terms before they are done typing – so some formerly long tail searches could be turned into short tail terms.  It seems to me this will happen less often, however, as someone with a precise search query in mind is less likely to jump to a suggested term before they are done typing.

I see an increasing number of companies specializing in websites for insurance agents that claim to provide search engine optimization (SEO) with their service.  But almost none of them are really are.  More website providers, maybe most at this point, include what is called a content management system (CMS).  CMS allow regular business users, with limited to no technical expertise, to manage and update their own websites.  Using a CMS, you can add content like images and video, add or edit web pages, and importantly you can control key page elements that search ranking algorithms use to determine page rank relevance.

And while there are differences between the various CMS options out there, most all of them remind you to include those key page elements by providing blanks for page title, meta description, meta keywords, and so on.  But including reminders through a CMS is not the same thing as delivering SEO.  In fact, it’s not even close.  To give you an analogy, think about what it takes to fulfill your tax obligations with the IRS, and at the same time, minimize your tax burden.  It’s easy enough to go online and download a Form 1040, and all the blanks are there.  But possessing a blank tax form does not automatically fulfill your tax obligation, the same way having a CMS with all the web page elements for you to fill in does not mean you have search optimized your website.

Obviously, there are advantageous ways to legally complete your tax forms.  But it requires a bit of knowledge about what is both legal and advantageous to complete your tax forms in such a way as to minimize your tax burden.  And the same is true for your CMS:  a bit of knowledge (and fore planning) are required to fill in your page elements in such a way that your web pages get ranked by Google and the other search engines.

Does it matter which CMS you select?  That question can best be answered by a quote from a recent Marketing Sherpa article, “Overwhelmingly, good search engine optimization with a CMS is really more about how you implement the CMS and not necessarily which CMS you select.”  So, in order to make the leap from CMS to SEO requires a plan and effective implementation of that plan.  A good CMS can be tremendously helpful in implementing many SEO plan elements, but CMS without a plan is no more useful than a blank tax form.

This screen shot of the local search portion of a Google search for ‘insurance chattanooga, tn’ points up the problem for insurance agencies.  Why are four of the 7 pack spots occupied by doctors?

The answer is because no local agencies have optimized their local listing in the Google Local Business Center.  Most haven’t even claimed their free listing.  I have seen local SERPs with attorneys, body shops and even Wal-Mart’s Vision Center better positioned than local insurance agents.  An individual searching on the word insurance is far more likely to be seeking an insurance provider than eye or medical care – and Google would like to provide options that fit a searcher’s objectives.  But even Google needs a little help from time-to-time.  This oversight committed by most insurance agents provides a golden opportunity for others.  Confluency Solutions is conducting a free webinar for insurance agents on April 22.  If you want to boost your agency’s search visibility, and write more new business,  you might want to think about signing up and sitting in.

If you want to show up in the top of search rankings for the keyword ‘insurance’, be sure to empty your wallet, hit up all your relatives for loans, and let your kids know they will have to turn in their cell phones and find their own way to pay for college. Here’s a run down of the companies with pages in the top 10 search results for ‘insurance’: State Farm, Allstate, GEICO, Progressive, Insurance.com, esurance, AAA, Farmers, and Liberty Mutual. How does your insurance agency SEO budget stack up against those companies?

But don’t despair, there are alternatives for going head to head against the Goliaths of the insurance industry; the trick is to define the insurance SEO game in terms you can win.

I’m going to explore several options in upcoming blog posts, and I want to start with long tail search. Long tail search terms, not to be confused with long tail insurance claims, are longer keyword phrases. Often, competition is much lower for long tail keywords, and the big competitors are not paying nearly as much attention to them.

Consider that, of the 200 million queries that Google processed in 2004, as much as half were unique. Add to that Google’s 2007 admission that 20% – 25% of all searches were completely new to Google.* What that suggests is an opportunity to capitalize on keyword phrases that will be searched, but that are often missed by the keyword research tools used by big budget on line marketing departments.

There are three simple tactics that insurance agents can use to identify, and benefit from, long tail insurance keywords: 1. Using your staff as a sounding board for new website FAQs; 2. Create keyword ‘demand’ through traditional advertising campaigns; and 3. Use paid search to test out potential long tail search winners. I’m going to tackle the paid search tactic here, and deal with the other two in future blog posts.

Long Tail Search Dressed for Halloween

Paid search can be expensive if you are bidding on common keyword phrases like ‘insurance’, ‘auto insurance’, or ‘business insurance’. The more specific you get, the less expensive the cost-per-click, and likewise, the less competition for those same specific keywords in organic search. Low competition is good, but low competition with zero searches is useless. The trick is to identify long tail keywords that others aren’t competing for, but which also get some search traffic.

Here’s an example. Google’s Keyword tool doesn’t show any data for search results on the phrase, ‘what is uninsured-underinsured motorist coverage?’ But any consumer performing a search using this keyword phrase is clearly looking for some education, and would likely be a high conversion website visitor. The question that has to be asked is whether anyone at all will perform a search using that phrase.  A simple way to find out is to use paid search (in the case of Google, paid search is their AdWords program).

Investing a few hundred dollars over the course of a month or two and bidding on potential long-tail search terms like ‘what is uninsured-underinsured motorist coverage?’ will tell you very quickly if you can get some productive search traffic by optimizing for these terms.  If the search term turns out to be ineffective, your AdWords account will not charge you, and you are free to use your budget to test other keyword phrases.  If you get some click-throughs then you will learn that it may be worthwhile to optimize a few web pages for ‘free’ organic search.

*Excerpted from Aaron Wall’s excellent 50 Kick Ass Keyword Strategies. Check it out for a quick, easy to understand approach to learning what do with keywords.