When you’re looking for a local business, where do you turn? To the internet, of course — and your clients do the same. Search engine optimization (SEO) can ensure your agency stands out among the pack, boost your image as a trusted expert, and help your website rank at the top of search results.
But you can’t rest on your laurels when it comes to SEO. Keeping up with the changing SEO landscape is essential. That’s why we’re sharing everything insurance industry professionals need to know about Google’s latest game-changer: Search Generative Experience (SGE).
What is the Search Generative Experience?
Google’s Search Generative Experience uses generative artificial intelligence (AI) to generate a detailed response to search queries. SGE goes far beyond Google’s Featured Snippets. Query results appear in a large box with a detailed answer, a carousel of additional links and thumbnails to the right, and suggested follow-up questions to explore the subject further at the bottom of the box. (Here are some examples of SGE results.)
Sponsored links, organic links, the Featured Snippet, and People Also Ask appear below the SGE results. However, because SGE results are so comprehensive and include additional links, many users will likely never scroll further than the initial result. This “completeness” will probably mean less traffic to organic links and sponsored content, cutting into insurance agencies’ pageviews and clickthrough rates.
Here are five insights to help you prepare for the impact of SGE on insurance industry SEO.
Insight 1: User Intent
SGE uses AI to decipher users’ intent based on keywords or the questions they ask. As SGE moves beyond its current stage, it will get better and better at delivering extremely targeted responses. For insurance marketers, mastering SEO in the age of SGE requires including not only keywords but also user intent in your content strategy.
The good news for insurance professionals: SGE is ideally tailored to answering questions. (It’s currently less useful for product-based businesses.) But rather than the brief answers that make it to the Featured Snippet, SGE presents long answers culled from sites across the internet. SGE includes links to sources for its information, so if you can answer questions thoroughly and clearly, your agency’s website could make it to the SGE box. You can sign up to use SGE and ask common questions your customers might ask to get a feel for how SGE will answer them.
Insight 2: Voice Search Optimization
A whopping 123.5 million people used voice assistants such as Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant in 2022, and their popularity is growing. Voice search and SGE go hand in hand. People using voice assistants tend to ask questions conversationally — for example, “What’s the best insurance agency near me?” instead of “insurance agent Milwaukee.” Longer, conversational queries make it easier to understand user intent, which can help you tailor your content creation to SGE.
Optimizing for voice search queries requires understanding the questions your customers and prospects ask and creating content that answers them in conversational language. Long-tail keywords will grow in importance as the use of longer voice search questions continues to grow. A mobile-friendly website (more on this later) is also critical to optimizing for voice search, which is typically used on mobile devices.
Insight 3: Content Quality and Depth
AI-generated content is created using patterns the AI derives from publicly available content online. As a result, content produced by AI tends to be generic. In order to stand out in the world of SGE, insurance industry professionals should focus on developing unique, high-quality content that doesn’t pull from standard sources.
Creating content based on your agency’s unique expertise, quoting insurance industry experts and research from your firm or elsewhere, and pulling data from social media sites (which AI is less likely to scour) can help your content shine. Long-form content, generally defined as anything over 1,000 words, can also boost your SEO. Insurance is a complex topic, and longer content can better serve your prospects by giving you space to answer common insurance questions in detail. It also provides more space for long-tail keywords, links to other pages on your site, calls to action, and subheadings that can incorporate keywords.
You can develop useful long-form content by researching the questions most people have about an insurance-related topic, reading the top three search results, and thinking about what they’re missing. How can you cover the same topic better, with additional information and unique insights or sources the competition doesn’t offer?
Insight 4: Mobile Optimization
Because mobile devices account for close to 60% of internet traffic , Google rankings use “mobile-first indexing,” primarily crawling the mobile version of a site’s content. The rapidly growing popularity of voice search means mobile search is poised to increase even more. A mobile-optimized website is essential to successful SEO for insurance agencies.
Google recommends the following to optimize your site for mobile:
- Use responsive web design, which displays content in a format tailored to screen size but uses the same HTML code and URL no matter what device a user is viewing.
- Put the same content on your desktop and mobile site to allow both to rank for the same keywords.
- Use the same headings on both desktop and mobile sites.
- Use high-quality images and the same alt tags on both desktop and mobile sites.
Insight 5: Local SEO for Insurance Agencies
With inflation eating into consumers’ budgets and weather-related losses on the rise, more consumers are seeking ways to save money on insurance. Searches for quotes typically start online, making local SEO more vital than ever for insurance agencies.
To optimize your website for local SEO:
- Include location-based keywords in your content, meta descriptions, page titles, and headings.
- Complete your Google My Business listing with detailed information, local keywords, images, and content.
- Build high-quality backlinks to your site from reputable sources such as local newspaper websites, relevant local business websites (such as a real estate agent or an auto dealership), or insurance industry websites.
- Ask customers for reviews on Yelp, Google, Facebook, and other review sites.
- Get listed in local business directories such as the Better Business Bureau, Superpages, Yellow Pages, and Local.com.
You can kill two birds with one stone by combining local SEO with long-form content tailored to the needs of clients in your area. For example, if floods are common in your region, create a flood insurance landing page, a list of flood insurance FAQs, and a detailed guide to flood insurance to answer all your prospects’ questions.
Future Trends in Insurance SEO
SGE will transform the way consumers engage with search — and the way insurance agencies approach SEO. Insurance professionals will need to adapt their SEO strategies to accommodate longer, more conversational search queries. While this requires some effort, AI will ultimately prove an invaluable tool that insurance companies can leverage to provide instant quotes, answer customer queries, and enhance the overall user experience. Predictive analytics and AI-powered algorithms will enable insurance companies to anticipate user needs and trends, helping them create content that powers successful SGE SEO.
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