Search Results Before SEO for Your Insurance Agency

Online Visibility for Insurance Agents, a Series Part I

The way most of us approach insurance SEO - search engine optimization - is to think in terms of keywords: keywords in domain names, keywords all over your web pages, keywords in meta descriptions, keywords in web page footers…

Sprinkling keywords like pixie dust here and there will not boost your insurance agency’s online visibility; in fact, going overboard and stuffing keywords or using them in a way that doesn’t fit the context of web page content or result in text that reads naturally will get your website penalized.

We’re not saying keyword rankings don’t matter, they do. But there are many components to search results for any given search, and those results will vary as Google tries harder and harder to get their robots to deliver exactly the information we are looking for, that it really makes more sense to stop, look, and think about search results before we try to optimize our insurance agency’s website for those search results.

And to really gain insights into how to achieve online visibility and search prominence, we need to understand what those search results are composed of and why.

So what could search results include?

Google search results could consist of some combination of any of the following:

• Paid search ads
• Local search listings
• Video
• News items
• Images
• Knowledge graph (usually a direct answer to the search query)
• Social pages like Facebook or LinkedIn
• Review ratings for businesses or products
• Suggested search questions
• Links to online directories
• And tomorrow there will be something else, that’s just how Google rolls

That’s a lot of possibilities, right?

So how does Google decide what combination of results to present? That’s complicated but let’s take a stab at it.

Google will try to second-guess what you want by analyzing your search query, and when available, other data like your search history. The robots will also adjust your search results based on factors like the type of device you are using (phone or laptop, e.g.), the time of day, your location, or the availability of a quick answer.

Here are some search categories that will yield differing results:

• I want information (exploring)
• I want options (early shopping)
• What does it cost (midterm shopping)
• How can I buy it? (the bottom of the sales funnel)
• What can I learn about this insurance agency I just heard of?

If we want to show up at the top of search results it is important to understand these factors and the different types of searches we want to rank for.

Especially noteworthy is that some searches are far easier to rank for than others.

Analyzing search results will help us separate the easy and the difficult and is that all-important first step to your insurance agency website pages showing up when people want to learn about or buy insurance.

We’re starting at the end instead of the beginning.

So let’s consider a few different SERPs, Search Engine Results Pages.

Because…

Understanding SERPs is the key to effective SEO for your insurance agency website.

The first SERP we’ll consider is a search for a product or service. In the case of your insurance agency the search will likely include common insurance policy names like:

• Car insurance
• Homeowner insurance
• Business insurance
• Life insurance
• Or just insurance

The search could be for an ‘insurance’ agent or ‘insurance agency’ or these terms could be appended to each of the search terms in the list above. These are commonly called keywords and you can readily see that a small number of generalized search terms can be converted to a large number of more specific ‘keywords’. Those small differences in keywords often big differences in the resulting SERP.

For instance, here’s a SERP for the search term ‘business insurance’:

In area 1 we see paid search ads. Nothing unusual about that (we’ll cover paid search in another blog and video). In area 2 we see a mix of web pages belonging to insurance companies and one insurance agency.

In area 3 Google offers up some news items. The search term ‘business insurance’ is pretty ambiguous and we could well be looking for news related to business insurance as opposed to shopping for it. Google can’t be sure of our search intent so it is hedging bets by giving us a little more variety in results.

Let’s change the search term just slightly by adding something to the end of the search query. Here’s the SERP for ‘business insurance agent’:

In area 1, once again we see paid search. Immediately beneath that, in area 2, we are seeing local results (more on that down the page). Local results showed up in the ‘business insurance’ search but they were further down the page, pushed there by news items and some page results from insurance companies.

Starting in area 3 we have results in the organic search area for insurance agencies as well as Trusted Choice. But this time we aren’t competing with any insurance companies for page one visibility. Insurance agencies have the playground to themselves on this one.

OK, I promised more on local search, and here it is.

Local search results, area 2 in the SERP snapshot above, will show up if:

• Google thinks the search has ‘local intent’.
• There are enough local businesses that fit the search intent (e.g., insurance agent).

As it turns out, every one of search terms that preceded our SERP examples are considered by Google to have local intent and that’s good for local independent insurance agents.

Why is that good?

The answer to that question is something we’ll cover in the blog posts and videos on local search and organic search. But the Cliffs Notes version of the answer is that you aren’t competing with mega-sized enterprise companies with large marketing departments, budgets and expertise for the local search space. The playing field is leveled here, so to speak.

How do you get into the local search results box? That answer will have to wait for the local search blog post.

So, if you aren’t subscribed to Confluency Solutions’ newsletter, sign up at the top of the page to be notified when the local search blog post and video are available.

Meanwhile, if you haven’t watched the video, Tutorial 1: Insurance Agency Visibility Online for 2018- Start at the End, take a look. We cover several other SERP examples in the video.