Generating Leads on your own site

mcday · 06-02-2008, 11:41 PM

Yeah, like Charpress said, "... getting a site up and running is the easy part." The hard part is getting traffic. Specifically, the right kind of traffic.

This forum is a work of SEO art. It has fresh, relevent content being produced 24/7 that is highly targeted to reach insurance agents.

If you want the traffic, you have to give the search engines content that they'll value to match the keywords you're targeting. For instance, if you want to reach people looking for health insurance in Utah... write content about health insurance in Utah. Add a few basic on-page SEO factors and there's a good chance you'll start getting some long-tail searches related to your topic.

If anyone, and I do mean anyone, out there wants some SEO pointers just send me a PM.

No, I'm not charging for help. I just want to give back.

Mike

Charpress · 06-03-2008, 11:40 AM

There is a book called "Selling Sucks" that I bought recently because of recommendations on this forum. The book is OK and marginally worth reading from the sales side. However, what really caught my eye towards the end of the book are some really innovative ideas for pulling traffic to a Website.

I'm not going to give away the ideas because it would be too complicated to try and explain. I have no personal stake in this, of course, but anyone who wants to invest $20 or whatever for new ideas might want to get a copy.

RayGroupInsurance · 06-04-2008, 09:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Charpress

I don't want to rain on any-one's parade, but getting a site up and running is the easy part. Someone searching for your name or company name specifically will find it, but they had to be looking for you in the first place. Getting other traffic is the part you have to figure out.

Take a look sometime on what Google AdSense charges for keywords like "Insurance" "insurance quotes" "life insurance" and so on. The only word I know of that is way above these in cost is "mesothelioma" which is the money maker for lawyers. This word can cost $5 a click. Even the misspellings of this word are expensive.

If you try to pay for broad match terms like insurance than yes, it's impossible unless you have millions to spend each month. But I don't want everyone in the world searching for insurance to find my site. I can get the words "Utah Insurance" for only a couple thousand of dollars per month (thats still too much for me, but more reasonable). If you break it down even further I can just purchase terms like "salt lake city home insurance" which is even less expensive.

I agree getting traffic to your site is the hard part, but if you put your time into it you will start showing up on page one. I started my own blog 3 weeks ago and it is already ranked #3 for certain terms related to utah insurance. I don't know anything about internet marketing and my blog is #3 so that tells me if you put in the time and effort you can show up on page one.

Charpress · 06-05-2008, 03:37 PM

I you haven't already done so, install Google Analytics on your site. It will help pinpoint what your visitors are doing on your site and it will tell you what search terms brought them there.

robliano · 06-05-2008, 04:15 PM

Why is it that most people don't reply to the question?

You can't just throw up a website (by paying for hosting) and expect leads, you need to drive traffic there, either organically or through pay per click advertising.

Is it worth it? To some yes, to some no. You can buy exclusive leads now that will cost the same as it will for you to generate a good lead flow on your own.

That's what it comes down to. So is it worth it? I say no, I don't want the headache, I'll just buy leads and let their web guys worry about the rest. I'm a sales professional, I don't design websites, host them or care to pay for advertising. I want to sell, that's where I make my money (and training).

If it's so easy to generate leads, go into the lead biz and sell them, I hear it does well!!

mcday · 06-05-2008, 04:18 PM

Google Analytics is great (unless you're buying PPC from them). You never want to let the fox in the hen house.

At the very least, create and install tracking code from statcounter.com

RayGroupInsurance · 06-10-2008, 07:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by robliano

You can't just throw up a website (by paying for hosting) and expect leads, you need to drive traffic there, either organically or through pay per click advertising.

Is it worth it? To some yes, to some no. You can buy exclusive leads now that will cost the same as it will for you to generate a good lead flow on your own.

Where are you finding exclusive leads? I currently use companies like Netquote, insweb, and insureme but I have yet to find any that offer exclusive leads.

As far as the price, I think the first year my costs will be expensive but after that I will only be paying to have the site hosted which is $5-50/month. Right now I pay about $10/lead for shared leads if I can generate 1-2 leads a month than the site is paying for itself.

I don't plan on using PPC, I am going to build a quality site that will rank well under the keywords I want, so my costs will be minimal. I also want to have a site so that my agency looks a little more legit, a place where my current clients can go for answers to common questions.

The Rabbi · 06-10-2008, 10:17 PM

I have a Norvax site that runs $100 month and I have tried some advertising but I get hits, I don't get calls.

Since I am moving into the senior market, I may give up the Norvax and just get one of the $5 or so sites, just to have a site. It can still take them to my company links for quotes. So why do I need Norvax web site for so much $

joshril · 06-10-2008, 11:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Rabbi

I have a Norvax site that runs $100 month and I have tried some advertising but I get hits, I don't get calls.

Since I am moving into the senior market, I may give up the Norvax and just get one of the $5 or so sites, just to have a site. It can still take them to my company links for quotes. So why do I need Norvax web site for so much $

I justify my Norvax expense by the time savings the quote engine provides me... I guess it depends on how much underage business you are doing.

mcday · 06-10-2008, 11:50 PM

Have you had any instances when the Norvax quote engine was wrong? Do they do a good job keeping up with rates, possible rate-ups, etc?

I would like to use them, but I hate quoting information that I don't get 1st hand.

robliano · 06-11-2008, 01:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mcday

Have you had any instances when the Norvax quote engine was wrong? Do they do a good job keeping up with rates, possible rate-ups, etc?

I would like to use them, but I hate quoting information that I don't get 1st hand.

I don't think Norvax rates are wrong, they send out standard as far as I know, so it may be wrong for the client but they are not wrong in a sense.

There are a couple of other good lead brokers. Most agencies use several.

Exclusive leads? Norvax has them now, and others.

CHUMPS FROM OXFORD · 06-11-2008, 01:42 AM

Norvax leads are about the worst out there (PZ). Their leads will have a much lower income (on average) than almost every other lead company.

The New Guy · 06-11-2008, 03:06 AM

If your web site hasn't been optimized for search engine traffic, your always going to be walking up hill both ways.

Norvax sites, have virtually zero SEO done to them.

They have no header tags, H1, H2, H3 etc.., keywords, or meta tag titles. I will say they do add your title name into the Meta keyword tag to give you a one word description.

It's a shame they don't do a better job of incorporating these features into their sites they provide.

It takes 6 to 12 months of consistent SEO work to get your site recognized organically. As I said before SEO is a process, not an event.

If your not doing any, then perhaps longer if ever.

Many people give up on their sites long before they have ever done any work to promote them.

I'll give you a quick example. If you type in the search term fullbenefits as one word into google, I come up number four, if you type it in yahoo, I come up number one.

Six months months ago, I wasn't even on the first 100 pages. Now granted fullbenefits is not typed in thousands of times a day, but my point is, that six months ago, I wasn't even in the picture.

Alston · 06-11-2008, 03:15 AM

My assumption is that Norvax sites are too similar to each other to be optimized for search engines.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but my assumption is that they are built on a fairly rigid template with only a small amount of customization being allowable.

If that is the case, a Norvax site can't be optimized because the search engines will see too much duplicate content when they compare the Norvax sites with each other.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The New Guy

Norvax sites, have virtually zero SEO done to them.

TXINSURANCE · 06-11-2008, 03:19 AM

You are correct and even if they "could" - SEO is such a changing and ongoing process - there is no way they could charge a fair price and measure results. They have a hard enough time pulling $50 a month out of agents, let alone $5000 a month for extreme SEO - it is simply not happening. I don't think that is their intention or target market either.

RayGroupInsurance · 06-11-2008, 01:41 PM

I am having my site built professionaly and so far I am happy with the way it looks. I was thinking about buying 3 or 4 domains with Yahoo Site Builder and building some simple sites that would link people to my real site.

Can anyone with SEO experience tell me if this is a good or bad idea? I've heard it's a good idea because you can optimize each page for different keywords (a motorcycle insurance site, auto insurance site, boat insurance site) to rank each page better. I've also heard that Google doesn't like it because you're kind of cheating the system.

Thanks for the help.