Developing a Web Site for Health Sales

[Alston]

Well, it was risky - at least to me...I had done ppc campaign a couple of years ago - it was not successful as I wanted it to be..it was really a complex task for me until I passed the GAP exam...

Based on my experience, PPC can really be a difficult task for beginners - that's what I meant in my previous post - do your homework.

It seems to me that you are successful with your PPC campaign - perhaps you can give him some useful PPC resources? :-)

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SimplePerformanceMarketing.Com

You can get a lot out of a $20 or $40 book on PPC. I don't have any of the titles of the books I've read on the topic handy, but here are some tips:

1. Stick with Google Adwords and MSN until you are no longer a novice.
2. Limit your budget by day or by month. (Bet with your head and not over it).
3. Start with very low bids.
4. Incrementally increase your bids until you see some traffic.
5. Turn off the content network until you have time to figure it out. (Content and search are about as different as TV and radio. If you do decide to use the content network in the future, do so in completely separate campaigns.)
6. Learn how to use negative keywords.
7. Send traffic to a page that is specifically devoted to lead capture. (I can remember exactly where I was when I figured out how stupid it was to send traffic to my home page. I started making money right after that.)
8. Test ad copy and landing pages, but not at the same time until you have significant traffic.
9. Test different headlines in your ads.
10. The content on your landing page should match your ad as much as possible.
11. Use Google Website Optimizer to test changes to your landing pages.

 

[kheyknee]

I am a newly licensed life & Health Agent.

I moved into insurance sales after a long career in direct marketing - thinking I would ace the lead generation aspect. The hard lesson learned was that I needed to be good at closing insurance sales BEFORE investing in lead generation. A great web site with lots of traffic won't generate any revenue if the prospects don't buy insurance from you. For me it meant the drudgery of call calling to first learn the business, then investing in lead generation.

 

[medx]

I moved into insurance sales after a long career in direct marketing - thinking I would ace the lead generation aspect. The hard lesson learned was that I needed to be good at closing insurance sales BEFORE investing in lead generation. A great web site with lots of traffic won't generate any revenue if the prospects don't buy insurance from you. For me it meant the drudgery of call calling to first learn the business, then investing in lead generation.

I Agree....

 

[Pangaea]

I Agree....

Definitely. I had a friend that thought all he needed was a website and leads, but I told him "clients could smell the experience in on your breath".

A++ Post!

 

[BestInsurance]

Agreed with Alston. Agreed with Alston. Agreed with Alston. Hmmm... Did I say that I agree with Alston...?

The only problems are:
1) SEO is complex enough to occupy all your head. It is nice to have free clicks and conversion of those clicks just ROCKS! I can convert about 80% of SEO clicks which is hardly believable figure. But you get clicks when you are on top, exactly - top 3. You can get to the top on a keyword or two, you need 200 keywords, it make take you a life to get on top on 10 keywords. Your SERP can be ruined by competitors, you will be sandboxed, and if you get out of sandbox (instead of just be banned), you will become "untrusted domain" and won't ever get back to the positions you had. You can spend years of your time and eventually end up nowhere. Good news, that if you can survive, you will make for living doing nothing. Guess, where from I know all of this stuff...

2) PPC is complex enough to occupy all your head. You can even make it your another profession. Complication here is that your keywords are no longer a secret. So, the only way to get clicks is to outbid your competitors. Just when you do it, please keep in mind that 5% considered as good SEM conversion ratio and you won't be able to monetize more than 50% of your leads (unless you do crappy practices widely blamed on this forum). So, basically, multiple your PPC bid by 40, that will give you an estimate of the lead cost.

Do both.

 

[LocalSEO]

Agreed with Alston. Agreed with Alston. Agreed with Alston. Hmmm... Did I say that I agree with Alston...?

The only problems are:
1) SEO is complex enough to occupy all your head. It is nice to have free clicks and conversion of those clicks just ROCKS! I can convert about 80% of SEO clicks which is hardly believable figure. But you get clicks when you are on top, exactly - top 3. You can get to the top on a keyword or two, you need 200 keywords, it make take you a life to get on top on 10 keywords. Your SERP can be ruined by competitors, you will be sandboxed, and if you get out of sandbox (instead of just be banned), you will become "untrusted domain" and won't ever get back to the positions you had. You can spend years of your time and eventually end up nowhere. Good news, that if you can survive, you will make for living doing nothing. Guess, where from I know all of this stuff...

2) PPC is complex enough to occupy all your head. You can even make it your another profession. Complication here is that your keywords are no longer a secret. So, the only way to get clicks is to outbid your competitors. Just when you do it, please keep in mind that 5% considered as good SEM conversion ratio and you won't be able to monetize more than 50% of your leads (unless you do crappy practices widely blamed on this forum). So, basically, multiple your PPC bid by 40, that will give you an estimate of the lead cost.

Do both.

Agreed, although sand boxing is less likely to happen if you just let the website sit for the first initial few days. Also, unless you are doing black/grey hat stuff you aren't really going to have too much of an issue with sandboxing. Quite a bit of people get sandboxing confused with the google dance as well, which is basically where your listing jumps around on the search results for a little while.

 

[BestInsurance]

Agreed, although sand boxing is less likely to happen if you just let the website sit for the first initial few days. Also, unless you are doing black/grey hat stuff you aren't really going to have too much of an issue with sandboxing. Quite a bit of people get sandboxing confused with the google dance as well, which is basically where your listing jumps around on the search results for a little while.

You don't have to go black/grey, idea is to have google think that you went black/grey.
Take a look _http://www.loyalmart.com/dir/Business/Financial_Services/ Do you really believe that I (or someone with my permission and on my behalf) submitted my webiste to "Indian Business Directory" mixing 2 ads of another companies, an insurance broker and a job shop? I got more than 1000 of such links almost instantly (within 1 day) and in less than 1 week has sunk in Google.

 

[LocalSEO]

You don't have to go black/grey, idea is to have google think that you went black/grey.
Take a look _http://www.loyalmart.com/dir/Business/Financial_Services/ Do you really believe that I (or someone with my permission and on my behalf) submitted my webiste to "Indian Business Directory" mixing 2 ads of another companies, an insurance broker and a job shop? I got more than 1000 of such links almost instantly (within 1 day) and in less than 1 week has sunk in Google.

It doesn't have to necessarily be you who does it, but if a spammer or a competitor wants to they can have your site taken down. It looks like that may be the case with your site? Again, I don't know the full details so I can't really say.

EDIT: your site is not sandboxed, you currently rank Page 1 Rank 3 for "best insurance". If you've ever hired an link builder or SEO perhaps they used the indian directory and other links to propel your backlinks forward. That website also appears to have A USA section, so perhaps the directory you're listed in is the USA section? I'm not quite sure, and that is just purely directory submissions I wouldn't really call that black hat unless you have quite a few of those instances.If that is the case you more than likely got blasted somehow.

 

[BestInsurance]

EDIT: your site is not sandboxed, you currently rank Page 1 Rank 3 for "best insurance".

I know... I didn't say that it is sandboxed right now. I even roughly know the procedure of getting out of sandbox. In that post I just described the process.

If you've ever hired an link builder or SEO perhaps they used the indian directory and other links to propel your backlinks forward.

Nah... I do everything myself. I may hire someone to do social media

That website also appears to have A USA section, so perhaps the directory you're listed in is the USA section?

Can you tell me how did you determinate it? I know it because I set website targeting, but how to find it out "from the outside"?

I'm not quite sure, and that is just purely directory submissions I wouldn't really call that black hat unless you have quite a few of those instances.If that is the case you more than likely got blasted somehow.

Honestly speaking, I'm not interested in getting know how and why that happened. I'm interested in getting know how can I protect myself from such things. I know the answer, but it isn't going to be neither easy, nor cheap.

 

[Crabcake Johnny]

My positive experiences with PPC all turned bitter. It appeared (no accusations being made) as if Google knew I was actually turning a profit and raised and raised and raised the bid prices.

There was no rhyme or reason for it - me being admittedly uneducated. What was a successful keyword phrase at say $3.15 per click would slowly creep up and up and up. It left a bitter taste in my mouth - like Google saying "well if John's willing to pay $3.15, surely he'll pay $4.15. And if he'll pay $4.15...."

Some of the bid prices are so absurd, no one could pay them. No one's going to convince me that any lead vendor is paying $30+ per click. Sorry...you won't convince me. With a 4:1 click through a lead would cost $120. Ain't buying it.