Does Anyone Solely Rely on Their Website to Sell Insurance?

robb01

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I've noticed locally that an agency is marketing themselves as "the only online insurance agency for the area". Does anyone solely rely on thier websites for leads/new business?
 
Re: Does Anyone Solely Rely on Thier Website to Sell Insurance?

haha, i tried to for the last few months, but drastically saw the checking account go down
 
Re: Does Anyone Solely Rely on Thier Website to Sell Insurance?

We sell 100% online thru our websites, have been for over three years.
 
Re: Does Anyone Solely Rely on Thier Website to Sell Insurance?

The insurance industry is one of the most competative online sectors so I wouldn't rely soley on it for your leads although it can provide a great supplement if done correctly
 
Re: Does Anyone Solely Rely on Thier Website to Sell Insurance?

robb01,
keep in mind that "the only online insurance agency for the area" doesn't necessarily mean that your competitor is relying solely on internet leads either.
 
Re: Does Anyone Solely Rely on Thier Website to Sell Insurance?

99% of my initial contact with prospective clients comes from my sites. This has been the case for six years or so. I also do a little direct mail and of course telemarketing but only to those who have visited our site.

I probably should be more diversified, but so far, so good.
 
Re: Does Anyone Solely Rely on Thier Website to Sell Insurance?

Seeing what Alston and the other experienced guys do amazes me. That's definitely where I want to be. Built mine a little over a year ago, and probably getting 4-10 leads a week now, but thankfully it's just me working them...

how long did it get for you to be consistent where you could use it for 99% Alston?
 
Re: Does Anyone Solely Rely on Thier Website to Sell Insurance?

I think it took about 18 months to get on the first page for my targeted phrase. PPC was a lot easier back then so I was able to make a decent living on PPC at that time.

I had a lot less SEO knowledge back then, but fortunately so did everybody else.

This goes back to 2004 or so. I basically got every free link I could and selectively bought links. My son did most of this for me. He worked as my assistant until he got his license. I paid for a lot of $10 permanent links in directories.

I don't think that buying links works as well today. Of course, Yahoo! BOTW and a few others are exceptions.

I created a lot of pages even though I didn't blog back then. I went after "Connecticut health insurance" and was #1 for a few of years for that phrase.

I also went after a lot of other phrases that included those three words and "stand ins" for those words.

Examples:
"Blue Cross" is a good stand in for "health"
"CT" and "Conn" are good stand ins for "Connecticut"
"medical" is a good stand in for "health"

When I lost the #1 rank for the head phrase, it didn't matter too much since I still did well for the long-tail.

I get anywhere from 10 to 30 leads daily from SEO for my CT website. I also get some cheap low hanging PPC fruit, but have a very small PPC budget for the agency today.

My suggestions for 2011:

Your head phrase should probably be [state or geo qualifier] + [line of insurance] + "insurance."

Your head phrase might be "Arizona health insurance" If your market includes a big city you might target the city name. You might target a county, borough or parish.

If you have a new site, you probably can't compete for the head phrase. This should, however, be your long term target. Your home page or some other well-linked (internally and externally) page should target the head phrase.

Basic SEO to target a keyword: Use it in the title tag, the H1 tag, most of the backlinks to that page and an outbound link to another page on your site.

Your other pages should target similar keywords that you can compete for using semantically-related words (aka stand-in words).

Get in every free directory you can. Look especially for local directories that the big national websites can't get into.

Create content regularly. Get links with anchor text that use a variety of phrases. However all the phrases should be semantically-related to your head phrase.

"Aetna insurance premium in CT" is not synonymous with "Connecticut health insurance" but it is semantically-related. If you create enough pages or blog posts that use keywords that are semantically-related to your head phrase (and do the same thing with links), you will eventually find that you rank for your head phrase.

This could take months or years, but while you are waiting, you will probably get traffic for the long-tail keywords.

Final tips:
There are a lot of reasons why you can't trust any keyword tool completely. They make good starting points, but don't allow them to stifle your creativity or common sense.

For the same reasons that "broad match" usually overstates traffic "exact match" can understate it.

IMNSHO, Google's keyword tool is very useful for SEO, but it is a PPC tool that serves Google's interests more than it serves PPC customers. Why do I think this? I regularly get hits -- from Google -- for keywords that Google's keyword tool says have no traffic.

Last tip:
Don't forget Yahoo!
 
Re: Does Anyone Solely Rely on Thier Website to Sell Insurance?

how can you possibly only have 1 marketing activity?

Impossible for you to say 100% website only,

If you get a referral, do you turn it away? you do NO other marketing? I think your full of it........
 
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