What happens if your insurance agency uses the same generic boilerplate content as 100 other agencies? What type of review would you give your current website, if you reviewed if from the perspective of a prospect, potential employee or possible partner? If your agency is simply copying boilerplate content, you're likely in the penalty box, placed there by both Google algorithms and your prospective clients. Let's
discuss how and why you got there, and remember, this information is in the public domain, accessible by anyone and everyone.
Your agency may be using boilerplate content from an insurance website platform. These can range in price from just a few hundred dollars total cost, to thousands of dollars per month. Regardless of the price, the approach is the same. You select the lines of coverage you want from a boilerplate content library, and that becomes your website content. Now your website is just like dozens, or even hundreds of other agents, agencies and brokers.
You can test your site for duplicate content by repeating the following four steps:
1. Navigate to one of your internal pages. For example, Homeowners Insurance.
2. Copy a sentence from your website page and paste it into a Google search. Here is a good example, "There are four primary types of life insurance, and each has a place in any sound financial plan."
3. Review the results pages - do they consist of agencies like yours?
4. Visit some of those websites - does their content look just like yours?
Repeat this several time on several pages (Auto, Life, Group Health, etc.). If your answer to items #3 and 4 are "yes", then your insurance website is using duplicate content.
When it comes to duplicate (or syndicated content), search engines often don't know which pages to include or exclude from their ranking indices. Further, the search engines don't know if they should direct the link metrics to your website, or another site. And they may not know which page to rank for their query results (which agency to display in their search engine results pages). Clearly, when duplicate content is present, websites suffer rankings and traffic losses. And potentially worse, your best prospect or new potential hire may click on a competitive site that looks just like yours, or notice your website looks the same as another agency, located down the street.
The solution is simple enough, though it can be daunting for a busy agency. Rewrite all your website content so it is truly unique to your agency, and do so from your specific value proposition and branding perspective. If your agency lacks the time, talent or tools to accomplish this, or if your website can't pass the Google Mobile Friendly Test, you can reach out to a proficient insurance agency marketing firm and outsource these initiatives.
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