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.
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.
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.
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.
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!!
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.
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 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.
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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.
------------------------------------ Michigan Health Insurance Is my main site. Check out the links directory, more than 9875 helpful links and growing.
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.
Originally Posted by The New Guy
Norvax sites, have virtually zero SEO done to them.
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.
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.
My assumption is that Norvax sites are too similar to each other to be optimized for search engines.
I did a little research on that last year. Norvax drops a common footprint into most of the sites they design. Try these searches to see how many websites have the footprint:
I'm sure there are several more footprints, but you get the idea.
Google can "see" these footprints when spidering a Norvax website. You always have the option to buy one of the Enterprise level website from Norvax (where, I assume, you can delete the footprint). However, that is expensive.
In my opinion, you're better off building your own website or blog. You can always tack-on the quote engine to your existing website.
I think it is a good idea. However, you should make sure that the IP addresses for the sites are on different C blocks.
All websites have IP addresses. For example the IP address of this forum is: 65.91.249.131
The third section or "249" is the C block.
The reason for separate C blocks is so that Google sees links from your_site_A.com to your_site_B.com as a "vote" from an impartial webmaster. If they are all on the same C block they assume that the ownership is the same.
I use glitterhost.com as my hosting company. I know that they can give you at least 10 different C blocks if you pay for the dedicated IP and get the SSL (https) certificate.
You will need to let them know what want before you place your second and subsequent orders so that they put your sites on different servers.
The package I have costs about $250 per site per year.
Norvax does allow their templates to be customized. If you know what your doing, you can add your own Header Tags, Keywords, and meta descriptions to them. Most
[COLOR=#000000]just don't know how to. [/COLOR]
That was also me up until the last 6 to 9 months or so. I don't know it all, but I know enough to put me ahead of 51% of the competition.
As far as multiple web sites, I think that is the only way to go in this day and age.
Where do you think all the leads come from. Multiple Web Sites, or as many call them, affiliates, which is just a fancy word for electronic business partner.
I currently own 71 insurance domain names, and I'm in the process of building web sites for 50 of them. Long term goal of 200 plus sites.
Each domain, and web site is keyword driven, and maximized for "on page" optimization.
For example "College Student Health Insurance" was typed in as a search phrase 471 times within a 50 mile radius of my home in the last 3 months.
So I go out, purchase college student health insurance.info, because the dot com is already taken, build the site using college student health insurance as my title, use that phrase as many time as I can fit it into a logically read sentence on my home page, again utilize that phrase as one of my main key words, plus add that phrase into my alt tag descriptions on my images, then use that phrase in my meta tag keyword phrase.
What you wind up with, is a web site that has one job, is optimized for one job, and search promoted for one job.
Now it just needs to be promoted on a regular schedule. I will do that with Pay Per Click, Search Engine Submission, Directory Submission, and Back Link building.
With a web site, you can control what goes on your page, and it's content, but it's the "off page optimization" that you can't control, but to an extent, you can guide the process with Good Relevant Content with matching keywords, Proper Back Link building, Directory and Search Engine Submission, and Pay Per Click Advertising.
Now, I'm another half of web site design behind for the day, but if this helps just one person, I'll consider that part of my paying it forward for the day.
Re: Generating Leads on your own site
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