I spent an entire week, last week with some of the top SEO’s in the world. I will be delivering what we derived in a series of blog posts and personal entries over the next several weeks.

Once thing I want to get out to all my friends and clients is this  concept of “LINK PRUNING”.

As you know we have seen several search engine algorithm updates, but is is becoming more and more clear that QUALITY, TRUST, REPUTATION are more important than ever.

What does LINK PRUNING have to do with this? Well for years many people have been going out and getting back links, with the goal in mind the more the better. BAD IDEA!

quality, trusted, reputable , related links =GOOD, helps SERP

Poor, untrusted, bad neighborhood, non-related = BAD for SERP

So we have started link pruning, and have seen SERP increases as early as 3 weeks.

How do you do this?

1) Identify the poor, low quality links and remove them! (15% at a time)

2) Increase your HIGH TRUST , high authority, related links.

So try to remove the bottom 15% of your bad links, at the same time increase your good links. SEE WHAT HAPPENS!

Keep doing this until all the links to your site are HIGH TRUST, RELATED AUTHORITY sites in and around your industry.

INDUSTRY PROBLEMS:

• It is hard to make someone remove your links, and in fact some sites are starting to charge for it!
• LINK BOBMING is on the rise, where the competition will add low trust, poor quality links to your site in effort to hurt your SERP.

We have suggested that the search engines offer a REVERSE NO FOLLOW, so we can identify POOR LINKS , to have their “BAD NEIGHBOORHOOD” affects removed . This is going to take time, so the best thing it to make sure you get rid of all your JUNK LINKS!

MAKE SURE YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR LINKS COME FROM!!!

LINK PRUNING

A semantic URL is essentially an URL string or address for a page that is human-readable (Designed for the customer) and conveys useful information about that page to the visitor at first blush.

An example for a page on “Medicare Supplemental Insurance” would be:

• www.example.com/Medicare-Supplemental-Insurance/

Way too often I see webmasters & agents make pages with addresses such as this:

• www.1-800-MEDIGAP.com/index.php?page_id=46

Typically we see this because it is much easier to implement ( use of WORD PRESS or CMS). The trouble is that it’s ANTI - SEO! ONPAGE factors are a part of the equation and do matter especially in the very competitive markets like insurance. Onpage may not be as important as AUTHORITY ! However, by and large, having keywords in the URL is the single most important part of on-page optimization.

Make sure your site developer implements semantic URLs correctly on your site!

Although you don’t get penalized for using a non-semantic URL structure, you’re missing out on a big opportunity… and changing it after the site has gone live can be a big headache.

Another thing to watch for is (_) vs (-) ?? You ask??

Medicare_supplemental_insurance = the keyword Medicare_supplemental_insurance   verses  Medicare-supplemental-insurance = Medicare Supplemental Insurance. The _ is not a space , so one of the options is just a huge run on word, vs the other is actually seen by the search engines as a key word phrase with spaces between them!

Medicare Supplement Plan F is our number one enrolling Medicare Supplemental Insurance plan.

Out of all the plans 1-800-MEDIGAP enrolls, it seems to have the most benefits for the money and fits well in most budgets.

If you are turning 65 or have started your part b in the last 90 days, call us NOW to discuss your TIME SENSITIVE options!

Medicare Supplemental Insurance Trends are by season and by region based on what the consumers see, thin and hear….it is very important to fully understand your customer, to make wise SEO choices. How Medicare Supplement plans work!

Medicare Gap

With the Medigap Market exploding, and millions of babyboomers turning 65 over the next 15 years 1-800-MEDIGAP is sure to be a leading source of consumer education on the web.

As an agent, we all know that LIVE phone calls convert the best, so 800-MEDIGAP is sure to be the competitive advantage for thousands of agents nation wide.

PRE-REGISTRATION is now live, so now is a good time to lock in this opportunity.

So the perfect storm for a new agent would be a 3 day weekend, that falls toward the end of the month.

You do PPC on a holiday weekend, you will be one of the few agents working so you will have less competition! Your cost per click will be down and fewer people calling make it the best time to spend your limited budget.

Another great time is sunday afternoon. Most agents do not work sundays, and people are at home so they are more free to talk. Again, if there is a Sunday on the last day of the month many agents monthly budgets have ran out, and your chances are much greater to get a quality lead for less.

Thanksgiving and especially the weeks areound Christmas are HUGE! So many agents take this time off, and many of the big offices shut down between Christmas and new Years, making it a great time to spend your marketing dollars. they will go much father, and many people are looking to make an insurance change before the new year, so you have very willing buyers who are on a mission and THEY ARE IN THE CHRISTMAS MOOD….

There are some other great time we will discuss on our next PPC call.

There are many ways to answer this, and it typically depends on when the questions is asked. So I am going to give you some facts, and myth busters and you can apply them to your new business.

1) MY WEB-SITE

This seems to be the first MYTH. It has to cost alot of money to build a perfect website for my new business, and it takes months to get it just right. FALSE!!!!!

Facts about web-sites:

• You can build a website for under $1500.00 and if you are on a real tight budget under $300.00(this will get you started, and you can alwasy grow your site as you have more budget).
• Time to depoly a site. 1 week! Get it set up, get a few pages on it and get to the business of selling insurance. Dont spend months making your site perfect, because there is no perfect site. The only person you are trying to impress with a site that takes months to build is YOURSELF!!!
• All hosting is the same! FALSE!! This is one thing you should invest in early. A FAST SITE, Google loves speed, so the faster your pages load the better. Dont buy the $7.00 shared hosting account. I would prefer to see you get your own blazing fast dedicated server, you will be glad you did. I have seen them as low as $150.00 a month, and I promise you in the long run you will be glad you did. Many agents make this mistake, and all things equal you may out rank your competition much sooner than you think , just because of speed. Google wants page load speed under 1.5, and most sites dont even get close to this. Flash and a ton of graphics really slow your page down.
• FACT: I built a site 3 days ago, and it is on the second page of Google today for the keywords I am optimizing for. It does not take 6 months to get indexed, if done correctly.
• MY URL: Dont fall inlove with a URL, that is all it is, a $10.00 string of words! I prefer URLS that include the KEYWORDS of your business, Google like this and they tell the customer exactly what your site is about. If your url can tell the full storey of your site, it has done its job!

OK, so you have built your site!!Yeah, now what? You hvae to choose a marketing budget, that you can stick to for 120 days. What ever that budget is, I reccomend splitting it in half and spending 50% on Pay Per Click and the other 50% on LONG TERM SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION.

Pay-per-click is very expensive in the long run, but it will get your business going in hours. You can set up a campaign and start creating leads the same day. If you need a list of good providers, give me a call and I can tell you the one that fits your product the best. You will need to figure between $4.00 a click and $15.00 a click depending on what type of insurance you are selling, and what time of year it is.

It typically takes 3 clicks to make a lead. So you invest $300.00 in a PPC campaign, you will probably see 7-30 leads. You close one leads and take the profite and do it again, and again, and again. You have now started a successful online business.

Over time you are going to see that your cost of leads are going up because PAY PER CLICK goes up every year. IN-FACT, when I started PPC, I was paying .01 a click. So it has gone up 15000% in 14 years, and we expect it will tripple in the next 3-5 years. So do the math, it is going to cost alot more to operate your online business in the future. That is where the other half of your marketing budget comes in. LONG TERM SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO).

SEO,Where do you start? Well you need to understand that SEO is a 3 legged stool and you need all three legs to succeed. You also need to understand that it takes months if not years to get the most out of SEO (that is why is is called a long term investment), but once it starts working for you it will help lower your cost per lead and cost per sale, and it will allow you to keep growing your business at the time you will need it the most.

WE OFFER AN ENTIRE CLASS ON THE ART OS SEO! Give us a call if you would like to be a part of the online or classroom class.

Oh panda we agree!

Defination of low quality, including but not limited to in Googles eyes:

• A high percentage of duplicate content or pages. • A low amount of original content on a page or site.

• A high number of pages with a low amount of quality and original content.

• A high amount of inappropriate content including advertisments, especially above the fold and run of site.

• Page content and on-page factors not matching the search queries a page does well for. (meta data)

• Unnatural overuse of a word on a page for keyword stuffing.

• High bounce rate % on page or for overall site, so content not serving the customers well.

• Low visit times on page or site, signaling poor content or not helpful to the Google user.

• Low precentage of visitors and users returning to a site, signaling not worth a repeat trip so may be low quality.

• Title and Google info poor, making for a Low clickthrough % from Google’s results pages.

• High % of stock or repeating content (the same on every page).

• Low , no-revelant or no quality inbound links to a page or site (by count or %).

• Low or no social signals.

All the pages on your site seem to be affected if you have decreased in overall value due to panda,even the high quality original pages that were being ranked well !

Google has always said “low quality content or usless content to their users on part of a site can impact a site’s ranking as a whole on the SERP.”

Change in Algorythim and SITE PENEALTY are two different things!!!

A penalty may be give to your site for not following the Google guidlines

A Algorythim change exists and its results will continue until it is changed, your site changes (or your site gets whitelisted).

Panda algorythim change is just that a change that we all need to wake up and take notice of. With over 12% of the sites on the web (US) being impacted there will be winners, losers and those who come out on top dispite CHANGE! Dental Insurance is cheap at: