SEO (Search Engine Optimization) helps your page rank high in search engine results. Best practices for SEO include publishing relevant content, writing compelling title tags and meta descriptions, and more.
A strong marketing presence is part of your agency’s brand. SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a part of your marketing presence. SEO helps your page rank high in Search Engine Results, which leads to more people finding your insurance agency.
Here are some SEO best practices you can use in your insurance agency marketing.
Make sure your content aligns with search intent
Search intent is, simply, the purpose or goal of an online search. There are four kinds of search intent
- Informational intent: When a user is looking for specific information, like best insurance marketing strategies.
- Navigational intent: When a user is looking for a particular website.
- Commercial intent: When a user searches for a product category such as health insurance agencies.
- Transactional intent: When a user searches for a product to purchase such as buy health insurance.
Optimize your website and online presence with the intent of your users’ searches. For example, if the subject is group health insurance, here are some things to consider:
- Informational: Write a blog to answer the question Why should an employer offer health insurance to their employees?
- Navigational: Submit your website to directory listing services for your site to be indexed by search engines.
- Commercial: Submit an XML sitemap, so the search engines know you offer group health insurance.
- Transactional: Establish a Google My Business account, so you display in local or other relevant search results.
Identify specific title tags and meta descriptions
Title tags are the clickable links to a webpage in search results; meta descriptions summarize that page in search results.
Here are some best practices for writing each of these:
- The suggested length of title tags is between 50-60 characters, with the focus keyword (primary term users will search for) at the beginning of the title tag. If needed, the title tag can be anywhere between 70-78 characters, but it may be cut off in search results. This is why the focus keyword needs to be at the beginning of your title tag.
- The optimal character length for a meta description is 150-160 characters, with the focus keyword near the beginning of the meta description.
- Write a title tag and meta description that align with search intent.
- Make title tags and meta descriptions descriptive but concise.
- Make sure title tags and meta descriptions are action-oriented and accurate.
Specific and descriptive title tags and meta descriptions influence click-through rate (or whether people will click through to your website).
Optimize website images
Optimizing the correct images on a website is an excellent practice to be properly indexed by search engines. Optimize those images by:
- Choosing the right kind of image format (PNG or JPEG).
- Compressing your image size (the larger the image, the longer your site takes to load).
- Providing alt text for images (descriptions that help for SEO and accessibility purposes).
Optimize your page speed
Page speed is an important aspect for SEO and can often be confused with site speed. However, page speed is the amount of time the website can deliver content on the front end (what a user can see). Slow content delivery to a user’s browser can cause usability issues, and users tend to leave due to low speed.
Use internal linking
Internal linking is a term used in SEO for linking one URL to another on the same website. This is an important aspect to tell search engines about the site architecture and increase ranking. When writing content, link to other relevant pages on your website when appropriate. For instance, if you were writing a blog about life insurance, provide a link to the services page of your website where you have information about buying life insurance.
Publish long-form content
Research and studies show that long-form content gets “three times more traffic and four times more shares” than short-form content. What is considered short-form and long-form content varies. On average:
- Short-form content is anything that is 1,000 words or less.
- Long-form content is anything over 1,000 words.
The length of your long-form content will depend on the topic and your audience. Publish long-form content with relevant keywords to get your website more views and traffic.
While there are many more SEO best practices, these are an excellent place to start. Use these to build your insurance agency marketing presence.