Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Insurance Websites: Did Your Traffic Dive on April 24?


Did the Penguin Google Algorithm Change Impact Your Insurance Website?

When you were a kid, you probably heard the riddle, "What's black and white and red all over?" At that time, the answer was "the newspaper," but today the answer could be "Google." Google is concerned with all things online that are black, white and read. So it's no surprise that colors inspire the naming of their latest Google algorithm change "Google Penguin" that went into effect on April 24, 2012.

Like its predecessor Google Panda, Penguin is intended to reward white hat search engine optimization techniques - mainly packing your site with quality, original content. And, it is intended to penalize black hat techniques such as keyword stuffing, overuse of anchor text links and questionable linking schemes. In a May 3 press release, international search marketing firm, Zeno reports that companies saw traffic plummet overnight as a result of Google's recent changes. Google is the largest search engine, accounting for more than 66 percent of search traffic, so Google's changes are not easily ignored.

How about you? Have you checked your insurance website's analytics to see how you fared?

Thankfully, my clients' websites have seen an increase in organic traffic following the April 24 changes. If your insurance website has been adversely affected, take these steps:

Audit your website content and remove anything that is not original and high quality. Make sure that content is well-written and not over-optimized. Shoot for no more than 2% keyword density for a single term. So for example, if you page contains 500 words, and you're optimizing for the term "insurance website," don't use that term more than 10 times, or it's going to start sounding like keyword stuffing. Audit incoming links and discontinue links that are irrelevant or spammy. Check on screen internal links and make sure that make sense. Don't use an anchor text link that has nothing to do with the content of the web page. Blog, blog, blog. Every time you publish a blog article on your website, you add a page of quality, original content. Blogging is one of the fastest ways to build your site's value in Google's eyes. But, only if you're using quality well-written articles. Beware of the blog writers who will sell you an article for $12.

If you have no idea if your site has been impacted, it may be time for a new website strategy. If you sell insurance to businesses, you must have a quality, effective website and you should be generating leads from that website every month. This isn't just about image - it's about creating an efficient lead generation model. To learn more about what makes insurance websites effective, download our free report, "Effective Insurance Websites - What You Need to Know Before Your Next Redesign."

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