Blogging for Insurance Agencies

Blogging 101 for insurance agencies.

There’s a lot to keep in mind when starting and running a blog, which is why it’s so often underused on websites. Here we’ll break down some of the key factors to remember when starting your blog to help you make it an effective tool for your agency. From the basics of content and formatting to more complex topics like posting timelines and content calendars, we’ve got you covered.

Creating content for insurance agency blogs.

Figuring out what to write can be the hardest part, but you’re lucky because you already have your niche and audience figured out. You’re an insurance agency, so you’ll most likely be writing posts about insurance and your agency targeted at current and prospective clients.

Knowing your niche means you know what kind of content to write. Your posts should relate in some way to either insurance or your agency. You don’t want to post blogs about random topics that are unrelated to what you do because you won’t be driving the right kind of traffic to your site.

Personality is also key. You want to let that shine through in your writing, which is where the more conversational style of blog posts comes in handy. That’s why blogs are a good way to make your agency seem more personable and approachable. This is also a great space to show off what makes your agency unique, perhaps through an article that features your agency’s culture.

A catchy title that’s also optimized for SEO using topic and location keywords is important as well. Not only can it help your post and site rank better, but it can also draw readers to your blog and keep them on your website for longer periods of time. Simply put, make sure the title matches and summarizes the content you are writing so it shows up better for relevant search results.

Now that you have an understanding of your niche and audience, it’s up to you to come up with ideas for blog posts. These could be how-to articles that relate to home insurance or announcements for a local event your agency will be attending. Here are some sample ideas to get you thinking:

• 10 reasons why you need home insurance in Bethlehem, PA.
• Catch F3 Agency at the Bethlehem, PA, Spring Festival.
• F3 Agency raises $5,000 at the ABC Charity Run.
• Do businesses in Bethlehem, PA, have enough insurance coverage?

Blogging SEO best practices.

According to Agency Forward®, businesses with regularly updated blogs see an increase of 55% more website visitors than those without.

Just by having a blog, you are already off to a great start. But the key is consistency in how often you post, and the type of content designed to drive traffic organically.

Blog articles with location-specific keywords give more credibility for your business to show up in the areas you are targeting.

Optimizing your blog’s content for SEO is important if you want to get the most out of this tool. It’s important that the title, heading, subheadings, and body paragraphs of your posts contain topic and location-specific keywords as often and as naturally as possible.

For example, if you’re writing an article on auto insurance, you may want to work the name of the city you’re targeting into the title and overall content of the post.

How to format blog articles.

Formatting your content correctly is almost as important as the content itself because you want your content to be easily readable and eye-catching. Subheadings help with the readability.

No one likes to read big blocks of text—it’s daunting. Breaking your post up into smaller chunks with relevant subheadings can not only make the post easier to read but can also help readers find the specific section of information they’re looking for.

As an added bonus, subheadings are also great for accessibility since it’s easier for screen readers to comprehend, and they’re also great for SEO if optimized with keywords.

Let’s talk about images. Having a featured image for your blog article, as well as images throughout the content, helps to break it up and make your post more eye-catching and engaging to readers.

There are two important things to keep in mind when it comes to images. First, you want to make sure you can legally use the photos, so either use stock images you’ve purchased or ones that you’ve taken personally.

Second, make sure they’re relevant to your content and formatted properly. Our Forge website platform makes this simple, where you can drag and drop the image you want to use.

The basics of blogging.

Let’s get into the nitty-gritty of writing a blog post. We’ll start with the ideal post length. Simply put, the lengthier the better, but be sure to break it up with subheadings.

Search engines like Google prefer posts and articles with 500 words minimum or more when ranking your blog because it makes user clicks “worth it.” However, long-form content, such as 1,500 to 2,000 words, is a great length to target as it gives you more room to expand, as you can get into greater detail on a subject, which helps the overall SEO ranking of your website and blog article.

Also, keep in mind reader attention spans. If there are huge blocks of text that seem to scroll on forever, they might not stick around too long.

Now, there are exceptions to every rule, so don’t let that stop you from posting shorter blogs when the time calls for it. It’s all about finding that happy medium, what makes sense for the topic, and what is ideal for your insurance agency to create.

The same goes for paragraph length. Ideally, you’ll want to avoid using large paragraphs and huge blocks of text. When you preview your blog, if you see a section with a particularly long paragraph, consider finding ways to shorten it or break it up.

Before you publish your post, be sure to proofread. Nothing hurts your credibility more than a blog post filled with grammatical errors. If you aren’t confident in your ability to use correct grammar and spelling, consider running your post through a grammar-checking program like Grammarly. A clean and polished blog post will keep readers on your site for longer than a messy one that’s hard to read.

Create clear call-to-actions.

Linking to other pages within your blog post can be beneficial for both if done the right way. When writing your blog post, try to incorporate content that you can link to other sections of your website—whether that’s another blog post, a coverage page, your contact page, or something else.

By linking to another page on your site, you increase the likelihood that people will stay on your website longer, thus boosting your chances at a lead.

You can also link to relevant pages and posts that aren’t on your site. For instance, if you’re writing a post about car insurance, you could add a link to a local mechanic’s blog about auto repair tips everyone should know.

If the topics are relevant and related, this could help boost your SEO rankings. However, you should link to outside sites sparingly because it would mean readers are leaving your website, thus reducing your traffic.

You also want to create clear and compelling call-to-actions that make sense for where you want to drive your audience. Make it clear why you want someone to explore further on another page of your website, and if you make it intriguing enough, they will (and that keeps them on your website longer, too).

Categorize your blog articles.

To make life easier on your readers and make your blog more organized, be sure to assign your post to a relevant category or categories and separate content topics as appropriate. For example, your home insurance clients might not care about business insurance posts.

Blog categories could include personal insurance, business insurance, community involvement, and events. So, if you were to create a post talking about your most recent day volunteering, you would categorize that under community involvement.

Not only does this make your blog more organized, but it’s also helpful for SEO since it gives search engines the ability to sort your content and apply it to relevant searches.

Posting frequency.

When it comes to deciding how often you’ll be posting blogs, it’s important to keep a few things in mind. First, consider the size of your agency and your blog.  Make sure you aren’t posting so often that you’re running out of quality ideas. Remember, quality is better than quantity.

However, size isn’t the only consideration when it comes to your posting frequency. In fact, depending on your goals, posting daily could actually hinder you. There are two main goals when it comes to blogging—building traffic and building brand awareness.

If your goal is to build traffic, then you’ll want to post more frequently with as much SEO-optimized content as possible. But if your goal is to build brand awareness, diversity in your content is more important than frequency. These blogs should focus on important information about your agency and your niche.

The best advice is to start small, with achievable goals you can actually meet, and create a content calendar of when you want to post and stick to that schedule. Over time, you can adapt and post more often or less often, depending on the results and what you see is working best for you.

Adding blogs to your Forge website.

If you have a blog post you’d like to add to your Forge insurance website, we’ve made it simple to do so. Whether you’ve written the content yourself or you’d prefer to start with our AI tool, FirstDraft, you can easily log in to your website dashboard and begin blogging.

You can do everything from writing the blog, reviewing and making adjustments, to publishing it all in one place, making it easy for insurance agencies like yours to keep up-to-date with blog frequency.

If you don’t yet have a Forge website, no worries! You can still use this amazing advice in this resource to get you started blogging, and to take your marketing efforts to the next level.

How to get started blogging.

The best way to get started is to just dive in!

Blogging can seem overwhelming at first, but it doesn’t have to be. Just keep in mind that you don’t have to go from zero to sixty overnight. You can take some time to create your strategy and posting schedule, develop topics, and gather your resources.

Quality information is better than a large number of posts, and there’s no reason to rush it. The more familiar and comfortable you get with the process, the simpler blogging for your insurance agency will become!