Start Blogging Today

Getting insurance leads online isn’t easy. If you want to compete with the big companies you have to stand out. You need to build a name within your community and establish yourself as the expert in your area. The easiest way I found to do this is through blogging.

A few years back I read about blogging and decided to give it a try for my agency. I took my time to learn the different systems and jumped in head first. It changed my life.

Blogging does take time. It takes a little patience to set things up right and learn the systems. If you have extra money you can also pay a virtual assistant to set up your blogs so all you have to do is write. But that’s up to you.

If you want to learn where to start and how to become the expert, check out Start Blogging Today. I’ve chatted with the developers about it and it’s incredible.

The day I knew blogging was effective was the first time I got a call from a prospect that said, “I was looking around your site and read all the stuff there. You really know what you’re doing and seem well connected in the community. I had to call you.”

Blogging is the way to set your agency/business apart online. It’s the way to establish credibility and expertise. It’s the core to everything I do now.

Go check it out yourself and see how you can Start Blogging Today.

Step 4 – Reading The Data And Making It Work

I’m going to quickly go through some of the data inside Market Samurai to help you get your site ranking quickly with Google and the other search engines.

It’s been a few days since I set up the WordPress site on the sample domain. I have done nothing with the site since then. It only has the first post I created on it. I will be adding to it down the road but for now I just want to show you where it ranks 5 days after the first post. It would be ranking higher if I had a better domain name but I decided to work with a domain I already owned since AZ and Arizona can be sometimes interchanged with the search engines (exact matching ‘Arizona’ and ‘Arizona’ will be better than how I have it now and is encouraged) and I’m confident of what to do here.

This screen shot below is from Market Samurai’s rank tracker section. I use it to track where my site, and all its pages, rank against the keywords
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Step 3 Continued – Clearing Up Confusion on WordPress and Other Questions

There have been a few emails sent to me asking about the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com. I want to answer those here along with a couple other points. (Please don’t email me with questions on individual posts, there’s a spot at the bottom of the page to do that and you’ll get a faster reply.)

WordPress.org vs. WordPress.com

The main difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com is where your site is hosted.

WordPress.com is hosted at WordPress.com. Your URL would be yourname.wordpress.com. While it’s easy to set up and get started this way, you will have only a few choices for themes and no flexibility with plugins. It’s hosted on their site so they won’t let you make changes and risk messing up their site.

WordPress.org is hosted on your domain. Your URL would be whateverdomainnameyoubuy.com. It’s actually a version of the software running WordPress.com that you put on your webhost. It’s free. It’s fully customizable with any of the thousands of themes available or any of the plugins you want to use to expand what it can do.

Now, since you’re probably not familiar with either, the WordPress.org sounds nice but maybe a little scary. You can
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Insurance Marketing Online Step 3 – Setting Up Your Insurance Website

Today is the moment of truth for many. It’s the point you fear more than anything. Setting up a website.

Now, as you relax, take a deep breath and allow any anxiety to drift away, watch the first video and marvel at how incredibly simple it is to set up a WordPress blog.

I recommend using the WordPress.org blog because it’s free, it’s incredibly simple to use and has one of the most supporting and giving communities out there. Anyhow, you’ll see how simple it is to set this up after you watch these videos.

What is WordPress and a blog?

First, a blog is short for “web log.” Originally they were used as daily diaries and are generally organized in a date fashion. The newest post/article is on the top of the first page of your blog. However, over time and as WordPress and other blogging platforms have evolved, they’ve become what’s known as a content management system. Now, it’s just an easy way to organize and create content online.

WordPress is a blogging platform that will provide software that sits on your webhost’s server. It creates the ‘look’ of your website. This site is built with a WordPress blog software. The theme is what makes the header, footer and sidebars look the same on all the pages. Or, if I customize it, makes things look differently on each page. All I do is upload this area here (what you’re reading now) and it creates the webpage with the header, footer, etc. all nicely formatted around my content.

Go set it up and play around with it. Try out several themes and see how the content stays the same but
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Insurance Marketing Online Step 2 – Domain and Hosting

Well, I was going to record a video for this but this should be pretty easy to understand so I don’t need to record something. But, it will probably take me longer to type out what I want to say here. Anyhow, here we go…

You should have a main keyword that has a large daily search volume, low number in the SEOC column, and a lot of green on the SEO Competition page. You should also have a few other related keywords that have some volume. I sometimes check the Google Keyword Tool to verify the amount of traffic for my chosen keywords but it’s not necessary.
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Insurance Marketing Online Step 1 – Market Research

The first step in successful online insurance marketing is finding what people are actually searching for online. You may rank #1 in Google for a few key phrases but if nobody actually types in those words you’ll never be seen. However, there are many search phrases that are just too competitive to even try to rank well for. So, where do you find that happy middle ground? That’s where we’re starting today…

The first tool I recommend you get, and one if you plan on doing any long term marketing online is a must have, is Market Samurai. I’ve had this for about a year now and only recently have begun to really use it to a fraction of its potential. I’ve used it mainly for pay-per-click campaign research and now have found it invaluable to finding keywords that I can rank quickly, provide traffic, and monitor my site’s ranking in all the search engines. This is the tool I’ll reference throughout most of what you’ll be learning here and can’t recommend it enough. Go download the free trial and give it a shot.

Once you’ve downloaded and installed Market Samurai, you can start
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Learning To Fish For Insurance Leads Online

“Give a man a fish, he eats for a day, teach a man how to fish, you ruin a wonderful business opportunity.”
- Karl Marx

Man, I love that quote.

This will kind of be a rant since I received a marketing piece from another insurance marketing guru that irritated me.

They were pitching a “done for you” internet marketing plan. You pay them a huge chunk of change along with large monthly fees and they’ll manage your online marketing. I’m sure they’ll sell a lot and take advantage of a lot of really talented agents. However…

Guess what happens once you stop paying?

That’s right, you’re screwed…twice.

You shelled out a large amount of your hard earned cash over time and you lost a cash earning lead source (I’m assuming they’ll produce leads for you).

Now, think about this. You actually learn some basics of online marketing. It’s really not hard stuff so please keep reading this. You learn the basics. And, for less than the amount you would pay these marketing gurus you could outsource many things (like building a website) or you can do it yourself.

And, I’ll show you how for free over the next few weeks.

Marketing insurance online only consists of three simple things: Market Research, Traffic, Conversion. That’s it.

I’ll introduce you to the tools I use online to get sites listed fast. Some of the tools cost money and I highly recommend you buy them. If you’re slightly interested in marketing online these will save you many hours of your life. With them you can also help friends or businesses you work with and show them some of the tricks up your sleeve.

You don’t need to learn how to program websites, however some basics you’ll learn as you go. Most of what I do is plug and play. This will involve a bit of writing and time but if you dedicate 30 minutes to an hour each day you can have a site on the first page of Google within 30 days. No joke, I’ve done it a few times.

Now, the question for you is, do you want to be someone’s business opportunity or do you want to learn to fish?

Is Technology Becoming Your Sixth Sense?

I sent this video to a bunch of friends a couple months back. The advancement in technology is amazing and something we really need to be aware of for our business to succeed into the future.

When you watch this, think about how easily your prospects and customers will be able to find out about
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Pay-Per-Click Case Studies

Here are a couple interviews with two agents that have had my material for a couple months. They reveal a few of the secrets from my Internet Insurance Profits course that will be released on May 5.

If you’re marketing insurance online now, these are a must listen. If you’re thinking about marketing insurance online and don’t know where to start, these are
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A Scorpion’s Insurance Marketing Lesson

Okay, I live in the desert.

Scorpions live here too.

My grandfather and his brother were in North Africa during WWII. They were in the Air Force (back then it was the Army Air Corps). He was with the 64th Division of the 57th Fighter Group aka the Black Scorpions. He said they got their name because the first thing they saw when they got off the plane was a large black scorpion and they had problems keeping them out of their stuff when they slept. I miss him and his ‘war’ stories.

Arizona scorpions are a little different than the big black scorpions my grandfather told me about. They like to hide. They’re difficult to be see. They’re rarely seen during the day and come out at night to eat. And, even at night they’re difficult to see unless you have a black light. Under a black light they glow like a Christmas tree.

I went out the other night to see if there were any around. Watch this, it’s very short
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Why Internet Insurance Leads Suck

I had an email discussion with an insurance marketing trainer the other day. He said, “through his indirect experience, internet leads only deliver a lot of activity with little results.” I couldn’t argue. The experience most agents have with internet lead companies is bad. They’re not structured in your favor.

Like me, you’ve probably bought leads from a few companies that promised you wonderful, highly targeted leads. Then, after a couple days of working these leads, you realize it would be more fun to climb a cactus naked.
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Where Should You Start Your Online Insurance Marketing?

If you’re just starting to market online or you’re not satisfied with what you’re getting out of your online marketing efforts, this is a great primer on what you can do.

Search Engine Optimization, Blogging, Social Media, Long-Tail Keywords, Pay-Per-Click advertising, I run through a little of each.

• What drives the best traffic?
• What gets you the most quotes and new business?
• How can you use these and where do you need to be careful?

With technology changing, online fads coming and going, it’s hard to get started online and feel like you’re making a good decision. I share my experience online and what has produced the best results.

Make sure you watch to the end where I go through the Google Analytics (Google’s free tracking software that gives you real traffic statistics on your website) on some of my websites and you can see the actual
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