Your SEO is Completed. Now what?
Sit back and hope for traffic? WRONG.
WebbyCtrl completes phase one of your SEO efforts for you. It is part of every package we sell. We optimize your website with content, demographic keywords, descriptions, ALT tags, H1 tags and individual titles. We bold various terms and we link pages together as well as creating a solid robots file and sitemap. Your website then gets the Google treatment with Google Maps integration, Google Analytics for website statistics as well as submitting the website to Google, Yahoo and Bing. These are basic necessities every website requires prior to launch.
However many business owners stop there and hope for traffic to start trickling in. It takes hard work and money to begin a strong campaign. Most of us don’t have $25,000 to $50,000 dollars to spend on marketing alone. Reading what others have done to reach their traffic goals is a passion of mine and helps me extend our services and knowledge to our clients. This article is aimed at insurance brokers but can easily be adapted to any profession.
Social Networking, not just online but in person.
We all know online social networks such as Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter can increase traffic by becoming friends with people across the nation. Tweeting about hot topics can also be a good source for incoming traffic. You can also send out ads through Twitter but did you know that online social networks can work in person? You should be looking for associative and non-related businesses that will link into and out of your website. You should also create online social ads that target their Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter customers. You should be looking for close relationships with mortgage companies, health spas, prepared food companies or any company that supports a healthy lifestyle or agencies whom are related to insurance and finance companies such as attorneys, estate planning and CPA’s.
Advertise with email and the traditional snail mail cards!
Online email newsletters are looked down on – no matter what the content they present and show. Out of 1,000 emails sent – only about 50 are actually read and about 10 are sold on its offer. So does this mean that you should stop your email newsletter campaign? Nonsense! You have to continue this aspect of marketing because it still puts your business out there on people’s monitors. What you probably haven’t considered is the traditional post card advertising you get in your mail box. And what you really didn’t know is that 70% of all printed ads actually get read! Why is that? The answer is simple, our natural response to all newsletters is spam so it gets trashed immediately. Our natural response to printed material is to read then trash if need be. How many times have you taken the printed ads you get from grocers to go directly to the trash – hardly ever because you want to see what’s on special. This is why Penny Saver and so many other do so well because people like to relax after work and read a little – it’s how we tell our brain to wine down and relax.
Cross sell products that are relevant in your area!
Advertising is not enough these days. A great idea I got from a broker in Florida is to promote products that are specific to that region such as boat insurance, motorcycle insurance and mortgage life protection. He also mentions that real estate is hot in Florida right now and finding similar products that relate to housing is a big part of their business. Referrals and share-a-sell is also a strong concept that allows other businesses to sell your products to their customers and get monetary rewards. Know your location and what events are happening on a monthly basis – the local newspaper is great for finding opportunities to cross sell at event with local businesses.
Getting External Links will be the hardest thing you do – but also the most rewarding!
One of the most important factors in any search engine campaign is building ‘relevant’ external links from ‘RELEVANT’ websites. I stress the word “RELEVANT” because you should understand that this process can lead to your website getting black hat on Google and other search engines. Meaning that if you join a link farm or have your website link on non-related websites and go directly your website – Google will either A) Lower your ranking to search result page 75 or worse, or B) Ban you from the Google search engine for life. So building external links is crucial to your website but doing it the right way is critical to the success of your SEO campaign. So for example, you could have your website link on a motorcycle shop’s website that links to your motorcycle insurance page which Google will find it relevant. However if you link the motorcycle shop’s website to your Medicare supplement page or homeowners page then you will get a negative remark on your rank. If done enough times it will cause dire consequences that cannot be fixed easily. It will take years to repair the damage you have caused.
There are many tips that can help you generate traffic and build an online community. Here is a list that I gathered that can help you on your way:
Offer incentives such as discounts and rebates for signing up.
Build a tool or service that makes the customer coming back and using your service such as rate calculators.
Create a worthy video to post online whether funny or informative a video on Youtube.com can greatly boost traffic.
Offer a course for free to the public in answering questions about medicare or life insurance.
Creating controversy in regards to healthcare reform and how it affects the average joe.
Create a blog and post only quality ‘relevant’ write up that will make fans out of readers and could possibly be posted another blog with a link that tracks back to your website.
Try not to cater to all and offer niche products and services such as medigap specialists.
Have an open communication with your website visitors and be helpful regardless if they purchase or not. Having a great online chat program can help you open doors to new opportunities.
Giveaways always work whether it be movie tickets or dinning gift cards – everyone loves free stuff.
Screen casts can change the way your website is perceived and increase sales by showing how to sign up or answer common questions or explaining a certain subject.
Always Evolve! Change your methods and keep an open ear to your customer’s requests. Ask them how you can better serve them – they’ll appreciate it and you’ll grow customer loyalty and referrals.