Insurance Agents’ Guide to Writing for SEO

Writing for SEO isn’t just something reserved for bloggers and marketing agencies. It’s something that all types of professionals can implement in their businesses, including insurance agents. By writing articles specifically designed for SEO, insurance agents can increase their website traffic and potentially draw in more leads.

While it does take time to be proficient at SEO writing, everyone has to start somewhere. As someone new to SEO, insurance agents can see a difference with just a few posts targeting the right keywords. And Insurance agents don’t have to be marketing experts or writing whizzes to be found by potential clients through search engines such as Google or Bing. 

In this guide to writing for SEO, we’ll explore:

• What Is Writing for SEO?
• Benefits of Writing for SEO
• How Insurance Agents Can Write for SEO

If you want to improve your sales and marketing, we can help. Click the button below to learn more. 

What Is Writing for SEO?

Writing for SEO is simply writing content in a way that increases your chances of being found through search engines. That’s not to say that you need to trick search engines or that writing for SEO means you don’t have to create quality content. On the contrary, writing for SEO and writing for your audience should be part of the same overall goal. 

Ideally, you can create content that people want to read, share and if your article shows up in a search engine, then you should be able to answer what the searcher came for. For example, if someone searches for risk management advice and one of your blog posts is ranked as one of the top results, then you should be able to provide risk management guidance that the customer finds value in. 

Otherwise, they’ll probably leave your site and search for another article with better advice, thereby defeating the purpose of drawing them in through SEO in the first place. Plus, if search engines see that people are leaving your site quickly, it sends a signal that they didn’t find what they were looking for. If that signal is sent over and over, search engines will demote your rank in favor of another site that does answer their question. 

Writing for SEO can include writing with the intent to rank highly on search engines across areas like your:

• Website copy
• Blog posts
• Landing pages

Benefits of Writing for SEO

Why should insurance agents care about writing for SEO? Because doing so ultimately can help grow your business. Insurance agents might think that SEO writing is too much in the marketing weeds for them to dive into, but it’s become important for all types of businesses.

90% of B2B researchers who are online use search specifically to research business purchases.

Google

The better you are able to write for SEO, the better you can provide valuable content to your readers. Ultimately, the better your odds are of being ranked higher, and therefore discovered through search. You can pull in more prospects who might not have come across your website otherwise, and if you create quality content, you can increase the likelihood of these searchers becoming leads who eventually become customers.

Plus, ranking highly in search engines can potentially have more impact than if these prospects came in through another channel.

“A key benefit of SEO that many companies overlook is how it improves your credibility among consumers. Ranking on the first page of search results signals to users that Google — or another search engine, like Bing — trusts your website,” notes WebFX, a digital marketing agency.

How Insurance Agents Can Write for SEO

Writing for SEO can be a complex skill, so some insurance agents may prefer to work with an SEO expert who can help them. Still, there are a few basic steps that insurance agents can take on their own if they want to improve their ability to be found through search.

Incorporate Keywords

One of the most important components of writing for SEO is incorporating relevant keywords into your content. “In terms of search engines, a keyword is any search term entered on Google (or another search engine) that has a results page where websites are listed,” notes Semrush, an SEO platform.

Put another way, keywords are the words or phrases you want to put in your copy that match what someone is searching for. For example, if you want to appeal to those searching for “errors & omissions insurance” then you would want to include this keyword in your website copy and/or blog posts.

Beyond the more obvious terms that you might know you want to include in your content, try conducting keyword research to see what else your audience could be searching for that you can incorporate into your content. Tools like Semrush and Ahrefs can help you with this research.

Keep in mind that you don’t want to just throw in a bunch of keywords that don’t apply to your content. Again, you want to create quality material that relates to and adds value to what someone came to your page for after conducting their search. You could also be penalized by search engines for doing what’s known as keyword stuffing, where you throw in an overabundance of keywords into your content to try to boost your rankings artificially. 

“Often these keywords appear in a list or group, or out of context (not as natural prose),” says Google.

Instead, aim to incorporate keywords naturally into your content, just with some small tweaks. For example, you might want to alternate between the phrase “professional liability insurance” and “errors & omissions insurance” in an article, rather than just using one, so that you can appeal to different searchers who use these keywords. Also, you might want to add to these phrases, such as incorporating local search terms like “professional liability insurance in Boston” if you’re trying to reach an audience in that area. 

Write Longer Content

Another way to write for SEO is to create longer content. While you don’t want to just add words for the sake of it, perhaps you have a lot to say on a topic, in which case you can feel free to dive in, rather than cutting your article short just to make it snappy like a social media post. Or, if you only have a little to say on one topic, perhaps you can combine it with a related topic that can fall under the umbrella of one long article.

As Yoast SEO notes, pages should be at least 300 words, and going over 1,000 words tends to increase your odds of ranking highly, because “a higher word count helps Google to better understand what your text is about. And, generally speaking, Google tends to rank longer articles higher.”

Start Improving Your SEO

Writing for SEO can take time before it leads to results. Semrush notes that it can take 6-12 months before you see a meaningful impact. That’s why it’s important to start focusing on this area now, even if you feel your business is in a good place. You want to be able to get a jump on improving your odds of pulling in new prospects in case you run into a lull through other channels, rather than scrambling several months from now if/when that lull occurs.

To get started, you can write new content such as blog posts, create landing pages through a platform like Wheelhouse, or update your existing website copy. Better yet, do all three, as SEO success can build on itself. As you start ranking higher through your blog posts, for example, it can increase your odds of ranking highly for a keyword that you add to your homepage. From there, having high-quality content in place and tools like Wheelhouse that allow you to easily sell policies can enable you to grow your business.