Every link that you add to your website is one more chance to lose a site visitor. Is it worth loosing a site visitor to this link?

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.

The following screenshot (located here) illustrates how you can have a page that is specific to an external site. In this example we are linking to the Trusted Choice website; but instead of just putting a link we created a page with the Trusted Choice^® Pledge of Performance.

Why is Linking to external websites this way so Effective?

We are explaining to the user what the site is and why we are members of the site.

The page is content rich providing us a great SEO page.

We are able to link to the website, include a logo, and still keep the visitor on our website.

Their Video:
SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – How to Get Awesome Links from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

This is the first time I was introduced to Yahoo internet user “Rocanne” (Link will take you to their profile on Yahoo)

Well, come to find out Rocanne has had insurance through many many agencies throughout the United States. From California to Georgia to Nevada and Illinois. I haven’t counted yet, but it looks like Rocanne has been allover the country. Avid mover? Multi-policy-over-insured-overzealous-crazy-insured-person? Or just a plain liar. I do not know who Rocanne is or where Rocanne is located. Chances are Rocanne works for or owns a Search Engine Optimization Company (SEO) The type of search engine optimization company that gives legitimate SEO companies bad names.

My theory about Rocanne:

Rocanne gets a customer in ABC Town, pulls up the local listing for “Insurance ABC Town” and finds any agency who has a better listing then her customer. Rocanne then writes bad reviews on all of the insurance companies hoping to decrease their page rank. All so her customer can rise to the top. Pretty sketchy…

With my information against Rocanne put to the side I reported Rocanne to Yahoo’s abuse (There is a link next to each review that reads “Report Abuse”) I entered my email address and a brief description detailing that there is no way that Rocanne is or has ever been a customer of all of these insurance agencies and that she is probably just writing bad reviews for competing insurance agencies of her own customers.

I then crossed my finger, closed my laptop and called it a day. Being my first time tattling on someone online I wasn’t sure how Yahoo would handle my complaint. Would it take them months to get to it? Would they even listen to me?

Within 24 hours (On a Sunday of all days) Yahoo had sent me an email that Rocanne’s comment was a violation and had been removed. Go Yahoo! It took Yahoo less than a day to review my complaint and remove Rocanne’s false review.

Unfortunately, Yahoo only removed the one comment that I submitted as abuse. (There are still about 22 more false claims out there)

Removing false reviews is pretty simple.

Here are some screenshots from my encounter with Rocanne:

Rocanne’s Profile On Yahoo!

He knows his stuff and put out a video earlier this year with some pretty good insight into website spam, SEO and Google.

Video Notes:

It is important not to fall into traps with companies who promise you top search listings. Let’s face it; if there was some secret way to guarantee your website top listings wouldn’t everyone be doing it?

SEO companies can play an important role in website development and marketing. They can also cost a pretty penny and leave you no better off than you were to begin with.

In November 2008 Washington State filed a lawsuit against a SEO company claiming they ripped off a handful of customers with unfulfilled promises.

What SEO companies should do:
Give you a complete analysis of your website, including broken links, top words used throughout your website, landing pages, Meta keywords, local search trends, determine how your website ranks among all major search engine, provide examples of ways to increase page rank,  etc.

Landing Pages:
Lately, “Landing pages” have been thrown around as the latest hip word to use in the SEO arena. A landing page is simply a page specific to one subject designed for search engines. For instance, if you sell crop insurance. On your website you should have a link for: example.com/crop-insurance this link would take you to a page specific for crop insurance.

Note for Confluency customers: Each of your product pages act as a landing page. Ex:
http://demo.cfluent.com/products/6/Boat

Cost Benefit Analysis:
The low end of SEO packages are usually around $30 to $60 per month. The average is probably about $200 a month. The high end could be upwards of $2,000 a month. (These numbers are solely taken from conversations I have had)

I’m not going to take into account the high end range; that is just crazy…

In my example I’m going to use $100 per month for a SEO package.

Annual fee: $1,200 – Benefit: (Unknown) Additional page hits: (Unknown)

What else can you do with $1,200 that will help your agency website?

Option 1: Pay me

Option 2: Pay-per-click advertisements: For $1,200 you can have a pretty steady marketing program that is guaranteed to increase the clicks to your website. (You will only have to pay when a click happens)

Using keywords that are not mainstream (Mainstream keywords or expensive keywords such as “Auto Insurance” or “Home Insurance”) you will spend about $0.20 to about $5.00 per click.

That’s 240 to 6,000 clicks to your website.

My conclusion:
Make sure you have gone through this blog especially the category “Search Engine Registration“

Pay for Yahoo or Google advertisements.

If you choose to entertain a SEO company, make sure you do the following:

• Ask for references, including phone/email addresses.
• Find out their “guarantee”
• Determine beforehand exactly what you are trying to achieve. Is it better page rank? More page hits

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:

1. Go to www.google.com
2. In the search box enter: link:<Your domain>
   Example: Your agency website is: www.abcdinsureance.com you would enter: link:http://www.abcdinsurance.com
3. Hit search.
4. 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.

Don’t expect them to do too much work…

Have a template email ready to send them. In your email thank them for their complement and include links to where they can write a review about your agency.

Sample Email: (Feel free to copy or modify this email for your own use)

Dear Joe Smith,

Thank you very much for your kind words earlier today. We greatly appreciate it and strive to do our best to satisfy our clients. If you don’t mind can you please post a comment about us on one of the major search engines; Google, Yahoo or MSN? Doing so will only talk a few moments and will greatly help us out.

You can access any our online listings by using the links below.

Google (Insert link to your local listing on Google here)

Yahoo (Insert link to your local listing on Yahoo here)

MSN (Insert link to your local listing on MSN here)

Once again, thank you very much. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.

Your agency name,
Your agency website address
Your email.

Once you have that email template ready to use forward it to your staff and inform them about the benefit of sending the email to your customers. Some agencies will even have contests for the person who gets the most reviews posted. A $20 Starbucks gift card can be very persuasive…

Now that you have the template email ready, send the email to your friends and family and have your staff do the same. This is a very good way to kick start your local listings reviews.

Google, Yahoo and MSN Live all have local search functionality. All of them also have an area where they allow users to write reviews about a company. Customer reviews can easily put your insurance agency website above the competition all of which can be done easily and for free. In my example to day, I’m going to use one of my favorite pizza restaurants; David’s Pizza located in Spokane Washington. 

David’s has customer reviews on all three major search engines:  

Google: 

Yahoo: 

MSN Live: 

(Click on any of the images above to view the actual listing) 

What does a pizza restaurant have to do with insurance? Search engines don’t care if you are a pizza restaurant or an insurance agency. They all have a local search area for local businesses within these listings there is an area where business owners can upload photos, post hours and update contact information. The more information Google has about your insurance agency the better. 

User reviews work the same way. If you have 10 of your best customers, friends and family write positive reviews about your agency on the three major search engines your insurance agency website value and position will increase. 

Try to think like a search engine. 

Your local listing has ten reviews and your competitor across the street has zero reviews who do you think the search engines will give more credit to? When a customer writes a review Google knows who they are (You are required to login first) they also know other reviews they have made and can score each user’s reviews based off of the quality of reviews they have made. The more reviews the better. 

What about bad reviews? 

Don’t think it has happened before. Upset customers, someone accidentally selecting one star instead of five stars, competitors giving bad reviews to make their own company look better… Since you have already followed my instructions for claiming your business on Google, Yahoo & MSN Live; you also have the ability to agree, disagree or mitigate your comments.

I cannot stress enough how beneficial this can be for promoting your insurance agency website. 

Next week: How to get more reviews about your agency website. 

Those are not the only search engines out there, there are others; they may not be as popular as Google or Yahoo but they do have web users searching on them. So how important is it to submit your insurance website to the major search engines? Extremely! Take a look at the list below and see how many search engines (This is only a partial list) scan Google, Yahoo or DMOZ for their own search results.