If you have been struggling with SEO on your own, it’s time to hand the reins to the professionals. You could actually be doing more harm than good in running your own SEO campaigns. Business owners usually spend hours, weeks and months running their own SEO only to find the results for their website traffic failed to improve, or even worse, it got reduced. You might spend so much time on SEO that your business actually starts to fail.

Don’t take the risk. Hire a good web marketing company to take care of your website optimization and social media marketing for you. With so many SEO companies trading today you can’t say you don’t have help available. So why is it that so many SEO companies are unreliable?

The problem with SEO is that it’s a relatively new marketing process. The Internet marketing boom caused many so-called professionals to jump on the bandwagon. Very often, they have no experience in SEO and attempt to con companies into signing up for their SEO packages. As with any industry, there are many scam companies out there, but it’s easy to avoid these when you know what to look for and how to read between the lines.

It’s quite a good idea to learn a little about SEO, so that you can ask relevant and pertinent questions before making a decision about who to hire. Many scam companies will promise to get you on the first page of Google within a couple of days. There is NO WAY they could ever do this. It would take a couple of days alone (at the very least) to analyze your traffic and to work out a suitable strategy to get your website noticed.

Tips for Choosing the Right web marketing Company

• If a company promises to rank number in Google, don’t simply take their word for it. Nobody can guarantee a number 1 ranking, but if a company says they can get you in the top 10 spots that’s good reason to hire them.

• Get recommendations from business associates, friends and family. An SEO company with good word of mouth recommendations is one not to be ignored.

• Ask around in online forums. There are many forums for webmasters and online professionals and it’s easy to get advice about which SEO company to use. However, owners of SEO companies also hang out in these forums so be sure to ask more questions before you hire a company.

• Turn to Google – You can Google the company name to make sure the company exists and it’s not simply a fly by night setup. If the company is scamming their clients, then you will probably find complaints from past users on the web. However, the lack of negative comments doesn’t mean the company is good. It could simply mean they are trading under a different name or that they haven’t had many customers. Look for a company that has lots of positive comments and testimonials.

• If you are looking for a local SEO company, search for them on Google – not by name, just as you would search for any local company in your area. Only use an SEO company that is ranking well in Google. You need to use a company that has its own SEO house in order after all!

• Ask a company you are interested in hiring for examples of websites they have worked on. Any company worth its salt will be more than happy to give you details of past successes. Most genuine companies will have details of testimonials on their websites. If a company rejects your request for testimonials for confidential reasons, this should set alarm bells ringing. Even if some clients have requested confidentiality about their details, the SEO company should still have some testimonials to show you.

• Ask them what keywords they are ranking their own website for. If they don’t rank well for these keywords then it makes you wonder how good their services are.

• Do they use automated submissions to build links? This practice is frowned upon by the search engines and could get your website banned from page ranking. Steer clear!

When considering the current economic climate and soft insurance market, every agency and agent wants to generate the optimum number of qualified leads with the lowest possible marketing investment. There is always a tradeoff between insurance agency lead flow today versus long range marketing plans, branding and agency awareness campaigns for the future. Let’s review some of the web marketing options available and discuss the length of time necessary to generate leads for insurance agents, or at a minimum, how long it would take to complete the task. These are in a suggested order for a typical insurance agency web marketing initiative.

Insurance Agency Website:

This is the first and foremost task for every agent and agency. Today your website is your Main Street façade, the front store window which every prospect and client will view. Regardless of lead flow, it is of paramount importance that your website is up to date and professional. After all, would you want to enter a store with peeling paint, a cracked front window, a faded sign and a general look of neglect? It only takes 30 days to revitalize a website, top to bottom and a compelling website will start to pay dividends immediately.

Insurance Agency Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Now that your insurance agency website is current and compelling, we need to focus on SEO. Arguably, much of the on page optimization was already accomplished if your website was redesigned, although many agencies have found that web designers may not be conversant with SEO. Regardless, it’s time to ensure your insurance agency SEO is at an optimum level. This encompasses both on page and off page optimization initiatives and both are extremely important to your success. Insurance agency SEO projects can put your agency on Google page one in as little as 30 to 60 days, resulting in a dramatic improvement for web traffic and an increase in lead generation.

Blogging

Blogging is a great way to increase website traffic, showcase agency expertise and improve insurance agency SEO. It’s fast, easy and arguably fun to do. Blog entries can be short; even two or three relevant sentences will often suffice. Blogging can also be outsourced to an insurance marketing agency or a proficient copywriter. Blog topics can often become articles, published in online magazines or article directories. Blogs can be integrated into social media marketing programs, and lead generation can be tracked through website analytics programs (including Google Analytics which is a free solution). If done correctly and consistently, blogs can increase lead flow in as little as 60 days.

Electronic Publishing

Electronic publishing or epublishing offers insurance agencies another way to generate website traffic, inbound inquiries and establish a positive internet presence. These days, electronic publishing can be more beneficial to drive in profile prospects to an insurance agency website than social media marketing or bulk web lead purchases. Articles should be educationally oriented focusing on your area of expertise. For example, perhaps your agency is proficient in compliance, workers compensation or marine insurance. Articles on these topics showcase your expertise and will help drive traffic to your website. Electronic publishing can drive leads within 30 days. Articles are typically published within a week of submission.

Social Media Marketing (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr)

Social media marketing is interesting, fun and empowering. Every agency and agent should have a presence in the major social networks, and should join relevant prospect groups on LinkedIn. Integration between social media (linking your blog to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for example), improves speed and efficacy of your content. Video offers advantages for marketing through YouTube and other social networks, and of course, makes your agency website more interesting and “stickier”. It takes time to germinate leads from social media marketing. Assume at least three or four months of effort before you see a return. However, when combining and integrating social media marketing with some of the other lead generation tools mentioned here, your return can be much faster.

Insurance Agency eMarketing

Agencies who try to use email blasts to blast out offers for cheap insurance will be sadly disappointed in the results. However, agencies who leverage eMarketing to distribute quality newsletters, white papers or educational webinar series can find this a highly effective lead generation tool, one which can dramatically help lead gen in a soft market. Campaigns can yield results very quickly, though it takes time to map out a successful eMarketing and seminar strategy, and an agency should plan on a 90 day cycle.

Insurance Agency Web Seminars

Web seminars, when combined with a professional eMarketing initiative, can be one of the most effective, long term lead generation tools available to agencies, in a soft or hard insurance market. Web seminar series build tremendous credibility, internet presence and agency awareness, and when done correctly, can virtually eliminate cold calling while adding qualified leads to the agency pipeline. It takes some time to create a successful webinar series, often up to six months to build awareness and loyalty. That said, once an agency establishes credibility, their webinar series will continue to draw impressive numbers of prospects. Agencies should assume three to six months to build an effective web seminar program.

Pay Per Click (Google PPC Campaigns)

Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising can be an effective way for insurance agencies to increase website traffic and generate leads. Organic SEO is superior in that there are no ongoing click based fees. However, for specific agency marketing niches, including commercial insurance, benefits insurance and personal lines. Pay Per Click marketing campaigns can offer a beneficial boost to insurance agency lead generation. Other variations on this include Pay Per Inclusion and Pay Per Impression. An important note, these campaigns need to be monitored and measured closely, as some keyword clicks can cost $5 to $15 every time someone clicks on the advertisement.

Web Lead Bulk Purchases

There are many companies which drive insurance consumer traffic to their respective websites and then parse and bundle leads, ultimately selling these to agents in their respective target areas. For example, some of these companies drive life insurance prospects to their websites, collect information, then sell these prospects to insurance agents and agencies on a per lead or lead bundle price. This can be beneficial to drive activity into and insurance agency pipeline, however, these leads are often sold to multiple agents and brokers, resulting in a pool of agents competing for the same prospect, armed with the same information. These bulk lead purchases can drive activity into a pipeline within 30 days, though the downside is that the leads are a free for all, and your agency will be one of many calling on the same leads.

These web centric activities can help drive leads to an agency, even in a challenging soft market as we have today. Your agency should focus on areas in which you have expertise. For example, perhaps one of your agents or support specialists likes to write, you could have them work on blogging and electronic publishing. Or, you may have a principal who would like to create a prominent social networking presence. However, if you lack the internal expertise or bandwidth, you can outsource all or part of these activities to a competent insurance marketing agency.