As social media has expanded over the past couple of years, it is obvious the affect it has had on our society.  We have now become more fast paced and invested in understanding the true definition of communication.  According to the Harvard Business Review, the future of social media stands right in front of us.

From Washington, with Obama utilizing Twitter for his campaign, to millions of Facebook users all around the world, it is clear that social media as something spontaneous reflecting how we behave in the real world is coming to an end.  We are entering an age of social business, bringing about a purposeful, planned, orchestrated, and integrated way of doing business in a social context.  This strategy allows one to complexly make a message feel personal to the outside, while on the inside, the organization is planning and navigating every move.  As further evidence to the shift, one can look to technology.

Over the past several years, innovative companies who have geared their mindset towards the future have begun to understand the value of monitoring conversations.  Therefore, they have purchased software licenses from platforms such as Radian 6.  Additionally, the notion of listening to social conversations is only a small portion of understanding social business.  The true opportunity lies in scaling and operationalizing “social”.  Thus, if the next phase of social media is operating as a scalable social business, then expect to see an increase of activity in the following:

Organizational Design: Social media is focused on parts of an organization or business where communications and marketing encourage social media tactics, while a social business is redesigned to look through a lens that is more holistic for the organization.  For further proof, we can look to Facebook, where business and brand pages deal with both customer “likes” and complaints.  Corporate Facebook pages are great examples of the need for marketing, PR, customer service, and HR to all figure out how to work together.  This is because users on Facebook don’t make the distinction behind which department is running what and to them, a company page represents all departments.

Social Business Intelligence: The rise of social media has led to many technology solutions, allowing organizations to become involved on conversations happening across multiple digital public spaces.  Organizations that have become accustomed to listening in on conversations are now positioned to take the next step and convert listening into organization-wide business intelligence.  Socially intelligent organizations will be able to adapt to conditions in their environment and eventually predict and plan for future scenarios.

Cultures of Collaboration, Co-Creation & Shared Value: The most significant recent business case, which illustrates the business side of social, comes from creating an ecosystem.  This idea operates by having value enter into it and then extracted by multiple stakeholders for mutual gain.  An ecosystem, by definition, is sustainable.

The relationship between social media and social business is complicated.  On one hand, the public desires authentic interactions in social spheres from real people and expect a real-time response.  On the other hand, a business or organization requires a system to be in place that coordinates activities.  Therefore, the oncoming shift is moving from a focus on external media consumption to the internal business integration of what it means to become social and connected. Is social media something you have included in your insurance agency marketing plan? If not you should make sure to include it, social media really is becoming the number one way to communicate with your audience.

It’s no secret the influence social media has had on Americans especially those in younger generations. What once started out as an application for people to meet and interact online has now become a super highway of sharing personal and public information. With this data, businesses and search engines are able to follow trends and tendencies among users and see what types of topics and products are popular and, more importantly, unpopular.

In recent years social media use has exploded at exponential and alarming rates. Now, not only do younger people use these platforms, but adults do as well. While Facebook and Twitter have over 700 and 200 million users respectively, it’s impossible to deny the influence they have had on society and culture. It’s especially been helpful for businesses. When information about the product is supplied and repeated, more traffic is brought to the company. With Google’s new social media platform Google Plus gaining in popularity, businesses are obviously at a disadvantage if they are not spreading their brand via social media.

Although most users access their social media accounts on computers, a new trend is beginning to emerge in how consumers gather and spread information: Smartphones. Ever since the release of Apple’s iPhone in 2007, mobile companies have been churning out phones with World Wide Web capabilities at rates that seemed impossible five years ago. Smartphones are so popular that, according to a recent study, of the people that own cell phones, 42% have a Smartphone. That’s closing in on 50%, and it’s only going to increase. Eventually, the inevitability of technology will cause every phone to be a smartphone.

So what does this mean for social media marketing? How does the increasing usage of Smartphones affect your agency and the way we use social media?

Because so many Americans have smart phones, information is being gathered and shared at the highest rate the world has seen. Social media marketing, and marketing in general, is in over its head with the ability consumers now have to see everything that is going on in the world wherever they may be. Consumers use Smartphones for surfing the internet as well as accessing their social media accounts. Individuals are notified of any happenings and updates on social networking sites through their cell phones in real-time. The consistent connection to social sites means agencies can remind and update followers about their capabilities, offerings, importance and much more. Additionally, advertisements are always in view of the user as well. Simply put, your agency has the opportunity to be sending messages and information to your followers wherever they are at all times, so why not take advantage?

Smartphones are overwhelmingly changing the landscape of business and marketing. Because information is now available anywhere, it’s up to you and your agency to implement a social media strategy that will provide constant updates for your followers with smartphone access.

With social networking applications teaming with Smartphones, spreading your brand has never been easier.

For search engine marketers who utilize paid search advertising, defining a campaign goal is amongst the first things to do when planning a campaign launch.  What is the desired result of our PPC efforts?  Is it to enhance our brand image by being visible on relevant and important keywords? Is it to drive web traffic to your site and increases visits?  Or are you trying to get your visitor to be something more, to perform a certain activity?  In the search engine marketing world, we call these actions “conversions”, and they can take many different forms: online retail purchases, information downloads, lead generation (contact information via user input), appointment request, insurance quote request, and many more.

Now that the internet, and our own web site development capabilities, has developed to a point that we can offer our visitors a specific conversion point, it is important to optimize our PPC campaigns to target those users who are most likely to perform our desired action.  Not only do we want to drive paid search traffic to our site, we want to drive qualified paid search traffic to our site.  After all, if we’re paying for the visits, we want to make the best use of our money by doing two things:

Using an insurance agency as our example, how can we best qualify our PPC traffic to convert into a lead, via an “insurance quote request”? Let’s start with these two simple steps to get qualified leads. Stay tuned for my next blog post, which will cover two more steps to qualify your PPC traffic.

Step 1: Target value-based keywords

Sure, broad keywords will drive the most traffic to your site, but are they right for your campaign? The keyword “insurance” has a Google-estimated search volume of roughly 56,000,000 per month, a staggering amount, but it will also cost your company at least $35 every time someone clicks on your ad from this keyword search. Not only is it expensive, but do you really know what the visitor is actually looking for?  After all, if someone is searching on the keyword “insurance”, they could be searching for any number of different things: insurance claim information, insurance careers, insurance research, etc. Do you really want to spend over $30 for every click, just to find out what the intent of the search was?  Me neither.  That’s why it is important to closely examine your keyword list to include some prudent generalized keywords (“auto insurance”, “car insurance”) in your campaign, but also to include some long-tail keywords that will attract those visitors that are more likely to request an insurance quote (“auto insurance quote”, “car insurance quote”, “home insurance prices”, “how can I get motorcycle insurance?”, “Pennsylvania homeowners insurance”).

By targeting these terms, you’re not only driving traffic that is more likely to generate a lead, but you’re also paying less for that traffic. Longer-tail keywords are less competitive in the search landscape, and therefore will cost you less per click than the broad keywords like “insurance”.

Step 2: Eliminate traffic that you absolutely do not want

Now that you’ve targeted the keywords that you are sure will drive qualified traffic, wouldn’t it be cool to eliminate the keywords that you don’t want to target?  Introducing negative keywords.  By utilizing this facet of your PPC campaign, you can tell the search engines which keywords that you do not want you ads associated with. By adding negative keywords to your campaign, you are providing a list of terms that, when a user incorporates them in their search, your search engine will know to never show your ad.  This is particularly helpful because it will cut down on traffic to your site that has very little chance of converting into your desired action.

Continuing with the insurance agency example, and remembering that we are trying visitors to request a quote, I would begin my negative keyword list with terms that are too broad, are not relevant to our conversion point, or are misleading for our product.  With that being said, the first negative keywords that I would target are aimed at careers in insurance.  Add these keywords to your list: careers, jobs, employment, job, career, training.

See what you’ve done?  You’ve eliminated the many people who are looking for jobs from your search universe.  When you’re trying to drive revenue through quotes, why would you want to spend advertising money on people that are looking to further their career?

What other keywords can you think of that would drive traffic to your site, but almost certainly won’t drive conversions?

Check back here for my next post, where I’ll talk about how your paid search ad copy and landing pages can further help to qualify your traffic.

“How can digital marketing help grow my agency?” This is a very common question these days among independent insurance agents. If you missed the Astonish Results and NetVU Webinar last week on Sales and Training tactics for your agency, it can be viewed in its entirety below. During the webinar we answered the question, but first we had to define digital marketing.  Digital marketing is a bit different from traditional marketing (radio, TV and Print).  While traditional marketing is geared toward mass advertising (spray and pray methods), digital marketing is a purpose-driven, metric-minded approach to marketing a product or service to the “modern consumer.”
The modern consumer consists of 85%-90% of ALL consumers who search online FIRST before buying any product or service.  In order to effectively market to the modern consumer of today, you must have a plan.

Digital marketing is a blended strategy comprised of a lead generating website, effective email marketing, a consistent social media strategy, and a solid Search Engine Optimization initiative. This coupled with strong agency leadership, the right people and process and incredible sales skills will help pave the road for future success.

Astonish Results has a passion to help independent insurance agents grow their business.  It’s so important that independent agencies adapt to the ever-changing landscape around them and adopt the available digital marketing strategies to truly market and communicate more effectively to today’s modern consumer.

See the full recorded webinar on sales and training for the independent insurance agency here.

A couple of weeks ago in this blog space, I talked about paid search marketing and what you could do to take advantage of this ever-growing advertising medium.  One of the keys to your PPC campaign, I mentioned, was to create and optimize a landing page that was dedicated to your paid search visitor.

The most common question that I got from readers after that post was this: “Why do I need to create a landing page that only my paid search traffic is going to see?”

The answer is that we need to treat PPC traffic differently than all other web visits, if not for user behavior then certainly because of the fact that you’ve paid for it! Paid search traffic and leads are too valuable to direct to your site’s home page, a generic restaurant menu of all the content found within the pages that follow.  We don’t want to force our visitor to work in their search to find the information that satisfies their search intent, especially when users are much more likely to hit the “back” button (as in “back to Google”) on their web browser than follow a link when they don’t immediately see the information they are seeking.

So what can we focus on to create an effective landing page?  I’m glad you asked. Lets break it down into four categories: Relevancy, Content, Call-To-Action, and Potential Distractions.  And away we go…

Relevancy

When a Google user clicks on a paid search advertisement (or any other search result, for that matter), they expect to see the information for which they’re searching immediately.  As in one click. We can only do our best to satisfy that user’s curiosity, but creating relevant landing pages for your PPC categories is a good start.  It’s a poor user experience to direct a user who has searched on the term “Boston Red Sox” to this page.  A very, very bad user experience.

Perhaps a better example comes from our friends in the insurance industry. Would you direct a PPC visitor who has accessed your site via a $30 “car insurance” click to your home page (which has lots of content and discusses the 40 different types of insurance that you offer) or, worse yet, your home insurance page?  No, you’d want to match the search query with the landing page, and send your traffic to an auto insurance page.  It seems intuitive, but often overlooked: get your PPC visitor to the page where they are most likely to find their desired information as quickly as possible.  Their search query has given you a strong indication of their interests, so make it easy for them!

Continuing with the theme – create unique landing pages for each of your various insurance products. Home insurance, auto insurance and business insurance are all unique enough that you can safely direct traffic to their own landing page.

But once they get to that page, what should the content look like?

Content

Three words: Keep it simple. Your landing page should not be as text-heavy as the rest of your site. This is a mutually beneficial relationship: you’ve bought their click for a reason, and they’ve chosen to click on your ad for (what you hope) is the same reason.  Let’s face it, you want them to perform a specific action.  Why would you bore them with details that could distract them from that action?  Create concise body copy, and limit it to the space “above the fold” on your landing page. Use bullet points to highlight the most important information.

Also, make sure that the content you offer doesn’t contradict your advertisement that the visitor has just clicked on.  If you offer 50% off your widget in the ad, make sure that that is reflected accurately and prominently in your content, because that’s probably what your customer is looking for.

This will help keep the visitor’s trust, but it will also help keep the visitor’s attention.  Attention is important, and we don’t want overcomplicated text to distract the user from the most important part of your page …

Call To Action

As I said, there is likely a specific reason that you have paid for your visitor’s click.  Well, here it is.  You want them to do any number of things: buy a t-shirt, download software, fill out a lead generation form, submit a video, or research a Petite Lap Giraffe.  Hey, it’s your site, do what you want.  I’m not here to judge.

The point is, be sure to clearly establish and feature your CTA.  If you are offering a free auto insurance quote, be sure that the lead form is front and center for the visitor. It should be obvious that this is what they are supposed to do – fill out a form. Don’t make your visitor hunt on the page for the lead form, or for the “download” button, or the “add this item to your cart” link.  Some quick tips:

Author’s note: The Lap Giraffe page is a terrible landing page for PPC.  All I wanted to do was look for the “Click Here to Purchase a Lap Giraffe”, and there isn’t a conversion point.

So now we’ve gotten the user’s attention with our ad, given them short and focused content to read, emphasized the call to action — now what?  Keep them from going somewhere else by reducing …

Potential Distractions

When I refer to “distractions”, I’m talking about opportunities for users to leave our landing page. We have a captive audience for our conversion point; I don’t want to give them any reason to leave this page that I’ve created specifically for them. To do this, simply reduce the number of links pointing to other pages — even other pages on your site.

Unlike your homepage, which I view as a gateway to information on your site, your PPC landing page is the destination. By eliminating all of the links that would make perfect sense on your home page, your PPC landing page will give your visitor fewer reasons to navigate away from this conversion point.

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So there you have it, some tips to help give your PPC visitor the information they are looking for, a conversion point to focus on, content to satisfy their search, and limited means to click away from your page. If done correctly, the positive effect should be seen in your conversion rate (# conversions/# visits).

If you’ve paid for the traffic, gently nudging your visitor to perform the activity that will help your business is very important.  Creating a custom landing page will help do just that!

On Thursday we held the first of many Astonish sponsored webinars with NetVU, a national member organization committed to providing advocacy and world-class education to independent insurance agencies across the country. The webinar covered social media marketing tactics for the independent agency including Facebook, Twitter, and social media ROI.

As more businesses are adapting to social media, and recognizing it as a new marketplace, it is important for independent insurance agencies to follow suit and take the social leap as well. With direct writers and customers already using social media on a daily basis, it is critical for the independent agency to place itself in the forefront of the consumers mind on a consistent basis.

In the webinar Social Media Networking 101 for the Independent Insurance Agency we went through not only why social media is important in marketing to your potential customers, but how utilizing social platforms can also help you connect with current customers, inevitably leading to new policies, better customer service, and even referrals.

We covered Facebook marketing for the independent agent. Discussing ways to drive more traffic to your Facebook fan page, along with effectively interacting with your community on the platform. Making sure to not just build a community and post, but also taking the next step and engage with them on a consistent basis, will bring the best results from Facebook usage. Along with Facebook we also discussed how Twitter can be used to network through individual personnel and why building relationships with those who will promote you to others, could eventually turn into a lead. Remember, insurance is not always on the modern consumer’s mind, but everyone does need it! So positioning yourself successfully in the forefront of the consumers mind, in your target areas, is where you need to be.

Many agents know they need to be using social media but aren’t really sure where to start. Getting started with social media as an independent agent does not need to cost a ton of money or take away massive amounts of your time. As an agency principal or producer you need to be running your business and selling insurance. That is why hiring a social media engineer or intern can help you allocate the social media marketing duties to someone who can spend the time to do it the right way.

At the conclusion of the webinar we had a few questions come in based on the presentation. Here is the recap:

1.            What is LinkedIn? Is this another social network? – Ann

Great question Ann. LinkedIn is another commonly used social media platform. LinkedIn is a business orientated social networking site that allows you to create a personal profile highlighting your job experiences and industry expertise. LinkedIn is a great resource to connect with other business owners in your own industry and other industries that you might have a niche product in. I highly recommend creating a LinkedIn profile along with a company page on LinkedIn to showcase your expertise as an insurance agent or agency owner, along with use the groups and the questions feature to build reputation and network with current and potential clients.

2.            How often should I be posting on Facebook? What about Twitter? – Kelly

On Facebook posting every few hours is usually what I would recommend. You do not want to be posting five times in a row and flooding users’ newsfeeds but you want to have posts throughout the day to reach the maximum amount of people in your community as possible. Also people use Facebook at different times of the day and their newsfeed updates in real-time. So by posting at different times throughout the day you are most likely to have your message be seen. If you do not post weekly, users in your community may not see the relevance in liking your page because you are not providing timely updates. For Twitter you can post more often as the Twitter stream updates at a faster paste due to the amount of updates and the shortened message. Again with Twitter, not posting for a while might turn off some of your followers, so keeping a consistent presence and staying SOCIAL will allow your following and community to grow on both sites. Thanks Kelly!

3.            If we have a company Facebook, and have individuals in the office responding/posting, how can we make it clear that a specific individual is answering rather than the company as a whole? – Melanie

Great question Melanie, I hear this a lot. To make it clear which individual is posting on your Facebook page you can do one of three things. You could have the person write the post then do a “ – Name Here” at the end to show who each post was written by, therefore having you fans learn the names of the agents who are posting. Another option is to not have someone be an admin of the page, but to create a personal Facebook that is just for business use. They could become the ‘face’ of social media for the agency and post on the wall as so, so people see the name and face of the agent who is updating the statuses. The third option I think is the best. Facebook now allows you to post as the page or as yourself. To make sure when you switch to yourself it still does not post to the page because you are an admin, go to edit page, settings, and uncheck the first box that is next to “posting options”. This will allow you to post on the page as either yourself or as the agency.

If you attended the webinar and still have questions feel free to email socialmedia@astonishresults.com to contact our team! If you are interested in Astonish Results and want to see a free virtual presentation on how you can bring your agency into the digital age call  1.888.899.1936 or visit AstonishResults.com and fill out the online form.

Internet marketing is here to stay.  Whether it is search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, or social media outreach, your business is likely participating in some form or fashion within this growing industry.  The state of Search Marketing is good, and growing.

In fact, as the new Director of SEM for Astonish Results, I’m particularly biased towards the news that paid search spending is projected to grow another 16% in 2011. Coming on the heels of a 14% increase in PPC spending in 2010, online marketing continues to be an effective and efficient marketing tool for companies in any business vertical.

Being new to this blog, I’ll offer some of suggestions that can help you take advantage of this booming business.  You’ll hear from me from time to time, offering tips and tricks when it comes to optimizing your PPC campaigns and updates on this ever-changing advertising medium.

In the meantime, let’s talk about a few things that make a good SEM campaign great. The following tips won’t guarantee a successful campaign, but they’ll get you closer to reaching its potential.

• Take a holistic approach to search marketing. The best performing campaigns that I’ve run have always used PPC in tandem with their SEO strategy. We all know that these two forms of digital marketing are vastly different from one another, but too often we choose one over the other. I’m here to tell you: don’t choose!  Supplement your SEO efforts by utilizing PPC to run paid advertisements on keywords that you are having trouble ranking for organically. At the same time, support your SEO by analyzing PPC keyword data: identify new keyword opportunities by investigating all of the keyword searches than resulted in a PPC visit to your site. Is your PPC data showing that users are searching on a different type of vernacular to get to your ads?  Incorporate that into your site’s content. The strategy is to use the available data from each form of digital marketing to inform the other, so that they work hand in hand.
• Test, refine … rinse, repeat. Search engine marketing is one of the most measurable forms of advertising in today’s business world. But what do we do with all of this available data? Use it to our advantage, of course, by testing different campaign tactics and strategies against one another. Not sure which ad copy is the best? Run two pieces of ad copy against each other, and pick the one with the best click-through-rate after 100 clicks for each ad. Don’t know what match type to use for your keywords? Set up two mirror campaigns for your keywords, setting one campaign to “phrase match” and one to “exact match”. Create another campaign with targeted keywords (long-tail terms) and set it to “broad match”. After a while, you’ll be able to tell which match type is most cost effective for you!
• Establish a conversion point, and assign a value to that conversion. Online retailers have it easy: a PPC visitor clicks on an ad, and either buys your product or doesn’t. Comparing the ROI for these types of campaigns is relatively easy, but what if you’re not an online retailer? What if you don’t “sell” something on your web site? It doesn’t matter, set up a conversion point anyway. Do you offer personal insurance products but don’t sell them online? Collect a lead from PPC by advertising for a free auto insurance quote. Are you a hospital chain with an online presence? Create an online appointment request form and drive your PPC traffic to that form. These may not be direct sales, but these “conversions” are a more effective performance metric than simply counting visits to your site.  Your challenge is to assign a value to these conversions. Once you’ve set that value for your PPC conversion point, compare the “revenue” generated by these leads to the cost it took to acquire them.  You’ll have a better understanding of how effective your PPC campaigns are.
• Have a dedicated PPC landing page. So, you’ve driven paid search traffic to your site … now what? Well, the best performing PPC campaigns have a unique dedicated landing page served up to only those visits that come through SEM. If you are sending PPC traffic to your home page, you’re likely losing valuable conversion opportunities for two reasons: first, the information you’re providing is too broad for your PPC audience (who have a specific search term in mind); second, there are far too many opportunities for a visitor to navigate to other content on your site (and thus away from your desired conversion point).  This is the difference between a well-optimized home page and a dedicated PPC landing page: your site’s home page is designed as a broad gateway through which users can find a wide array of content, while your PPC page is designed to entice your visitor to perform one specific action (“Request a free auto insurance quote!”, “Download this white paper!”)

Come back to this space frequently to check out my thoughts on Search Engine Marketing and Pay-Per-Click advertising.  After all, if American’s performed almost 19 billion searches in the month of March alone, shouldn’t you be paying attention to your Search Engine Marketing strategy?

As a Search Marketer I often have to justify to our clients the amount of money that we spend on pay per click advertising- SEM and why they should consider future ad spend.

Often the number of clicks (web site visits) far outweighs the number of actual form conversions (form leads) produced by any given campaign. We do see some of our click to conversion rates as high as 30% which is nothing less than awesome.

Also as a rule we factor in the number of qualified phone calls that come through the designated SEM phone numbers and combine those calls with total form conversions to arrive at the total SEM opportunities.

Confusion arises when you take the amount of money that is spent and divide it by the number of leads received to arrive at your cost per lead.

Defining SEM ROI does not and should not stop there. It’s not quite as clear cut as buying leads and the true cost per acquisition is not so easy to nail down.

Without getting too esoteric, here are some OTHER favorable attributes gleaned from a typical SEM campaign:

Branding

Every ad view (impression) your SEM ads receive via pay per click is an opportunity. It is a virtual billboard just for you on the internet super highway. The best part about impressions is they are FREE… You don’t pay to have your ad show up next to or even above your competition. Exposing searchers to your brand is crucial to maintaining consumer “top of mind awareness”.

Our clients often say they don’t want to pay for branded (name) keyword phrases to show up on the search page.

I ask WHY?!

It’s not surprising some 80% of today’s consumers use search engines to research an upcoming purchase. These folks don’t always buy online and they may not even be buying immediately.  This tire kicking by-product of search engine marketing is known as ROPO, (research online purchase offline)

ROPO gets a bad rap because it’s not so easy to tie offline sales to online advertising.

Here are just a few ways to trace offline conversions back to online origins:

• We already mentioned having a unique phone number for SEM that is accessible only to folks that initiate contact via an SEM campaign and the calls are noted as such.

• Special landing pages that are only used with SEM campaigns are another way to isolate traffic origin.

• Surveying customers by asking where they first heard about your company or product can help quantify online origination.

• Offering special rebates or coupons assigned to specific search campaigns is another great way to track online to offline sales.

Search Engine Marketing is so much more than purchasing leads…

It is a major catalyst for advertising your brand, shouting your message, besting your competitors, and setting yourself apart from the rest.

SEM is also a lot less expensive than TV, Radio, Newspaper or the Yellow Pages…

Take another look at SEM and see it for the multi facet marketing medium that it truly is.

You’ve heard it before. You need to have good keywords on your site.  But what exactly is a good keyword you ask?  Well for starters, a good keyword or keyword phrase is one people are actually using in their searches.  There is no reason to optimize your website around words not searched for by potential customers. If everyone is searching for ice cream and you are optimized for frozen milk, how well will your site do? You might rank #1 for frozen milk, but you probably won’t be seeing any traffic.  And isn’t the whole point to drive good traffic to your site?

People can also run into a problem with wanting to use their professional or industry buzz words as keywords.  Just because you think you know what potential clients are searching for doesn’t make it so. Most potential customers probably won’t know those specific terms so their search would be a bit broader. Therefore, it is important to do the research and find the keywords that will actually bring the customers to you.

Another key ingredient to a good keyword is for it to be relevant to what your website is about. Your goal is to not only bring in visitors, but visitors that will find what they are looking for and on an e-commerce site, fill out a form.  If your website sells blue cars and you optimized for red cars, when visitors see that most will “bounce” from your site without filling out a form or visiting additional pages.  Obviously “red cars” was not a good keyword for your site even though it brought in visitors.

As an SEO specialist, part of the job is to research what people are searching for in relationship to what you are selling and find the best keywords to bring in conversions through your site.  Of course finding the right keywords is only the beginning.  How they are deployed is just as important. But that is for another day…

At Astonish, we’re big believers in having a plan.  This belief spills over into everything that we do.  From an SEO perspective, it means having a defined strategy.  Gone are the days where you could just toss some keywords onto your website, cross your fingers, and hope for the best.  There needs to be a cohesive strategy and a method to the madness.

Once we define what your targets are (product mix and geographic focus), we’ll come up with a plan of attack to get your new virtual insurance office optimized for the right keywords and phrases, based on our extensive research.

That’s only the beginning, though. Our best clients are making use of every opportunity to really increase their internet presence.  They do that by:

• Blogging on site, to show the search engines that their website is being updated on a regular basis and that it’s not just a stagnant information center.

• Blogging off site (on a wordpress.org blog, for example), to focus on a specific niche that they want to target.

• Working with us on developing a solid Press Release strategy.

• Getting involved with paid search advertising.

• Playing an active role in their local listings and soliciting some of their best clients to get reviews added to their listings.

• Maintaining an active Social Media presence.

If it sounds like there’s a lot to do, you’re right.  There is.  The good news, though, is that we can help you develop a plan of attack for each of the above areas (and then some)!

The most important thing to remember is that it’s not just about tossing some keywords up on a page.  There needs to be a plan of attack to supplement and reinforce those keywords. Organic Search Optimization isn’t something that happens over night, but stick with it and follow our lead.  The results will come!