How to Optimize Your Insurance Agency Website Content for Search Engines

In our previous “How to Create an Effective Website for Your Insurance Agency” blog, we covered practical strategies to create a highly converting website to sell insurance products. We also showed that delivering meaningful content is an important part of this. In this part of the series, we provide content optimization tips to boost search engine rankings for the site you just built.

The main reason for SEO content optimization is that you want to be found by some of the 71% of consumers who research insurance products online before making a purchase. Your insurance website content has to be optimized for local and mobile search too, with a Google study uncovering a dramatic increase in mobile searches with the phrase “insurance near me.”

What Do You Mean by Content Optimization for Insurance Websites?

Content optimization for insurance websites is the process of making your content search engine and user-friendly, so that it can reach the largest possible target audience and drive the highest possible user engagement. When you optimize content for your insurance agency website, you provide relevant information while incorporating specific components for search engine rankings. It’s all about the things you should be doing onsite for your articles, landing pages, and other page elements to get noticed by Google and also increase user engagement. When consumers look up insurance information on search engines, web pages with proper SEO content optimization have higher chances of ranking for respective keywords.

What Are the Keys to Content Optimization?

Your content will rank better if it provides value to the reader and satisfies Google’s Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness or E-A-T guidelines. E-A-T is one of the many guidelines that Google uses to evaluate the quality 0f your content and decide whether it should rank well. As per these guidelines, your content should be:

• Created by an expert
• Trustworthy and posted on an authoritative site
• Updated regularly
• Valuable to the users

Here are useful tips to make your content E-A-T-able:

• Match user intent: The content should answer the questions visitors type on Google before finding your site. You’d have to research keywords to target the right search queries. Also, base your strategy on the nature of business that brings users to your insurance site (is it navigational, informational, or transactional?)
• Create trust: Incorporate the right words to show you know what you’re talking about. Be objective (not pushy) and share relevant stats and research to support your statements. Add credibility with user-generated content like client testimonials.
• Focus on quality: Make a great impression with error-free grammar and stay on topic all through. Improve readability with proper layouts, fonts, and color, and incorporate supportive media to enhance understanding and engagement.
• Establish authority: This is where you cite authoritative sources and add relevant CTAs. Be sure to optimize with visual materials, like infographics.
• Complete the SEO checklist: On-page header tags like H1, H2, or H3 make your content easier to follow and index. Use title tags, meta tags, and search engine-friendly URLs, too.

How to Optimize Your Insurance Agency Website Content to Win Search Engines and Users

#1. Start with Researching Your Target Keywords

You want the people visiting your site from Google to do things like schedule appointments or request an insurance quote. Keyword research will enable you to deliver content that attracts that type of high-quality traffic. While choosing a keyword, investigate the number of users looking up that keyword, their search intent, and keyword competitiveness. Such extensive research will help ensure that you generate high-quality, relevant content to engage your target audience and drive more conversions.

Choosing a primary keyword should never be the end of your insurance marketing strategy. Instead of optimizing a single keyword, you should create keyword themes based on like-minded keywords (all centered around the same idea). Make sure that you choose keywords within a realistic reach and that are not too competitive.

#2. Go One Step Ahead to Create Topic Clusters

Insurance buyers tend to do a lot of research on Google and, in doing so, they keep adding different aspects to their query. For ex: someone searching for “property insurance agents near me” may also further their research by modifying their queries to “P&C agents with best customer service”. That’s where topical clusters content optimization technique comes in. As can be inferred by the name, you don’t only target a singular keyword, instead, you are optimizing your content for a larger topic by targeting a string of all the important keywords falling in the same category, making it a topic cluster.

#3. Research Competitors to Develop Content Benchmark

Content benchmarking is about assessing your most successful competitors online for their entire content strategy to determine the right benchmark for your content. Having a benchmark and duly following it helps you stay competitive with your content and provides you better chances at beating your competitors for target keywords. When studying competitors, you can look for content type (list post, guide, article, tutorial, informational, comparison, etc.), content length, quality, search intent match, use of keywords, internal and external link structure and quality, and several other things to determine the best strategy for yourself.

#4. Optimize Your Page Meta Descriptions for Conversion

A meta description (MD) describes your web page or service and appears prominently alongside a search result. Optimizing it in the following ways can increase your SERP click-through rates (CTR):

• Keep your MD less than 160 characters
• Incorporate your primary keyword(s) in the MD
• Create an insightful MD and include a CTA if possible

#5. Use the Headings in Proper Structures

With HTML tags for headers (H1 to H6), you can structure your insurance website content to maximize the SEO value. When you include H1, H2, and H3 headings, Google will scan those to better understand your article. Make sure the sub-headers are related to the main heading and incorporate target keywords in a natural way.

#6. Use Location-Specific Phrases to Target Local Intent

There’s been a growing uptick in the number of mobile searches for local insurance services or agencies. To boost your local SEO, you should use geo-specific words in your keywords. Mention your target state or city or phrases that have your city or vicinity’s name in the keywords within your page titles and H1 tags. You should also go one step further to also include some details about your community in your content wherever applicable to provide a local context to the readers while staying on topic. This kind of local targeting can help your content a long way with its rankings and also in driving good engagement with your content from local users.

#7. Use a Search-Engine Friendly URL

A Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is the unique web address that visitors use to reach your insurance agency website. A search-engine-friendly URL not only enhances the user experience but also helps Google to determine what different pages on your website are about and how those pages are interrelated. In short, URLs are the building blocks of your insurance website, which, when optimized for search engines can help drive the right traffic to your website. Moreover, well-structured URLs appear more credible and are easier to share.

A few best practices for URL structure include:

• Keep your URLs standardized to prevent errors while linking to other pages on or outside your website
• Use keywords that are relevant and reflect what your page contains while selecting page category
• Keep it simple and easy to understand to guide visitors to the content they are looking for

#8. Don’t Forget to Use Images and Optimize It

Image optimization starts with the design and content of the image. Then comes the technical parts like image file name, title, and alt tags–all telling the right stories while also targeting relevant keywords. Readers enjoy the images, but Google scans the optimized descriptions for SEO purposes. A simple rule of thumb for image optimization is to keep your image content and its descriptions aligned with the topic of your content and optimized with the target keywords.

#9. Optimize the Content’s Body for User Engagement

Marketers talk about dynamic content optimization and getting the timing right a lot, but it’s easier to forget how the right structure can impact engagement and conversions for an insurance web page. Whenever you write, you should start with a compelling intro that sets the scene (be sure to add the primary keyword in the first 100-150 words at least once). Recall SEO content optimization doesn’t mean writing for search engines. Instead, write for users by utilizing target and semantic keywords naturally and in variations throughout the content.

#10. If Possible, Create and Embed Videos

Videos being the highest engagement format, it’s a great idea to record a video on the same topic and embed it on your page or blog post. It helps with improved user engagement and rankings. For example, you can do an informative explainer video, such as on ways to reduce homeowners insurance costs. When it comes to video content optimization, ensure it’s a high-quality production and use the right keywords in the metadata, including the title and description.

#11. Get Your Internal Linking Right

This is where you enforce appropriate connections between the different pages on your website. As a matter of fact, Google also finds different pages on your website by jumping through links of different pages you add on each given page. Each of your pages or blog posts should link back to another page(s) or post(s) belonging to the same or related topic category. By linking, you can establish a logical connection among different pages and create a logical sitewide navigation for users. It also helps search engines to identify your site as a go-to resource for a topic cluster. This establishes the site’s authority in the insurance niche and boosts rankings for related keywords.

#12. Link to Related, Authority Websites

Link to relevant sites with related stats, guides, or studies to support your statement in your content. With third-party verification of your claims possible, your site can easily establish trustworthiness in search engines and users’ eyes.

#13. Never Forget Your Target Audience at Any Stage

Know who your target audiences are and what they want to learn or get from you through your website. What value can you provide with your content? What formats can you utilize to make your messaging clearer? How can you establish trust with your content? These are the things you need to keep in mind throughout your content journey, from the time you identify a keyword and create the content to on-page content optimization and more.

#14. Add Calls-to-Action to Drive Conversions

Don’t forget to use the right calls to action at the right places throughout your content-both in the form of overt CTA buttons and subtly, in the form of a complete paragraph that sets interest and then links to a related page for more info. After all, every content on your website has to have a purpose and CTAs are how you get your audience to fulfill your purpose.

Create High-Quality, Intent-Driven Content for Your Insurance Agency Website with Stratosphere!

There are various content optimization tools out there that you can leverage to boost organic traffic to your insurance website. However, those won’t matter without a proper strategy that helps establish brand trustworthiness and a meaningful online presence.

If you need help creating optimized content for your insurance agency website, contact us at Stratosphere today. Our team of insurance content marketing experts are here to help you create SEO-friendly content that will engage your target audience and establish your unique brand identity.

Insurance Marketing How-To