SEO Is The #1 Source for Lead Generation
For the last few years, marketing gurus have been telling companies to increase their use of social media. Most major insurance companies now have a strong presence on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. A recent study, however, calls this advice into question.
When polled about where their business actually comes from, marketers admit that more than 57 percent of their business to business leads and 41 percent of their business to consumer leads come from search engine optimization, or SEO.
If you are selling insurance, this study has significant implications for finding insurance leads. It suggests that rather than spending your time and energy on social media, you should beef up your insurance website to increase lead generation.
Keyword Phrases and Lead Generation
A major part of search engine optimization involves the use of keywords, or phrases that people might type into a search engine when they are looking for whatever your company has to offer. Someone looking for medical insurance, for instance, might use terms like “health insurance,” “major medical,” “small business health insurance,” or “Medigap insurance.” Take a look at the copy on your website to make sure that it contains multiple keyword phrases.
Many insurance companies find it useful to hire a copywriter to make sure that their web copy contains enough keywords to attract both search engines and insurance leads.
When revamping your insurance website, avoid the temptation to throw in too many keywords. Search engines are programmed to ignore websites with a high keyword density, and reading the same phrases over and over can annoy your human visitors as well.
Links to Your Insurance Website
Another factor that plays a large part in SEO is the number of links to your site from other reputable sites. One way to obtain backlinks is to contact websites with a high Google ranking and request a link exchange. You might also approach sites that provide insurance information and offer to write a free article or blog post for them in exchange for a link back to your site.
Is It Time to Give Up on Social Media?
No one is suggesting that social media is dead. In the study mentioned above, business to customer marketers estimated that social media accounted for about 25 percent of their leads. Don’t abandon your social media marketing efforts, but at the same time take a good look at your business website to make sure it is SEO friendly. This will help ensure that you don’t miss out on any valuable insurance leads.
