Where To Begin On Online Marketing Strategy for Insurance Biz?

My experience in SEO is very extensive, however that being said, when one stifles themselves, one will be passed up by others who test, learn, and explore. SEO is an ever evolving process, where the search engines are attempting to defeat the spammers, but those who play by the rules are also hit.

What works today, may not work tomorrow in search engine optimization. Because I have a larger number of EMD websites I was quite displeased with the recent change, specially the money that was invested in creating the websites.

One tactic I'm exploring is changing the focus on the websites to something not remotely tied into the key word, that may save my investment, or perhaps it will not. Only one way to find out.
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But if a site has great content and strong white hat linking, and the domain is 10 years old...and it is an EMD....I would assume it will be fine.


Do you have a EMD? If so have you lost SERP? ( If so how much have you lost in ranking?)

SEOMOZ did a report and showed a large number of EMD with apparent white hat that were hit by this change. Google that report to see what I mean. (However some EMD did not lose ranking as of the time of the report, but the question should be if they are targeting EMD, why take the chance you won't be penalized?)
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Blog commenting? A

Filler.


Blog commenting was affected byan update... If you have excessive blog comments as links you will be penalized!

(so you can turn your scrape box off)
 
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The strange thing about the algorithm changes is that they do not hit everywhere all at once... For instance one of the keywords that we focused on for my agency

[FONT=Arial","sans-serif]I had the very first position on page 1organically for more than 18 months. Google rolled out a penguin update that was targeting excessive blog commenting backlinks… I did not get hit with that penalty about two months after they rolled out that update… but eventually I did get hit. (from page 1 1st position out ranking a 6 billion insurance company to page 3)[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial","sans-serif]The penalty is coming.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial","sans-serif]If you have not been hit yet, it's just right around the corner. If you are relying upon exact match domain names, you are going to be in a world of hurt very soon.[/FONT]

EMD is a strategy of the past. I have 13 EMD web sites, they were all hit, if you know anything about SEO we were completely diversified on the linking strategy. Unless Google changes its mind the EMD penalty is here to stay.

I don't have the time to really dig into this as much as I'd like to. You're making some interesting comments, but I think you're missing huge parts of the puzzle.

You said there was a two month lag on a "penalty". I don't have a timeline in front of me, but if you think al algorithm change impacted your site with a 2 month lag, I think you're getting hit by a different algorithm change and/or something else. Changes in the algorithm impact search results (nearly) instantly.

As to your claim about my penalty coming, I really doubt it. I have that locked down hard. Unfortunately it's a low volume search term that doesn't matter one way or the other, I'm much happier about none-EMD terms I'm ranking for, but whatever I'm doing google seems to like well enough. Phone keeps ringing off the hook lately.

I'd venture there are other things hurting your other EMD sites, but it's truly not my business.
 
One tactic I'm exploring is changing the focus on the websites to something not remotely tied into the key word, that may save my investment, or perhaps it will not. Only one way to find out.

I would think Google would hate that. Nobody wants to search for "life insurance quotes," and go to life-insurance-quotes.com, only to see naked pictures of Mila Kunis, instead of a life insurance quote form. I imagine a problem if your domain name has no relevance to your content.

On a related topic, can anyone help me with my bounce rate for mila-kunis-naked.com?
 
I would think Google would hate that. Nobody wants to search for "life insurance quotes," and go to life-insurance-quotes.com, only to see naked pictures of Mila Kunis, instead of a life insurance quote form. I imagine a problem if your domain name has no relevance to your content.

On a related topic, can anyone help me with my bounce rate for mila-kunis-naked.com?

You are a man that can't be trusted ;)
 
Josh said:
I don't have the time to really dig into this as much as I'd like to. You're making some interesting comments, but I think you're missing huge parts of the puzzle.

You said there was a two month lag on a "penalty". I don't have a timeline in front of me, but if you think al algorithm change impacted your site with a 2 month lag, I think you're getting hit by a different algorithm change and/or something else. Changes in the algorithm impact search results (nearly) instantly.

As to your claim about my penalty coming, I really doubt it. I have that locked down hard. Unfortunately it's a low volume search term that doesn't matter one way or the other, I'm much happier about none-EMD terms I'm ranking for, but whatever I'm doing google seems to like well enough. Phone keeps ringing off the hook lately.

I'd venture there are other things hurting your other EMD sites, but it's truly not my business.

Nope, not missing much...we build links by hand, no black hat, no spammy links ever purchased through Fivver...the truth is that many EMD's were hit, and hit hard...read this: How to deal with EMD penalty? | SEOmoz Q&A

This article was also Interesting is it alluded to the fact that some spamming and junkie EMD sites did not get whacked by the EMD sites, Because there were not sufficient signals For the website to be detected because they may be Very simple sites with little to no content and few backlinks, but Many other EMD websites were hit, check it out:

Everything You Need to Know about the New "EMD" Update | Search Engine Journal

EMD's are in Googles Crosshairs if and when you lose SERP, it's time to go to plan B.
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AgentProvocateur said:
I would think Google would hate that. Nobody wants to search for "life insurance quotes," and go to life-insurance-quotes.com, only to see naked pictures of Mila Kunis, instead of a life insurance quote form. I imagine a problem if your domain name has no relevance to your content.

On a related topic, can anyone help me with my bounce rate for mila-kunis-naked.com?

If my website is commercialinsuranceohio.com, instead of targeting commercial Insurance Ohio, it might be Contractors insurance Ohio for back linking, going to test it out to see.
 
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You build links manually, but it's nothing blackhat? Please tell me you see the obvious contradiction.
 
Josh, what do you believe the term black hat signifies? What is its Definition in your opinion?

Look boss, clearly you believe you have this all figured out. It sounds like you've come here to attempt establish credibility and sell your services (which is just ducky). Don't let me get in the way of you making whatever claims you want and calling whatever you want "not blackhat".

Anything outside of basically building content on your site and coding it the way you want (actually optimizing your website for search engines) is blackhat. If you're going to article directories and doing manual blog commenting, that's blackhat. Again, if you want to call it something other than what it is then go for it, but it is what it is. Just because you're not using scrapebox or spinning it, doesn't put you above the rest, you're just taking more time and arguably doing a better job of being blackhat, but that doesn't mean you're doing it "right".
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I don't normally like to call folks out, but since you seem to want to "back up" what you're saying, why on earth do you have a backlink from headway to your site? What does this have to do with insurance?

Thank you very much for the comparison. I recently found both theme generators in the last week and I have never created a WordPress blog, I’ve always paid someone to do it for me. But I was drawn to the headway themes, but I had a question are there templates available for customization in Headway?

Please don't misunderstand me here, I use blackhat techniques and have had some pretty stellar results from them, but I find it a bit patronizing for you to claim you're all whitehat and do it "right", when in digging through your backlinks for all of one minute I find gems like the above and this little monster:

A backlink on pandora.com with the anchor text "Cincinnati insurance". The discussion has NOTHING to do with insurance, but you've got a backlink there.

It sounds like you're doing well for yourself and I'm not saying you aren't, but can we at least agree to call it what it is?
 
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