Search Engine Marketing and Online Insurance
February 13, 2006 - What good is a Web site if nobody ever sees it? People find what they are looking for on the Web through major search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and ask.com. So if traffic and visibility is important to you, then maintaining high placement for the keywords that relate to your products or service offerings is critical - especially for online insurance Web sites.
As an example, take Medicare part D. On November 15, 2005, seniors could begin enrolling in the new government-sponsored drug benefit. In anticipation of this milestone event, in the summer and fall of 2005, IdeaStar built a site for a client to facilitate education and enrollment in the program. Because, we included sophisticated search engine optimization techniques in the site programming, in the first 3 months, the site had tens of thousands of page views and enrollments stemming from search engine traffic alone. It's powerful stuff!
IdeaStar Inc. excels in attaining and maintaining top rankings for its many search engine marketing clients. With that in mind, IdeaStar’s General Manager and Search Engine Specialist Susanne Svette and Communications Manager Mary Fisher recently attended the Search Engine Strategies Conference in Chicago - The Premier Event for Search Engine Marketing & Optimization.
Susanne concentrated on the “nuts-and-bolts” of search engine marketing, as well as its future. She added to her considerable knowledge of the craft by attending forums including:
“I attended the Search Engine Strategies conferences for several years now. It’s always amazing to me the new information that’s out there, and that I can put it to use for our clients,” Susanne said.
"One of the most interesting topics covered at this conference was the future of Search and Pay-Per-Click campaigns," Susanne said. "MSN is now competing with other top search marketers like Google and Yahoo with their MSN AdCenter. This third player is going to make things very interesting."
“MSN AdCenter will be unique,” Susanne added, “because it will provide demographic information on keywords which equals insight into your audiences.”
Mary focused on the marketing and content aspects of SEM. She attended forums including:
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Search Engine Friendly Design
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News Search SEO
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RSS, Blogs & Search Marketing
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Converting Visitors into Buyers
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Writing for the search engines.
“I didn’t realize there was so much to be taken into consideration for converting Web site visitors into buyers – everything from page color, to button placement, to text size. It can be mind boggling,” Mary said. “This will come more into play for IdeaStar’s e-commerce clients.”
Mary also came away from the conference with a better understanding of writing for the search engines. “The thing to remember is you are also writing for people. There is a fine line between adding search terms and what is acceptable to readers.”
What does all this mean? It means IdeaStar is continuing its commitment to being on the leading edge of search engine marketing for its clients. “If there is one thing certain, search engine marketing is constantly changing. You can be at the top of a search engine one day, and down at the bottom the next,” Susanne said. “It was great to spend some time learning the latest.”
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