SEO for Insurance Websites

[SecureHealth1]

If there is any advice I can give you all on SEO, its this: DO NOT HIRE ANY SEO FIRM, NONE, NADA! We've spent $75,000 over the course of 3 years and have absolutely nothing to show for it. The best advice I can give is to learn on your own. Look up Bruce Clay and follow what he says, he's considered the God Father of SEO. The companies we tried were Straight North and Page One Power, both have raving reviews but got us nowhere. They all waste so much time on strategies and conference calls with you and there "teams", its absurd how much time is spent trying to figure out your industry than trying to get you to rank with very little work actually being done.

 

[valdet]

If there is any advice I can give you all on SEO, its this: DO NOT HIRE ANY SEO FIRM, NONE, NADA! We've spent $75,000 over the course of 3 years and have absolutely nothing to show for it.

I am sorry to see such a huge loss, but what took you so long to figure out what the majority of people can recognize snake-oil SEO companies/people ?

I've never heard of the two companies you've mentioned and the key reviews you mention were probably bogus/paid off.

There is probably better SEO advice in this thread alone, and so many of free resources like Moz, SEL etc... than whatever you had to pay.

I am sorry if I come of arrogant, but stories like this are very hard to read and many agents falling prey to such schemes.

 

[SecureHealth1]

Here is what I have come to learn about SEO. There are thousands of people talking about how to do it and how it works, but places like MOZ, Bruce Clay, Neil Petal etc. and the likes don't tell you how it needs to be organized and structured (unless you pay them).

99% of the online resource gives details that are very gray and give you all kinds of bits and pieces that make your head spin and leave out very important elements. Half the SEO world says you need links, the other half says you need good content, but guess what, neither one actually digs in deep past all of the myths and theories and explains how both need to be done to satisfy the end-user and the algorithms.

Take this thread for an example, It filled with great info, but it's also very confusing to most new guys because everyone is bouncing around talking about so many different pieces to building a website. It's like you can get tips and ideas from so many places for free, but to bring at all together on your own can take years! On top of all that confusion, you have Google which basically uses AI to determine how well your content needs to be based on the searcher's intent.

Everyone says just write "great content" and it will all work out, but no one actually gets into the technicals of how the content should be written, structured, siloed, categorized, sub-categories etc. Everything came together for me after I attended Bruce Clay's in-class training in California a few years ago and got a great understanding on Google's AI of how to write content. We decided to hire those companies because we had the marketing budget to do so, we were simultaneously doing our own SEO which wasn't working so well at the time. We like many others got caught up in spam tactics that we didn't understand was wrong at the time. Once you really learn SEO the right way, you can ignore or decipher what is right and what is wrong very quickly and come up with a great rinse and repeat process.

70% of our leads have come from PPC for the last 15 years, we had always been trying to figure SEO along-side PPC. With many years of trial and error and money spent, we now fully understand the do and don'ts of SEO doing it on our own. We now have writers to write the content for us based on our very specific detailed requests, we no longer do a thing for links, we just keep posting content. In all honesty, I don't see as that big of a loss, because we learned a great deal from those companies (good and bad) even if our rankings had nothing to show for it. Most people can smell the snake oil like you mentioned, but they also wont do anything else on there own after being turned off by SEO snake oil prices.

Tahoe Ray said this:

"You want to create your own content and design. No one knows what you offer better than yourself. If you commit 1-2 hours per day to write relevant for your audience, you'll have MUCH better results than hiring some SEO company."


This is spot on, but to be able to write great content, you have to understand where it fits in your content structure, and then be able to craft it to satisfy the user and the algorithm. The latter is what we kept getting lost on, we can all write good content, but nowadays Google has gotten very smart, they know you have to cover the topic in great depth, down to using certain relevant topics and subjects in it for it to rank. You can't just write on Medicare Supplements in Florida, you also have to cover: Part D, Hospice, Part A, Part B, Nursing Facilities, eligible requirements, and so on. We can all write something good that we know well but can leave out a lot of topics by accident that Google is looking for. Sorry for rambling, this topic runs deep for me lol.

 

[scagnt83]

This is spot on, but to be able to write great content, you have to understand where it fits in your content structure, and then be able to craft it to satisfy the user and the algorithm. The latter is what we kept getting lost on, we can all write good content, but nowadays Google has gotten very smart, they know you have to cover the topic in great depth, down to using certain relevant topics and subjects in it for it to rank. You can't just write on Medicare Supplements in Florida, you also have to cover: Part D, Hospice, Part A, Part B, Nursing Facilities, eligible requirements, and so on. We can all write something good that we know well but can leave out a lot of topics by accident that Google is looking for. Sorry for rambling, this topic runs deep for me lol.

The best way to think about it is that its not what google is looking for, its what people are looking for on google. The best way to find subjects for your articles (keywords or key phrases, etc.) is to just think about the questions and concerns that clients have. That is what they search for on google, so that is what you target. Think about the follow up questions and everything involved in the question or concern, that is what you go into detail about. Google is looking for helpful content, so think about the very specific questions and concerns that people want answered.

 

[somarco]

The best way to think about it is that its not what google is looking for, its what people are looking for on google. The best way to find subjects for your articles (keywords or key phrases, etc.) is to just think about the questions and concerns that clients have. That is what they search for on google, so that is what you target. Think about the follow up questions and everything involved in the question or concern, that is what you go into detail about. Google is looking for helpful content, so think about the very specific questions and concerns that people want answered.

THIS^^^^^^^^^ !!!!