The insurance industry is vast. Regardless of your agency’s niche, it’s important to increase your online visibility to get in front of prospective customers. This is achieved through SEO for insurance companies.
I’ll walk you through what insurance SEO focuses your agency needs to see the greatest results in your digital marketing approach.
SEO for Insurance Companies: The Potential Returns
As an insurance agency, you’re focused on one major element of insurance SEO: the ROI.
It’s a common question I receive from my clients: “Are these SEO services going to be worth it for us?”
Knowing the potential returns is key to investing in insurance SEO services with confidence. I measure the potential returns of SEO efforts using what’s referred to as a business case.
Let’s imagine that we create an SEO strategy in which we seek to create around 95 location-centric pages for your insurance agency’s offices. Let’s also say that all of these keywords have a collective search volume of 29,350 a month.
If we were to assume that you would receive monthly traffic of around 2,935, and you received a 2% call-through rate with a 10% conversion rate, and that you earned around $130 of revenue per lead, you could be looking at:
- 587 calls per month
- 294 leads per month
- $38,155 per month, or $457,860 per year
Insurance SEO service for your insurance company can offer sizeable returns that help you sustain and grow your insurance agency.
Local SEO: The Main Focus
Agencies with a physical presence need to focus on local SEO for their insurance company. You want those in your area to be able to find you quickly and easily when they require your insurance services.
The main focus here is on appearing on the Google Map Pack. If I were to search “insurance agency,” this would appear at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs):
How do you show up here?
My local SEO services approach begins with making sure that you have a Google Business Profile for each branch.
A Google Business Profile, formerly Google My Business, is what pops up in the Google Map Pack. When you have a GBP for each of your locations, you’ll have greater online visibility across the board.
None of your offices are going to go under the radar like they would if you were to have only one Google Business Profile for your entire business.
The next step is to make sure that these profiles are properly optimized so that they rank on the Google Map Pack. This is achieved in SEO for financial services by:
- Adding all of your business information (business name, address, phone number, etc.)
- Utilizing high-quality images to showcase your professionals and your agency
- Ensuring that you’re using the right category for your agency. For example, some might fall under “insurance agency” or “insurance broker”. Other results might show something more specific, like a car insurance agency would appear as “auto insurance agency.”
- Encouraging each customer to leave a review with detailed information regarding their experience.
- Updating your GBP regularly and responding to reviews to show Google that your business is active.
Businesses on Google Map Packs receive as much as 44% of total clicks on SERPs. It’s vital that you appear here so that you can get the exposure your insurance agency needs.
It’s important to note that in some niches, Google Map Packs might not appear. In this case, we’ll focus on traditional insurance SEO strategies to ensure you appear on SERPs.
Other Local Considerations
Local SEO isn’t limited to just the Google Map Pack. In fact, local SEO extends beyond these top results.
Continuing with the above example, let’s say that I’m looking up “insurance agency”. After the Google Map Pack, you’ll see this:
Looking for an insurance agency will prompt Google to show me insurance agencies in my area, such as car insurance agencies and life insurance agencies.
Insurance SEO needs to focus on ranking locally on traditional SERPs, too. Should a potential customer scroll down to further assess their options, your insurance business will still appear there.
Local and national insurance agencies will appear in these SERPs. However, you’ll find that even small insurance agencies are able to stand out from the bigger players, like Farmers and Progressive.
I’ll conduct an SEO audit, then create a strategy that focuses on helping each of those locations rank so that you appear on both the Google Map Pack as well as traditional search engine results pages.
I’ll also help you target lesser-known elements like NAP (name, address, and phone number), which Google looks at across various resources and directories to verify the legitimacy of your business.
With the right SEO strategy, you can make sure you’re getting in front of your potential customers.
Keyword Research: Your Niche Approach
Local SEO is an important focus in insurance SEO. But you’ll also want to make sure you’re focusing on keywords that are relevant to the services your agency offers, and those that customers in your area are searching for.
Let’s say that you are a life insurance agency. There are numerous keywords that you could leverage to appear on SERPs, beyond just focusing on location-based keywords. These SEO keywords for insurance marketing might include:
- “when to purchase life insurance”
- “is life insurance taxable”
- “what life insurance do I need”
- “whole life insurance definition”
- “is life insurance a good investment”
- “when to sell life insurance”
I focus on finding long-tail keywords that are easy for your business to rank for so that you can see faster progress on search engine results pages. A common mistake for insurance agencies to make is to use keywords that are too difficult to rank for in the competitive insurance industry.
Trying to rank for “health insurance”, for example, is going to be impossible as an insurance agency getting started with search engine optimization.
This would be something that would quickly become evident on Google Analytics as your digital marketing strategy fails to yield results.
Long-tail keywords will ensure you rank on search engines, help you generate organic traffic, and bolster conversions to increase your business and profitability.
These are what I focus on when conducting SEO keyword research for insurance brokers, insurance agencies, and independent insurance agents.
Technical SEO Considerations
The technical state of your website could make or break your SEO strategy.
Technical SEO is an aspect of insurance SEO that often goes overlooked.
At the most basic level, technical SEO might be something you’re already familiar with. When you optimize your H1, title tag, URL, or meta description, you’re tackling basic technical SEO.
Technical SEO also entails the state of your insurance website. Some insurance agencies might have websites that load slowly, are riddled with 404 or 500 error links, and look outdated.
For example, the Aberdeen Group found that 40% of users will abandon a website if it takes more than three seconds to load.
These elements drive away users and make it harder for Google to crawl and index your insurance website. Both can result in lower search engine rankings for insurance firms.
What’s also important to utilize is schema markup. Put simply, schema markup is code that makes it easier for Google to understand exactly what your business is and what services it offers.
An example of an insurance schema you will use on your insurance website can be found here.
E-E-A-T and YMYL
The Google Quality Raters’ Guidelines categorize some industries as “your money or your life” (YMYL) industries. Businesses in these industries, like your insurance company, are held to a higher standard.
No matter whether it be health insurance companies, car insurance companies, or other insurance firms, you have to appeal to YMYL standards.
As such, you have to make sure your website exemplifies experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T).
There are numerous ways to improve the E-E-A-T of your website, regardless of whether you’re looking to improve SEO for financial advisors or insurance agencies. Some of the strategies I employ in the insurance industry include:
- Keeping your insurance agency website up-to-date and adding an SSL certificate.
- Having “About” and “Contact” pages that are easy to navigate to and feature real people in your insurance agency.
- Adding visible dates to your blogs, as well as author photos and bylines.
- Using experienced writers to create knowledgeable long-form content for digital marketing. For example, a current insurance agent would write authoritative content and be a trustworthy source of information.
- Featuring certifications and awards on your website.
Google wants to know that you’re an authority in your industry, and your potential customers will want to know as well.
Write Content
Creating content is the next logical step after doing all of your keyword research. Once we’ve determined which keywords to use, you need to create copy and content around those to generate organic traffic.
There are several different types of SEO content I focus on when it comes to content marketing. These include:
- Location Pages: Location pages are essential to ranking on SERPs, especially as they pertain to local SEO in content marketing. I focus on location-based keywords that help you appear to local Google users for effective SEO results.
- Service Pages: Optimizing every service page with a related keyword allows you to rank on SERPs for people who are searching for those specific insurance solutions.
- Regular Blogs/Articles: Creating blogs or articles around questions that potential customers might have helps direct them to you, which can result in conversions for those who might not be looking for your agency specifically.
I focus on creating one page or blog per keyword for content marketing. Speaking as an SEO expert, this helps you rank effectively for every keyword and maximize your insurance SEO results.
Get Backlinks
Backlinks are one of the core pillars of SEO, but they’re not easily understood or acquired.
Backlinks are something that many insurance agencies struggle with.
Think of backlinks as word-of-mouth marketing. If you do a good job for enough people, they point to you as the go-to insurance agency or the expert. The bigger you get, the bigger the impact you’ll have.
Backlinks signal to Google that you’re considered an authority in the insurance agency. They demonstrate that other websites look to you for trustworthy information. Having more in the right places, like your homepage, will greatly improve your ranking on search engines.
In fact, almost 100% of sites that fall in the first 10 results on SERPs have at least 100 unique domains linking back to them.
If you want to make sure your SEO strategy is effective, you have to focus on link building and outreach.
As your insurance SEO agency, GB Digital handles these SEO services for you, leveraging our connections with reliable websites to ensure your link-building strategy produces quality results.
Brand Signals, AI, and Modern SEO
AI can be a polarizing topic in search engine optimization, but it’s here to stay. Knowing how to appeal to the algorithm so you can improve your online visibility is a major part of modern SEO.
Take, for example, AI Overviews. AI Overviews are summaries of relevant information that appear at the top of SERPs for certain searches. I have my own formula to help you show up in AI Overviews.
Another important focus is brand signals. Branded links, branded searches, and mentions of your brand across the internet can all affect how visible you are.
If you’re mentioned enough, you can take advantage of clickless search, allowing Google to do the legwork to bring customers to you.
In the modern era, adapting to current and emerging technologies in search engines is a must.
Hire Insurance SEO Professionals at Garit Boothe Digital
Don’t let poor search engine optimization performance stand in the way of insurance agency growth. Let the experts at Garit Boothe Digital manage your SEO strategy to boost your online visibility and profitability.
Book your discovery call with us today to get started!
