@somarco - thanks, but frank, blunt tell it like it is, free advice, often hurts ears that never listen, yet they talk with a forked tongue.
@csi_patrick - whoa boy - it is the power of the written word that is more important than structure. Your client wants to be entertained, and learn what they do not already know (as in trust factor).
Dare to be different, dare to make more money than anyone else. If it worked for me, it sure could work for you. (Or follow the pack and end up eating yellow snow)
@csi_patrick - whoa boy - it is the power of the written word that is more important than structure. Your client wants to be entertained, and learn what they do not already know (as in trust factor).
Dare to be different, dare to make more money than anyone else. If it worked for me, it sure could work for you. (Or follow the pack and end up eating yellow snow)
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csi_patrick
Expert
- 21
Trust is important - but so is structure - it is important to always know where you rank and why you rank at that spot and how to improve.
A good structure also often makes sense to your visitors.
Example:
Medicare Plans
- Medicare Part A
- Medicare Part B
- Medicare Part C
- Medicare Plans By State
- Medicare Plans Ohio
- Medicare Advantage Dayton
- Medicare Advantage Cleveland
- Medicare Plans Alabama
- Etc..
This is the page structure - I use wordpress, so I'd use pages to create content like that. This is called an SEO silo.
Then I have a tab strictly for news - which has blog posts. Each page is strictly informational, and the blog posts will be more for entertaining stories and excerpts and training articles.
Being structured doesn't mean the content can't be original, funny, or entertaining. At the very least it's informative and educational which also builds trust and credibility.
My main focus with our site is agent recruitment though, but I'm also building it to bring in some clients to request quotes.
- 2,024
Breaking this down further, think of any site or database as having hierarchial structure. It is good not just for the user, as it makes it easier to navigate, but for the content creator, because you know where things go.
in the above example, I feel like he left out a step to some degree.
Medicare Plans
-Medicare
--Medicare part A and B
---Medicare part A and B assistance plans
----QMB
----SLMB
--Medicare part C
--Medicare part D
---Medicare part D assistance plans
----Medicare extra help
----QMB
-Medicare supplement
--Medicare supplement plans
---A (Basic)
---D and G
---C and F
---N
---Medicare Excess Charge
---State by state differences
----Alabama
----Alaska
----...
-Medicare advantage
--HMO
---HMO-POS
--PPO
--PFFS
etc
In this example, you see that you end up with a multi-layer hierarchy, however, certain branches might share content, good example being QMB can be in 2 different categories by the layout.
This allows you to build upon the existing structure, have a huge number of content pages, yet have navigation that allows users to find the page they're looking for.
If you do a page like medicare, then put every other topic under medicare, you might end up with 200 or 300 topics directly under one tree heading, which makes navigation tricky, however if you do a tree, its easy to find what you're looking for, and there are less options to scroll thru per topic.
I am actually intigued by the technical side where as the writing part I a have a hard time with.
- 10,275
I am honored that you used a quote from me in your first post. Clearly, you will be successful in this business, as long as you don't do what I do.
InsuranceGuynTX
New Member
- 11
Wow! I am currently working on my own site. I am using Dreamweaver CS5 and have a pretty good knowlege of basic web building skills. But SEO is still a new thing for me. I will use this information and get back with you guys on the results I am getting.
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Also, if any of you SEO experts would like to critique my site please feel free.
Loy Harper Insurance; Fort Worth Insurance; Tarrant County Insurance Company; Texas Car Homeowners Business Life; Workers Compensation Insurance; Dallas Insurance Agency
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Also, if any of you SEO experts would like to critique my site please feel free.
Loy Harper Insurance; Fort Worth Insurance; Tarrant County Insurance Company; Texas Car Homeowners Business Life; Workers Compensation Insurance; Dallas Insurance Agency
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- 1,432
Great looking site. I wish that I had the ability to create a site as aesthetically pleasing.
I think you chose a good color palette for an insurance site.
Test raising the font size of your phone number. You may also want to test a color that makes the phone number pop.
I think that when people see a phone number they are both more likely to click and call. Knowing that they can call gives them more confidence when sharing information online even if they don't want to talk to anyone at the moment.
Your pages will load faster if you take the styling you have in the <head></head> section and put it in an external css file.
You only get "credit" for the first 70 or so characters of your <title></title>. You will probably do better if you shorten it.
Your title usually becomes the clickable text in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). The contents of your meta description tag becomes the little "classified ad" that shows up just below.
Without a meta description, Google will use a snippet of text from your page Google deems is most relevant.
Create a meta description. Your meta description should be about 154 characters for Google, 167 for Yahoo! and 174 for MSN. (Those character limits may have changed since I checked them last.)
Since you can't create separate descriptions for each engine, make sure that you get your main sales message out in the first 154 characters.
Hope this helps.
- 2,024
Title tag needs to be shorter, replace the ; with |. you need an h1 tag on the page, the most important text on the page is the title and h1. H1-h4 is not just for styling, its also to tell google/yahoo/bing what the page is about, typically a page is:
Title
-h1
--h2
---p
--h2
---p
--h3
---p
--h2
---p
etc etc. Headings are supposed to be in order, h1 is only supposed to appear once, and they're not used for styling the page.
You can change the style of the H1, but you cannot tell the robot that your h2 is your h1 because you wanted a different style for the heading.
Those rules need to be followed on each page. 60 char title, 100 char h1, repeat target keyword in every paragraph or 2, 500 words to a page or less, etc. I break the words on a page rule a lot, and I exceed the chars in title/h1 sometimes, but never omit those.
meta description is the words that show up when your term is searched, as alston said, do that too.
Homework: make an h1, shorten the title, use pipes | instead of ;, make a meta description and if you can remove all those tables. Tables are only supposed to be used for holding data, use divs and css for style.
I'm 100% sure that is dreamweavers fault, not yours.
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[Invalid] Markup Validation of http://www.loyharperinsurance.com/ - W3C Markup Validator
Shows 19 errors in syntax
Title
-h1
--h2
---p
--h2
---p
--h3
---p
--h2
---p
etc etc. Headings are supposed to be in order, h1 is only supposed to appear once, and they're not used for styling the page.
You can change the style of the H1, but you cannot tell the robot that your h2 is your h1 because you wanted a different style for the heading.
Those rules need to be followed on each page. 60 char title, 100 char h1, repeat target keyword in every paragraph or 2, 500 words to a page or less, etc. I break the words on a page rule a lot, and I exceed the chars in title/h1 sometimes, but never omit those.
meta description is the words that show up when your term is searched, as alston said, do that too.
Homework: make an h1, shorten the title, use pipes | instead of ;, make a meta description and if you can remove all those tables. Tables are only supposed to be used for holding data, use divs and css for style.
I'm 100% sure that is dreamweavers fault, not yours.
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[Invalid] Markup Validation of http://www.loyharperinsurance.com/ - W3C Markup Validator
Shows 19 errors in syntax
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learninsurance
Super Genius
- 108
There are lots of ways to get you website visible on most Search Engines and drive traffic to your site. You can do On-page optimization and off-page optimization as part of your Search Engine Optimization. Let's focus first in on-page optimization. You will need to do these stuffs:a. Make sure your domain name is related in your niche or industry,b. You must have a good site structure from site navigation to site validation(if you don't know this, there are many available Web Developers out there),c. Get advantage of these SEO elements: Title Tag, Meta Tags, URL structure, Header Tags, Anchor Text from your Inbound and outbound links,keyword prominence & density, and many more. d. Do keyword research, product analysis and competitor analysis as well. For off-page optimization, you can try these strategies: Social Bookmarking, Social Networking, participating in Forums, Blog commenting, Guest Posting, Writing Reviews to other sites, Classified Ads, Yahoo Answers or Answer.com, Web 2.0 like blogs, wikis, and hub pages, Business Profile creation and many more.
