Our Broker Survey – Commented on..

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Group: Unum Employees and Alumni Subject: New comment (1) on “Why are nearly 70% of Insurance Broker Websites so Bad?” It may be because someone who wants to sell improved website design says so. Posted by Joe Markland

To Joe Markland – HR Technology Advisors:

Joe, I just got the the comment above in my daily email update that you posted on the UNUM LinkedIn group. I saw you deleted it but as we all know what we say on the web has a long tail and it merits further comment.

Our extensive broker consultant website survey – offered free of charge – covers over 650 brokers who do 95%++ of the group business in the nation – and that includes all your members as well.

The first of its kind it was created to provide a baseline for brokerage firms to measure themselves against best practices and competitors. One click links for checking Google rankings and basic web visibility make it a great tool.

There are some great sites out there and we make it easy for folks to see and compare (for free) and thus far our survey has gotten north of 5000 page views as folks use it to compare and learn making it the most viewed pages The Industry Radar has posted in 3+ years.

The issues the survey raises are:

• Why do only 43 out of 650  appear in the top 10 in their market in Google?
• Why are only 33% ranked a 3  or higher?
• As we expanded in the last 2 weeks from 390 to 650 firms to include more big name member firms and affinity groups like HRTA the percentage went down, not up. Why?

Based on these findings the conclusions are whether the nation’s top brokers prepared to deal with the rapidly changing Web 2.0 and social media landscape and their own customer’s expectations?

Let’s look at your own HR Tech site as it is an interesting business case. You define your business as follows:

“HR Technology Advisors, LLC (HRT) is a national, independent benefits and HR technology consulting firm focused entirely on serving the needs of employee benefit firms and their clients.”

Your comments are a bit disingenous as you sell software and services to brokers, as well as design websites, and have created what appears to be a member group that competes with groups like UBA.

Your site is attractive and informative and I would give it a “3” – a good score. Folks you send there will like it. Not many will find it from the search engines. With your target market that may be unimportant.

For your brokers however, website quality and maximum visibility is important, especially as the healthcare markets change. Being prepared for the impact of social media and maximizing ROI in tough economic times is key as well.

Let’s look at what this independent SEO analysis site tells us about your own site:

• HR Technology Advisors has a “0” Google rating
• Has no “Title” or metatags
• Only 3 Yahoo links and
• no Alexa, compete.com links or ranking

It does have Google Analytics installed so you obviously know what your traffic volume is and where it comes from.

Your site appears on page 3 for 2 major search terms simply due to the firm’s name. With almost no effort you could get much higher and really be seen on page 1…

Most importantly – just like your site, and most of your clients – the nearly 70% we reference in this post do not follow the top 5 SEO tips from Google’s lead SEO engineer and their own webmaster’s SEO handbook:

• 85%+ do not use well designed titles with keywords they want to be found for
• 90%+ do not have metatags for descriptions and keywords
• 90%+ do not even use any sort of analytics to track their site activity (You do)
• Almost none have any sort of fresh content to get regular attention from Google
• Less than a dozen use a blog or RSS, the backbone of social media for content and sharing.

Several that do like Precept – run by old UNUM colleagues Wade Olsen and Alex Wasilewski – use the media well as part of a very innovative business

As a benefits “technology consulting firm” I  hope that you find our research helpful in improving your own site’s visibility and in helping your clients as well.

Explore posts in the same categories: brokers, Business, Employee Benefits, RSS Feeds, social media, Technology

Tags: brokers, Employee Benefits, internet, Technology, websites

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