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.

What we’re going to be going through over the next few weeks is very simple search engine optimization. I’m not going to go into canonical urls, page rank sculpting or other esoteric SEO tricks. We’re talking basic SEO strategies because you’re going after lower competition spots that only require the basics to get you listed and going fast. We’re shooting the fish in a barrel.

You won’t want to use your current agency site for this. The main domain for my agency, that we use for our email addresses, doesn’t have a site at all. If you typed in the URL it redirects to one of my other sites.

So, what you want to do is register a domain for the main keyword you found in Market Samurai.

As in my example from yesterday, the main keyword would be “Arizona home owner insurance.” I would want to buy the domain arizonahomeownerinsurance.com if it’s available. If not then I would try the .net. If the .net is not available I would go with a hyphenated version of those words with a .com or .net without looking too odd. An example would be Arizona-home-owner-insurance.com. If I’m still having problems then I would add “quote” or “quotes” before the .com.

I use Dotster to look up and research availability of domains. I don’t have any registered there currently but they’re a great place to research.

Why are we buying a new domain name? If you noticed on the SEO Competition page in Market Samurai, one of the “on page” ranking factors is the url. If the domain name is the search phrase then Google looks more favorable on your site as a site that should rank for the search term. (I’m going to use Google as representative of all search engines including Yahoo, Bing and others. Google is the big dog and it’s shorter than writing “search engines” each time). The more red squares you can make with your website the better position you’ll be against the competition.

What we’re going to do in Part 3 is set up a Wordpress blog on this domain. They’re extremely search engine friendly and easy to use. You’re going to have to trust me here. With a couple of clicks you’ll have a website up and running. First, you need to get hosting for your new domain and your soon to have blog.

I use and highly recommend Hostgator for webhosting. I work with several companies but Hostgator is my favorite. They’re easy to use, have great customer service (it’s US based and they’re friendly even at 2 am), and great reliability. They also allow the ability to host multiple websites without any additional charge (important if you want to target other lines of insurance too). But, most important is they have CPanel site management. This will give us our easy one-click Wordpress installation and save you learning new tricks. I don’t recommend GoDaddy at all, ever.

When you click go to Hostgator’s site, get the “Baby” package. If you look at the picture above the choices there will be a coupon code to save 20% off your initial order. Right now it’s the word “Autumn.” As you’re signing up, you can also register your new domain to save yourself two separate accounts and make this even easier.

It will take 24-48 hours for your domain and website to register. Once you’re done you can relax and in another couple days I’ll have the videos up to walk you through setting up the Wordpress blog and starting the customization process. We’ll also be going through the other fun stuff Market Samurai can do to track and find other opportunities for you online.

To those that want to use their current site:

Yes, you can do that if you want. However, if you did not set up your site and don’t have access to the hosting or files, this is a bad idea. If you don’t know anything about html, this is a bad idea. Unless you have experience, I wouldn’t recommend it.

Also, when you do it this way you’ll have a site, basically free except for the hosting and domain name costs, that you’ll be able to customize without knowledge of html, php or other programming language. You’ll be able to create the meta tags that make more of the “on page” ranking factors red with your site. If you’re using your old site then you will have to call your programmer, webhost, whatever and have them make changes.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments below.