Even with its growing popularity, SEO continues to be a tricky thing to master – especially for independent insurance agents who have a wealth of other priorities on their plate, as Josh Bowe, SEO assistant at Insurance Technologies Corporation (
ITC), points out.
Achieving professional-quality SEO, or search engine optimization, can result in improved search rankings, increased traffic and increased awareness in search engines for a website. But, what do you do if your SEO experience turns out to be more destructive than helpful? Bowe offers three recovery methods on how to correctly do SEO according to Google’s standards.
Dump the “spammy” content
“If you haven’t already, get rid of any keyword stuffed content,” Sowe says. “Replace it with more natural sounding language. Read it out loud to yourself to see how it sounds to the human ear,” he said.
Updating existing content to reflect more natural speech and creating future content that fits that mold is key to maintaining a healthy SEO status. Sowe suggests blogging as a great method, as long as “keyword spam” is removed.
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Delete duplicate content
Sometimes, insurance agencies who use third-party SEO firms become victim to their dirty practices – one of which is the copy and pasting of the same content repeatedly throughout the agency website. This makes it appear to Google as if new pages of content are consistently being created, when in reality it is all duplicates.
Even if you don’t replace this content, get rid of it, says Sowe.
“Fresh and unique content is better than stale, old content copied across a website,” he explained.
Claim and update your business listings
When focusing on SEO, don’t omit other important listings sites, such as Yelp or Yellow Pages, or even map services like Apple Maps, Sowe explains.
“[Make] sure these listings have the same contact info as your insurance website,” he says. “That will let Google know your business is legitimate and not spam.”
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