We don't talk a lot about website Search Engine Optimization (SEO), not because we think it is unimportant, but because too many of us focus only 
on this tactic for generating site traffic. Generally speaking, SEO is the practice of tuning your insurance agency website so it ranks highly with search providers like Google and Yahoo. There are numerous other traffic generation techniques, and we have discussed several in this forum, that put insurance agents in control of costs and results. It is true that Google and Yahoo regularly change their relevance scoring, competitors for keywords are too numerous to count, and include some big budget Goliaths (e.g., GEICO, State Farm, Nationwide). But in spite of that there are a number of low cost, fundamental SEO tactics that will pay off for your insurance agency.
It is important to understand that web page design is a little schizophrenic. On the one hand, pages need to be laid out for people, and take into account all the idiosyncratic ways a person might look for information on your agency website. At the same time, your web pages need to appeal to machines called crawlers, or bots that are deployed by the search engines to index your site and determine relevance to specific keyword searches. People and machines will see the same page differently. If you are curious to see how a search engine crawler ‘sees' a particular page on your insurance agency website, you might want to try out this free analysis tool:
http://www.confluencysolutions.com/tools/seo.
Here are a few general tips to keep in mind as you review the results of the analysis…
Content is the key to keywords. The more content your site contains, the more likely one of your website pages will be found for a given search query. (And by the way, search engine users have become much more specific with search terms. A Google user is more likely to type in ‘How much business interruption insurance do I need for my law office?' than something more general like, ‘business insurance'.)
Be hospitable to visiting bots. Make life easy for the search engine crawlers by providing a site index, and at least title or description tags, usually called Meta tags. The more you can tell a search engine what they are looking at, or where to look for something, the higher relevance ranking your pages will receive.
It doesn't pay to fool Google, at least not for long. Search engines take the responsibility of determining search relevance seriously. There are a number of practices that are designed to trick the search engines (for an example, see the article in this issue on Landing Pages and Doorway Pages). When a search engine realizes it has been tricked strict penalties may be imposed, up to and including death (i.e., blacklisting your insurance agency website).
There has been a lot of interest and press devoted to website Landing Pages recently, even though Landing Pages have been around for some time. Landing Pages can be very effective when used the right way, but should not be confused with Doorway Pages, 
a generally deceptive technique that can result in search engine penalties. We will discuss both here.
For those of us who haven't lately come across an article or blog on the topic, a Landing Page is a place for website visitors to, well...land. In short it is a specially designed page for one idea, service, or product. Landing Pages are most commonly thought of in the context of Paid Search (AKA, Pay Per Click - PPC or, Search Marketing). In a paid search campaign, you bid on, and pay for key words. When your bid is accepted, your ad - a very brief description of your product or service - will display in a special area on a search results page along with a link to your specially constructed Landing Page.
Landing Pages will often employ a simplified address that is also easy to use in a print, or radio message. Consider this landing page, which was used recently in a National Public Radio broadcast about global warming:
That's a lot easier to say, read or remember than the actual address of the page which is:
And that's where the confusion with Doorway Pages comes in.
A Doorway Page is also a narrowly designed page optimized for one or a few key words. But these pages are typically used to fool search engine crawlers, and there is no balance in accommodating the human user. That's because the human user never really sees the page. A nearly instantaneous page redirect takes the visitor to another page on the website. The Doorway Page exists only to trick a search engine into generating search traffic. And search engines hate being tricked. Just ask BMW. A few years ago, their German website was blacklisted by Google for deceptive practices; that is, using Doorway Pages.1.
The important distinction between Landing Pages and Doorway Pages is that the first is designed for both human users as well as search engine bots while the latter is designed only for search engines. Landing Pages are great for use with traditional advertising campaigns, to highlight a particular service, or to provide an individual producer with a personalized 'home' page. Just be sure that the Landing Page has legitimate content, not just a bunch of keywords for search engine consumption, and you should capture more traffic without risk of penalty.
One counterintuitive and often overlooked source of new business is lost business. Ironically, most accounts might not have been lost if the incumbent agent had a chance to intervene. One insurance company study showed that, when an agency has a chance to save an account, they are successful 86% of the time. The key to getting that chance is systematic client communications, but that is another article. The important thing to note is that most customers who leave your agency are not so disaffected that they wouldn't return as customers, if only they are asked. Reacquiring lost customers isn't as cost effective as keeping them in the fist place, but getting them back is almost certainly less expensive than acquiring new customers from other sources.
You have a great deal of information about lost clients - after all, you did write their insurance at one time. You know their policy expiration dates, driving histories, business inventories, and more. If you had to pay for all that information, you would only be able to afford a small number of leads. So if you aren't making use of the free lost account information in your possession, and going back for your former clients, you should be.
Think about an agency with 2,000 customers and a 95% retention rate. Even this agency will lose 100 customers in a year. If this hypothetical agency had a lost business recovery program in place, they would no doubt pursue the lead for three consecutive renewals.2 Over time, as the business recovery program matures, the agency will have 300 'leads' in any given year from the lost account source. A 33% conversion rate means 100 new-old accounts - a nice way to firm up the bottom line.
The first step is to perform a quick, monthly review of the lost accounts. You may not want all of them back. Once you have determined you want an account back you should let the client know that and try to find out why they left. A systematic survey is a good way to do that.
The twist on this old program is to use your website. After the survey has been performed you should continue to communicate with this group of prospective clients using the same program you use to communicate with existing clients. Be sure to include references to website articles and checklists in your print newsletters, and use email where possible to send direct links to your website. It is likely that the competitor who took your client is not promoting their web resources very effectively, if they have any. If you can get or keep your former client in the habit of using your agency website as their primary insurance resource you will have an easier time converting them back into a client. In their mind, and in fact on the web, they will never have left your agency.
You may use the survey form below, in whole or part, as a tool in your lost business recovery process. You should keep track of the data captured and append information like total account commission, client longevity at the time of business loss, number and type of policies the account is comprised of, etc. This data, collected over as little as six months, will help you make better business decisions and zero in on at risk accounts before they leave.
The survey should be sent out by the agency owner, or failing that, by the business unit manager - not the producer or account manager. If the survey response indicates the relationship is salvageable, the client-turned-prospect should be added to your prospect communication program.
Download an Example Survey for Lost Business
posted by cfluent at 5:45 PM
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