In today’s Masters of Marketing Webinar, Website Coordinator Amanda Oldham discussed the different techniques you can use to make your insurance agency website more effective.

1. Techniques to Make Your Website More
Effective
And Get More Traffic
Amanda Oldham
Website Coordinator

2. What counts as an “effective website”?
• Website design is judged by the users and clients who
interact with the website
• Usually, this judgement is based on usability, first
impressions, and how the website functions as a whole
• Websites that perform poorly in these departments will not
rank as highly

3. Focus Your Energy On What Works
• Technology continues to grow rapidly. But market trends
grow and change just as quickly
• If something does not work for you and your goals, cut it
out. No matter how cool it looks or if everyone else is doing
that same thing
• Be the trendsetter
• Put that time, money, energy and effort into the pieces of
your website that work well

4. Make Your Site Useful to Clients
• If your site isn’t useful, it will not be a very
effective tool
• Figure out what your main goal is:
• Lead generation?
• Customer service?
• Add things for your clients to do that they will
want to do
• Such as: quote forms, payment and claims
information, insurance education

5. Keep All Forms Short
• Clients are more likely to
fill out a shorter form
• Shorter forms ask for
basic information:
• Name, contact info, basic
information for the line of
business
• It means more work for
you the agent
• But will increase your
leads and lets you add a
personal touch
• Longer forms can intimidate
a client who is just starting
their search
• They mean less work for you
in the long run, but it comes
at a high risk for scaring off a
potential client

6. Keep Your Website Up To Date

7. Emphasize Fast Load Times
• You have 15 seconds on average to grab a client’s
attention, don’t waste a third of your time because your
website takes 5 seconds to load
• Pages that load slowly decrease client’s interest and
increase likelihood they will go to the next search result
• Avoid items like Flash and auto-playing videos
• Optimize your images for your websites so they are lighter

8. Go After referrals
• Referrals are the life blood of a lot of agencies
• Have a way for clients to refer their friends and family
members, and make sure to feature it prominently

9. Use Eye Catching Photography
• A good photo grabs the attention of your client
• A bad photo can make your website look out of date,
unprofessional, or just cheesy

10. Avoid a Bad Content/Ad Ratio
• If your website includes advertisements, make sure that
they are subtle and out of the way of your website’s content
• Always makes sure that
there is at least 5x more of
your content than all of your
ads combined
• Avoid pop up ads completely

11. Vary Page Length & Format
• Increase and decrease the amount of text on a page to
better appeal to your audience and your goals
• A website that focuses on information should not two short
paragraphs of content
• Don’t make your clients read an essay before they can
submit their information to you
• Write until you’ve gotten your point across: which could be
a few sentences to a healthy amount of longer paragraphs
• But never forget your target audience

12. Break Up the Text into Small Chunks
• Avoid having a wall of text on any of your pages
• Add the following items to your content to make your pages
more legible and easier on the eyes
• Short paragraphs
• Bullet points
• Numbered list
• Photos
• Videos
• Subheading

13. Avoid Duplicate Content
• Always write original content for your website
• Google will notice if your website pages have content that
“either completely match[es] other content or [is]
appreciably similar” and it will affect your SEO negatively
• If your website has pages that have original content that is
similar to other original content on your website, you can tell
the search engines which page you’d prefer them to read
• Avoid placeholder text on any website that is live

14. Write Better Page Titles and Headlines
• Titles and headlines introduce your audience to what the
page they are on is about
• Should be under 70 characters, so keep it short
• Be specific by adding in city names
• Affordable Dallas Home Insurance vs just Home Insurance
• Use a formula to keep your pages consistent
• Make a Payment | A & B Insurance Agency
• Clever headlines make readers laugh, but search engines
may not get the joke

15. Add Internal Links to Your Content
• Internal links connect one page of your website to another
• These links make your website easier to navigate and can
help improve your optimization

16. Add Accurate Alt Tags to Your Photos
• Search engines can only
read text, not images
• Alt tags help Google and the
other engines crawl photos
• Avoid keyword spamming
• Describe the photo and
graphic as concisely as
possible

17. BLOG!
• Blogging is one of the best and easiest ways to increase
your website’s effectiveness and optimization
• Each time you post an original blog, your website gets re-
read by the search engines and re-evaluated for relevancy
• Blogs don’t have to be long. Shorter blogs can be just as
effective as they are easier for people to read
• Make it a goal to blog at least 1 post per month
• Don’t forget to promote your new blog post on social
media!

18. Join Us Next Month
• January’s Masters of Marketing: Ask Me Anything
• Scott Cornelius, from ECI Agency in Oklahoma will be
telling the story of how he went from almost closing his
agency down and then turned everything around with the
help of online marketing.
• He will be answering your questions about how he did it,
how he continues to do it, and what things you can do to do
the same.

19. Don’t Forget!
• We hope you’ve enjoyed this year’s batch of monthly
webinars.
• If you liked them and want to stay up to date in 2016, you
will need to re-register for the new year
• Just go to:
http://www.getitc.com/solutions/agency_marketing/webinar/
• An email will be sent out in January as well that you can
click on to re-register