A great website is something all insurance agents and insurance agencies should shoot for, but without basic SEO knowledge…
a good site will just sit there doing nothing and attracting no one. As you know, that is bad news. SEO, otherwise known as search engine optimization, is as important to your site as how it looks, what it does, and what it contains. Without at least some SEO efforts, your site may languish in cyberspace without a chance to attract any visitors at all. Luckily, SEO basics are easily understood and finding help is easy.
SEO can be complicated, but it does not have to be.
There are two basic things that most can do without too much technical know-how, but some research is needed. One is to create quality content that has a certain keyword saturation. This is choosing the keywords most relevant to your site, in this case insurance search terms, and integrating them into the text. The other is using backlinks to draw more search engine activity. The more often a site is linked to by external sites, the more power it gets in Google search rankings.
When it comes to content and SEO, insurance agents can write their own content or they can hire a writer. It is important to have quality, original work. Re-using articles will knock you down in the rankings. Researching the right keywords is important. Think about the article is about and go from there. Google has a keyword suggestion tool. The keywords should be in the title and throughout the text. Some like to add them naturally and some add them one per paragraph and in the title. There are great articles out there about getting the right keyword density and some that can even evaluate an article for you.
The backlinks can be harder to find. Google operates under the assumption that if other sites voluntarily link to yours, your site must have some value to it. In other words, when a different site puts a link up to something on yours, your site instantly has more clout. Over time, you will get natural backlinks, but never buy them. This can backfire and your site can sink in the rankings. Instead, link naturally by using press releases, blog posts, directories, and even guest-blog spots for your links. As your site ages, you will get more links as long as your content has value.
There is much, much more to SEO…
However, these basics can really help you. If you have a hard time understanding it or you do not have the time, you can find writers who know all about SEO that can work on content and backlinks for your insurance website. Either way, SEO is not something you can ignore, but you also do not have to devote every minute of your day to it.