SEO For Insurance Agency

SEO For Insurance Agency

Does SEO For Insurance Agencies and Insurance Agents Work?

If you own an insurance agency or are an independent insurance agent, then you more than likely have one of these problems:

 

  • Do you have sky-high costs eating into your profit margins?

 

  • Do you have slim profit margins of 10% on average and want to make more money, but you need to know how?

 

  • Did you start your journey in the insurance industry cold calling, building a sales team, and a referral network but are struggling to scale and get to the next level?

 

If you answered yes to any of the above, then SEO marketing is your solution. Continue reading to learn exactly how SEO marketing solves your problems step by step.

Does SEO For Insurance Agencies Work?

Yes, search engine optimization (SEO) for insurance agencies only works when you have a proven process and a proven team that generates results consistently. SEO marketing delivers exponential returns on investment that only go up while only decreasing your costs over time. Since SEO marketing is an earned source of revenue, even if you stop investing in SEO marketing, you continue to receive revenue. Enabling you to invest for some time and continue receiving leveraged returns on that investment well into the future, creating the possibility for a near-infinite return on investment over time. 

 

SEO is a consistent source of leads you can depend on to deliver month after month, feeding your insurance company’s sales team to sell your services instead of constantly hiring and firing insurance sales agents because of the challenges your insurance agents face to close deals. You can feed your best insurance agents as many exclusive warm leads as they possibly can handle, making it easy for you to scale and hire more to sell your services. These exclusive warm leads convert at a rate more than double in comparison to outbound advertising. Exclusive SEO leads convert at a rate of 14.6% compared to outbound advertising which only converts at 1.7% on average. 

Does SEO Work for Independent Insurance Agents?

If you are an independent insurance agent, this section is for you. If you are an insurance agency owner, skip this section and continue reading the next section to learn why you are missing out on the highest quality exclusive source of leads if you are not using SEO. SEO for insurance agents delivers leveraged returns on investment just like it does for insurance agencies. However, if you are an independent insurance agent, you have probably grown your business book from a combination of outbound sales, friends in your network, and referrals. 

 

You may be working a lot to continue this growth train churning along the tracks. You may feel burnt out and resentful of all the work you do to keep your business growing. You should spend more time with your significant other and close friends, traveling, and enjoying life on your terms. Instead of being chained to a job that demands your work time and even cuts your free time. Maybe you have hired and outsourced a team to handle your outbound sales, networking, and referrals, but you are capped on growth to get to the next level. Is any of this relatable?

 

If you answered yes to any of the above, you need to access the most scalable, hands-off, and explosive growth tactic in the insurance industry. We are talking about SEO) for insurance agents. Since SEO is an earned source of business for independent insurance agents, you do not have to work to keep the business coming in consistently. Once you get SEO going, the leads and revenue continue even when you are sleeping or on a beach in Cancun enjoying the sunset beachside with a pina colada in hand. If up until this point, your entire book of business has been built through outbound sales, friends in your network, and referrals, then SEO is your key to getting to the next level. Instead of converting 1.7% from outbound sales, friends, and referrals, you could convert 14.6% while exponentially growing your market taking you to the next level. 

Why Choose Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Your Agency?

SEO is the prescription medicine to your slim profit margins flu, sky-high costs sore throat, and your throbbing scale challenges migraine preventing you from getting to the next level. Unlike paid advertising or cold calling, you do not have to continuously invest your time or money to receive a return on investment. SEO delivers an ROI even when you stop investing in the insurance client acquisition channel. SEO increases your insurance profit margins while decreasing your insurance client acquisition costs over time. Independent insurance agencies close more business by delivering the lowest cost and highest quality insurance products that fit their clients’ needs. 

 

If your spending to acquire a new insurance client is as high as the Eiffel Tower, then your profit margin will be as small as the world’s smallest violin, and you may even hear yourself playing that violin when you are feeling the pain. High spending on insurance client acquisition leads to less competitive prices for the insurance consumer.

Since independent insurance agencies often compete on quality for the price, SEO can help you deliver the highest quality insurance product for the lowest price undercutting your competitors. Since SEO is an earned source of exclusive warm leads and revenue, your investment only goes down over time, and your returns exponentially grow. The insurance agency that spends the least to acquire new insurance business wins. If someone has to win, it should be your agency, and SEO is your insurance agency’s best path to victory.

What are the Search Engine Rankings, and Why Do they Matter for Insurance Agency Websites?

For those unfamiliar with SEO, it is the largest source of website traffic on the internet, making up more than 50% of all website traffic. Compared to paid advertising which makes up only 15%, and social media marketing which makes up 5% of website traffic on the internet. SEO is an exclusive lead generation and revenue-driving tactic for agencies and agents from the organic search results on search engines like Google and Bing. Search engines deliver paid search results and organic search results; here are the differences:
Paid Search Results –

Paid Search Results

The paid search results, sometimes known as PPC (Pay Per Click Ads), makeup only 2% of clicks and can only be accessed by paying the Google search engine for access. The moment your agency stops paying for exposure in the paid search engine results is the moment all leads and revenue stop for your agency. The paid clicks on Google are auctioned off to an agency like yours based on the cost per click.

The insurance agency has the highest cost per click online at $20.12 per click, an all-time high. On average, your agency will spend $1,609.60 to acquire a new client using the paid search results. Your insurance agency’s advertising costs only go up on average 15% a year using search ads and 45% a year using display ads. 

 

The world’s largest insurance companies drive up the cost to advertise your agency on Google because they can afford to lose money to put your agency out of business. Here’s how much the top insurance companies in the world spend annually on their business:

 

  1. State Farm spends $43.7 million on Google Ads for their business per year on search engines. 
  2. Progressive spends $43.1 million on Google Ads for their business per year on search engines. 
  3. Quicken Loans spends $21.1 million on Google Ads for their business per year.
  4. eHealthInsurance spends $20.6 million on Google Ads for their business per year.
Organic Search Results –

organic search results

Organic search results make up 98% of all clicks on Google, and the only way to tap into the 98% of all clicks on Google is to earn access using a proven SEO marketing strategy process. Google’s search engine algorithms decide the Google organic search engine rankings; SEO for insurance influences these Google algorithms and Google search engine bots to position your insurance company’s website at the top of the Google results.

SEO for insurance delivers one of the lowest costs to acquire a new client at $116 on average after investing in Google SEO for a year. The only downside of SEO is that it is not an immediate ROI driver; it takes time. Think of it as investing in insurance, real estate or stocks; when you first invest the money, you will not see a return, but that investment exponentially grows by compounding over time. Here is a visual of what that could look like for you:

organic seo advantage line graph

One of the biggest pain points blocking the dam of exclusive leads and revenue for your insurance agency is the consumer’s lack of education on insurance. The average everyday man or woman needs to understand insurance and why they cannot live without it. When humans do not understand, they seek information to learn what they do not know. Search engines provide searchable answers to your ideal clients’ questions about insurance.

These are challenging sales objections that insurance agency websites answer for their consumers when they invest in SEO. According to Google, the world’s largest search engine, people use Search mainly for the following human needs:

Doing:
Potential insurance clients are searching to purchase insurance right now. This is what makes SEO services different from other channels. SEO is the only channel where your ideal business is literally searching to purchase insurance from you right now. Example: people search “buy health insurance” to purchase health insurance more than 11,000 times every month in the USA.
Understanding:
Consumers are searching to understand your services and how your services can best serve them in their world. These are searches where you could tip consumers over the fence to take the jump into working with your team. For example, consumers search “where to buy cheap health insurance” more than 1,000 times every month on Google because they want to understand which services are the right fit for them. 
Belonging:
Your consumers are searching online to connect and socialize with others like themselves. This is where you could build a community forum where consumers can ask questions about your services and connect with others in a similar situation. For example, consumers search “is health insurance worth it” more than 1,500 times every month on Google. If you create a forum where consumers answer this question, your forum can show up online first and recruit more people to your forum—those searching for this need first-hand experience from others who have been there and done that. 
Experiencing:
Your consumers are searching to learn more about car insurance when they experience purchasing their first car. If you sell car insurance, showing up online first when your consumers search “how much is car insurance for a new driver” more than 1,800 times every month on Google can lead to increasing your sales and profit margins. 
Progressing:
Your consumers are searching as they progress in age and maturity. For instance, a young 18-year-old may not be thinking much about purchasing life insurance, but when they are 40 and married with kids, they will be. Using insurance agents’ SEO, your company can show up first when they search “how much is life insurance for a 40-year-old”.
Self-discovering:
Your consumers are using Search to seek answers that help them develop and reinforce their personal identity. For example: by searching for “is it okay not to have health insurance”, you could help shape their personal beliefs about what you are selling. 

Is Insurance SEO Services Worth It?

Insurance SEO is a necessary investment for you to get to the next level. You have the decision of investing in outsourced insurance SEO services or investing in your in-house insurance agency SEO. The number one reason businesses invest over $80 billion a year in outsourcing SEO is that scaling SEO in-house is time-consuming, expensive, and highly challenging. 

 

The only way to know what works and does not work in Google SEO is to test all of the ranking factors individually and repeatedly. There are over 1,600 known ranking factors on Google! Many moving parts go into executing an SEO strategy that delivers, and with that comes an expensive annual price tag for employing your in-house SEO team. Here is what you could expect to pay a year on the payroll for your SEO team:

  • SEO Digital Director [$80,000 a year]

 

  • SEO Digital Data Scientist Management [$102,149 a year] 

 

  • SEO Strategists Management [$88,190 a year] 

 

  • Marketing Strategists [$61,362 a year] 

 

  • SEO Web Design Management [$69,430 a year] 

 

  • SEO Digital Public Relations Manager [$58,605 a year] 

 

  • SEO Data Researchers [$54,433 a year] 

 

  • SEO Conversion Rate Optimization Specialist [$75,000 a year] 

 

  • SEO UI/UX Designer [$110,315 a year]

 

  • SEO Copywriter [$54,184 a year] 

 

  • Technical SEO Lead [$67,070 a year] 

 

  • On-page SEO Lead [$61,857 a year] 
The total cost of employing an in-house SEO marketing team is $882,595 a year. Then you have payroll taxes to consider, which further eat into your profit margin. If you were to outsource SEO marketing to a proven team with a proven SEO content marketing process and track record, your investment would only be $42,000 a year to get results in months, not years. Outsourcing SEO content marketing increases your profit margin, decreases costs, saves time, and keeps you focused on what you do best so you can sell more insurance policies. 

Other Questions About SEO for the Insurance Industry

What is SEO in Insurance?

SEO is the best source of exclusive warm leads that convert at a higher rate, decreasing your costs and increasing your profit margins so you can get to the next level.

What are 3 Main Areas of SEO Applicable to the Insurance Industry?

Setting up a Google Business Profile is the easiest and best place to start for smaller agencies and agents. Making sure your local listings are in directories, and you are earning many quality reviews is a great way to build your Google profile’s reputation.

Scaling up your SEO marketing to acquire more clients using content marketing and digital links is key to getting to the next level. Links are like votes for search engines; however, it is not the number of votes that is important; it is the quality of those votes. Earning high-quality links have the dual benefit of controlling the narrative in the media about insurance and your brand while driving targeted referral traffic that converts to your website. 

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