White Hat Insurance Agency SEO Versus Black Hat Insurance Agency SEO

White Hat SEO versus Black Hat SEO Definitions

Hopefully your insurance agency is now familiar with terms like insurance agency SEO, insurance agency search engine optimization or insurance agency search engine marketing, the process in which agents attempt to lift their websites to a top position on page one of Google or Bing’s search engine results pages (SERP). There are two basic approaches to accomplish improved search engine rankings, which can ironically (or iconically) be found in old Westerns. I’m referring to the old white hat versus black hat cowboy days featuring white hat actors like John Wayne and Clayton Moore (The Lone Ranger) against black hat actors like Jack Palance. For a more contemporary version, Luke Skywalker versus Darth Vader comes to mind, minus the hat for Luke. Fast forward to today and we’re now referring to white hat versus black hat SEO tactics. Hopefully your agency is not engaging in black hat tactics accidentally or otherwise. As with the movies of yesteryear, the black hat represents the villain, and the villain is usually vilified. Black hat SEO tactics can get your agency in trouble with the search engines, and there is no need to resort to these methods to achieve compelling SEO results for your agency…

Optimizing Insurance Agency SEO with Anchor Text

What is anchor text?

First, let’s start with a basic definition of anchor text. Simply stated, anchor text refers to the text that incorporates a link to another web page. Here is an HTML anchor text example:

<a href=”http://www.yourawesomeagencywebsite.com”> Awesome XYZ Agency</a>

The phrase “Awesome XYZ Agency” which would appear as a live link on a web page, is an example of anchor text and will result in an active link back to a specific website. In this example, the website is: “http://www.yourawesomeagencywebsite.com” (this is a fictitious website, and I certainly hope that nobody would use a website name that long)…

Insurance SEO Best Practices: Attain the Attainable

In search engine optimization, as in all things, our attention to detail, complexities, and nuances can cloud our perspective – we can’t see the forest for the trees. A common manner in which this SEO vexation manifests is through keyword rank tunnel-vision. In a previous blog, we explored the nature of the keyword – what makes a keyword a good or bad pick. Now we must reexamine our keywords to determine performance, efficacy, and attainability.

Performance manifests itself in the simplest, most easily tracked manner. Has the ranking of your site for a given keyword gone up or down on a given search engine in the last month (monthly assessments are best)? If your rank has improved, then your site is likely performing well. If you were on page 3 and you are now on page 2, that is a very good start. If you were on page 3 and you are now higher on page 3, that is a modest gain that must be improved upon. Inevitably, your site’s rank for some keywords will stay flat or go down. Simple enough…

Insurance Agency Social Media Marketing as a Tool for Insurance SEO

Social Media Marketing is one of the hottest topics in the marketing community, and the business community as a whole. Everyone wants to harness the power of the web’s hive-mind. And for many B2C operations, Social Media Marketing in and of itself can present a massive opportunity for lead generation and conversion. For largely B2B endeavors (the majority of revenue for most insurance agencies), the best bet to generate leads is by driving traffic to your site. “But wait”, you say, “isn’t that what Search Engine Optimization is for?” This is quite true, but an underutilized and under-appreciated aspect of Insurance SEO is SMM – Insurance Agency Social Media Marketing…