The Most Important Factor in Search Engine Optimization
In order to succeed today, an insurance agency must recognize that more than 80 percent of consumers rely on the Internet to browse and comparison shop before they commit to purchasing, whether they intend to make the purchase online or at a traditional brick and mortar location. This huge number of prospects must be able to find an insurance agency online among untold numbers of competitors-and that phenomenon requires the savvy insurance agency to employ SEO, or search engine optimization.
A successful SEO strategy drives prospects to the agency’s virtual door by bringing the agency’s name at or near the top of unsponsored searches when a consumer enters keywords that relate to the agency into a major search engine such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, Bing, or Ask. The person performing the search could be researching information related to auto insurance, or an existing client who simply needs to get the agency’s phone number and hours. Either way, being easy to locate the agency will make it that much simpler for a prospect to become a customer, and an existing customer to become a lifetime client.
In a nutshell, how SEO works
How companies get to the top of the heap (or the top of the search page results, in this case) is in the “hands” of search engine spiders or “bots” which cull the Internet at light speed, looking for web pages whose content is applicable to the keywords that were searched for. The exact (and constantly shifting) methodologies used by the search engine organizations to rank items resulting from a search are each company’s own well-guarded trade secret.
It’s all about the frequency
Experts say that the biggest factor in successful SEO is how frequently consumers will click on an agency’s URL to go to its website when the agency is one of many results returned by the consumer’s search. The number of clicks translates directly into the ranking assigned by the search engine, with the rank rising in accordance with the number of clicks. Also, by featuring offline and online promotions the agency increases brand awareness among consumers. This familiarity will in turn help improve the chances of consumers selecting the agency name they recognize rather than several pages of unknown names returned by the search.
Ultimately, consumers will want to buy from an agency that offers a variety of quality coverage, knowledgeable professional agents, and attentive customer service representatives, but they have to first find the agency. That’s where the insurance agency SEO comes into play. Implement a strategic SEO plan and watch as the traffic to the agency’s site increases by leaps and bounds.
