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One of the most effective and cost efficient ways to increase your insurance agency website page rank is to make sure other sites have links pointing to your website. When search engines crawl websites they take note of which websites the site they are currently crawling is linking to. The more links pointing to your insurance website the more valuable your site is. Links are also scored by the quality of the sites that are linking to you. For instance, a link to your website from Traveler’s website is better than a link from the local lumberyard. For more information please visit this Wikipedia entry on PageRank.
Find out who is linking to you:
Google has a great tool that helps you find out who is linking to your insurance website.
To find out who is linking to your website:
- Go to www.google.com
- In the search box enter: link:<Your domain>
Example: Your agency website is: www.abcdinsureance.com you would enter: link:http://www.abcdinsurance.com - Hit search.
- The following results show a list of websites that are linking to your website.
How to get more links pointed to your website:
Now that you understand the importance of incoming links pointing to your website you may be asking yourself; how do I get more websites to point to my insurance website…?
Insurance Companies – Your best option to get quality websites linking to your agency site is to talk to every company that you represent. Most insurance companies have some type of agency locator on their site. Go to each company that you represent find their agency locator and make sure there is a link to your website. If not, you will want to talk to your marketing rep.
Press Releases – Press releases are also another good way to get more links to your website. PR websites such as PRWeb.com have very inexpensive options for submitting press releases. These press releases then get picked up by online aggregators and spread throughout the web. In a couple weeks I will talk about press release examples; for now, a press release can be anything from a new product, new company or a self promoting piece.
Local directories – There are many online local directories where you can submit your company information (for free) and have a link to your website. A good example of this is a Seattle based website Lost in Seattle.
Associations, Groups, Churches, Charity Events – Any association, group or community that your agency may be involved with most likely has a website. Talk to the association and find out if you can have a link pointing to your site.
Trade a Link Programs
I have had many inquiries over the years from agents who receive solicitation from companies who want to “trade-a-link”. Basically, they will put a link on their website if you put a link to their website on yours. Seems fair enough right? Before getting involved with such programs you will want to ask yourself a couple questions. Who is this company that I may be linking to? What types of websites are also linking to them? Will adding a link on my website to their website distract from my insurance website? What is the benefit to my users/customers who may stumble upon that link?
Linking to other sites
It is important to be selective about which websites you link to on your insurance site. For instance, what value does this link have for your customers? Does this website also offer insurance products? Or do they have an agency locator?
When linking to sites it is always good to type out a sentence or two explaining where the link goes. FAQs are an excellent resource for external links.
Example of a valuable FAQ with a link to an external site:
Question: How do I find out about state insurance laws?
Answer: Washington State has valuable resources located at: http://www.insurance.wa.gov/
Replace Washington State with a state that you write business in and you are set.
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