Keywords are Key

Content is king, but getting it consumed is where keywords become queen

Sep 30, 2020

Today marketing your agency and yourself as an agent has never been more difficult, but you’ve also never had so many channels, mediums and strategies at your disposal. When you’re in the process of marketing yourself, the task of selecting the right mix of marketing tools might feel overwhelming, but if you take it one step at a time and you will have success.

A must-have in your toolbox is digital marketing, even with our current pandemic situation. Gartner’s CMO survey in 2019 shows that two-thirds of advertisers' budget is spent online. Developing great digital ads is important, but only one piece of the puzzle. You need to build a strong foundation first with keywords.

You are a health insurance expert. You have a wealth of knowledge that you’ve shared with your clients, and of course, you want to share it with many more new clients. You might have blog posts, videos or even podcasts highlighting the information and, in part, what makes up your value to the market. Don’t just let it sit on your website, YouTube page or social media untouched. Make sure your clients and prospective clients know about it. Make sure they get to your contact form. That all starts with keywords.

What are keywords?

Let’s start with defining keywords. You may hear the term keyword tossed around a lot, but to start using them, having a good understanding of what they are will help tremendously. SEOmoz, Inc. simply defines keywords as ideas and topics that define what your content is about. They're the words and phrases that searchers enter into search engines, also called "search queries."

Keywords are important, because they are the words that your clients and prospective clients are using to search the internet looking for health insurance, how to select a plan, or what benefits a health plan should offer. If you were to take out all of the images on your website, take all of the text and sift out the simple words and phrases on each page, those would be your primary keywords.

When you think about your keywords, think about “long-tail keywords”. These have nothing to do with dogs, cats, monkeys or Tiger King. Long-tail keywords are the longer phrases that you find when you sift through all your content. Clients search for “health insurance”, but they also search for “best benefits for employees today”. The second of these examples are long-tail keywords.

How do I find them?

Going back to search queries, or better known as “googling”, being able to look at your website and wading through the content, you should find key words and phrases that define or are embedded into the text, blog post, video or flyer. These keywords are the start of your keyword strategy.

Once you’ve found a handful of keywords, try to build out more words and phrases using free keyword research tools like Wordstream’s keyword tool, or sites like Google Trends and Keyword Tool.io. These tools can help you build hundreds of keywords to help you get started on a large base of keywords.

What’s next?

Now that you have a list of keywords that are pulled from specific pages on your website or from content you’ve posted, you begin testing.

Start small. Start with a blog post, a video or a landing page. This will help you understand the process of creating a keyword strategy, building a list of keywords and then being able to manage a pay per click (PPC) ad campaign. Companies like HubSpot have free keyword planning templates to help.

Marketing is a disciple of both creativity and science, and much like the scientific method, there should be lots of testing. Start advertising in places where your clients spend their time. That will most like likely be places like Google, LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram. And they all have an ad platform where you can start the process of advertising and testing out what works and what doesn’t.

Additional Resources

For more in-depth tips and tools to execute your keyword strategy, use sources like MOZ's beginner guide. Other sources like SEM Rush's PPC Checklist or the Search Engine Journal's PPC guide can help you create and run a campaign from beginning to end.

Right now you are most likely meeting with clients over the phone, on Zoom or by email. With the possibility of employers and clients continuing to work at home, direct and print marketing may not be a viable option. Make sure you use every tool you have to get in front of your clients and prospective clients. Keywords and paid search advertising are a great tool to use for now and for the future.