Just launched, Please critique my muse site

[erazer]

After a year of on-again off-again work my muse site has been finally launched at carinsurancequoter.com (http://www.carinsurancequoter.com).

I was wondering if the good folks here at the 4HWW forum would be willing to take a look a look at it and provide a critique and give some feedback. The site has virtually no traffic at this point, so I'm looking at strategies to market the website.

I was wondering if you guys might be able to share some best practices?

Would it be a mix of tactics, or is it wise to focus on just article marketing for example? I'm a highly competitive market - car insurance, so I don't know if bothering with trying to rank in google makes sense. Isn't that what article marketing is mainly for - to build backlinks.

I'm also looking into PPC with Adwords- I've heard good things about it, but you can break the bank quickly if you don't have a good daily budget and don't optimize for the right keywords. Since car insurance is so competitive the Cost-per-clicks for most keywords are insanely high. I've done some tests with a random selection of keywords in the past, and it was very high CPC. The problem is I'm a Adwords newb and I just haven't found a reliable resource to learn about this tactic and how to implement PPC for this type of competitive niche.

Thanks for the help, all comments/critiques/feedback appreciated.

[americanoracle]

How do you plan to generate revenue from the site? Do the insurance co's pay you for directing them traffic or what?

I am still learning, not much I can advise you on.

Good luck!

[erazer]

How do you plan to generate revenue from the site? Do the insurance co's pay you for directing them traffic or what?

I am still learning, not much I can advise you on.

Good luck!

You are correct. Its all affiliate earnings. When someone enters a zip code, they get a list of insurance providers. They should one provider from the list (after comparing the different features of each), and then are taken to that provider. I get paid based on the visitor choosing an insurance provider and going to their website.

[gaberoonie]

This looks great. I'd use this site.

Some marketing tactics you should explore:

Forum marketing

Killer banner ads per Mille impressions on cheap PPC networks like AdBrite

Article marketing can drive traffic not just through ranking

With that domain name, you might have a good shot at ranking well in google for "car insurance quote"

[americanoracle]

If it's not a secret, how much does one get for a click through from insurance companies?

Just my experience with your site but I would be much more inclined to use it if it were set up like orbitz or such. where I entered my basic info and then it just spit out 10 quotes. Don't know if that can be automated but that is what I would attempt with a site like that.

cheers,
J.

[seth121]

Insurance is the most competitive field online...Seo would be a real challenge as your dealing with a lot of other really savvy seo guys in that area who have over a 10k budget for a site.

Also PPC is quite expensive for insurance and many times you will be placed in an undesirable location....I wouldn't recommend entering insurance unless you have 10k or more realistically 50k for advertising and link building and thats rather modest if you plan on entering the top 10 in SERPS or being competitive in PPC.

There are other forms of insurance such as pet insurance which is quite big and some decent payout on leads...or you can try boat insurance but the volume mostly comes from australia

or targeting at least 140 long tail keywords since you won't be able to compete for the broad base keywords

[erazer]

If it's not a secret, how much does one get for a click through from insurance companies?

Just my experience with your site but I would be much more inclined to use it if it were set up like orbitz or such. where I entered my basic info and then it just spit out 10 quotes. Don't know if that can be automated but that is what I would attempt with a site like that.

cheers,
J.

It ranges from a few bucks to $12 if the customer fills out a quote form at the insurance provider website. They use a formula called quality score to determine how much that click is worth.

Of course I'd prefer to have more control over what the system spits out in terms of insurance information but as an affiliate I dont have control over the script unfortunately. You get to compare features/benefits from the providers but not quotes themselves.

[erazer]

This looks great. I'd use this site.

Some marketing tactics you should explore:

Forum marketing

Killer banner ads per Mille impressions on cheap PPC networks like AdBrite

Article marketing can drive traffic not just through ranking

With that domain name, you might have a good shot at ranking well in google for "car insurance quote"

Great advice thanks. The car insurance quote keyword is insanely competitive and it would probably take ages to rank wouldn't it? I guess I have good things going for me considering the keyword is in the domain. But I have really no experience with that. I'm assuming it just involves a ton of backlinking and indexed pages, which unfortunately my competitors have tens of thousands of both.

I am looking at article marketing, but haven't tried any automated tools to get the articles submitted. Any recommendation? Also, getting the articles written costs $$ - know where to get good quality cheap articles written?

I've heard of Adbrite but haven't tried them yet. Whats your experience like using them?

[erazer]

Insurance is the most competitive field online...Seo would be a real challenge as your dealing with a lot of other really savvy seo guys in that area who have over a 10k budget for a site.

Also PPC is quite expensive for insurance and many times you will be placed in an undesirable location....I wouldn't recommend entering insurance unless you have 10k or more realistically 50k for advertising and link building and thats rather modest if you plan on entering the top 10 in SERPS or being competitive in PPC.

There are other forms of insurance such as pet insurance which is quite big and some decent payout on leads...or you can try boat insurance but the volume mostly comes from australia

or targeting at least 140 long tail keywords since you won't be able to compete for the broad base keywords

Ya I was pretty naive when I entered into this, I didn't really consider the competition at the time so search engine ranking is a massive challenge with a site like this.

What CPA networks do pet insurance and boat insurance? I've been looking for another good niche to get started in.

Targetting long tail words would be interesting to try. Do you recommend using exact and phrase matching for these also?

[seth121]

Well your head is in the right place. Lead generation has much higher conversion rates than sales and is much easier in comparison that sales based sites and can be just as profitable. I would actually prefer a lead based site more than an item based site since it's easier to set up and get going as well as there is potential for more profit.

For lead based commisions you can look up leadpoint.com, leadpile, odigger.com, insureme.com etc etc. These are probably the best for financial leads. Now finance is really profitable but extremely competitive for that main reason. So if you were to go into any of these area you would have to target a lot of long tail keywords.

For PPC you should set your bid to lowest on broad, medium on phrase, and high on exact. Exact has more conversions but less click through rate. But since you are competing in a pricey market you may have to go broad based fist to increase your CTR rate which will in turn lower the cost of bidding for other keywords. So bid high on broad in the beginning and then follow through with the outline I gave you before.

For on page SEO you should try to target as many long tail keywords as possible. I would use a tool by compete.com to analyze the keywords of your top competitors and pick off those keywords since you can just look at what traffic you competitors are bringing in from there keywords since they have already done all the research for you.

Read this article it will be really helpful for you.

http://www.ppchero.com/how-to-effectively-group-ppc-keywords-by-purchase-intent/

and this one of how the top seo guys choose which sectors to enter.

http://www.wordstream.com/articles/ultimate-guide-to-keyword-competition

and if there are some tools i would seriously invest in that would help you do some keyword research and in depth analysis

SEMrush <==== one of my favorites
Compete.com <====== awesome data
Majestic SEO <===== great tool
SEO for Firefox <===== mandatory and awesome free toolbar tool for firefox and developed by Aaron Wall
Backlink Analyzer <==== check the backlinks of your competitor and then follow those backlinks and try to place your link on those sites...also it's free and by Aaron Wall


Also you seem to have a good Domain name so you may potentially be able to sell it. I would put it up for sale just to see if you get any bites.

[erazer]

Man thats such a great wealth of information! Thanks so much for pointing me in the right direction.

I'll be sure to check out the SEO tools.

Whats your take on PPC or PPV networks, like Adbrite? I just setup an ad with them to start some testing. Do you recommend investing in time/money in those aside from Adwords?

Well your head is in the right place. Lead generation has much higher conversion rates than sales and is much easier in comparison that sales based sites and can be just as profitable. I would actually prefer a lead based site more than an item based site since it's easier to set up and get going as well as there is potential for more profit.

For lead based commisions you can look up leadpoint.com, leadpile, odigger.com, insureme.com etc etc. These are probably the best for financial leads. Now finance is really profitable but extremely competitive for that main reason. So if you were to go into any of these area you would have to target a lot of long tail keywords.

For PPC you should set your bid to lowest on broad, medium on phrase, and high on exact. Exact has more conversions but less click through rate. But since you are competing in a pricey market you may have to go broad based fist to increase your CTR rate which will in turn lower the cost of bidding for other keywords. So bid high on broad in the beginning and then follow through with the outline I gave you before.

For on page SEO you should try to target as many long tail keywords as possible. I would use a tool by compete.com to analyze the keywords of your top competitors and pick off those keywords since you can just look at what traffic you competitors are bringing in from there keywords since they have already done all the research for you.

Read this article it will be really helpful for you.

http://www.ppchero.com/how-to-effectively-group-ppc-keywords-by-purchase-intent/

and this one of how the top seo guys choose which sectors to enter.

http://www.wordstream.com/articles/ultimate-guide-to-keyword-competition

and if there are some tools i would seriously invest in that would help you do some keyword research and in depth analysis

SEMrush <==== one of my favorites
Compete.com <====== awesome data
Majestic SEO <===== great tool
SEO for Firefox <===== mandatory and awesome free toolbar tool for firefox and developed by Aaron Wall
Backlink Analyzer <==== check the backlinks of your competitor and then follow those backlinks and try to place your link on those sites...also it's free and by Aaron Wall


Also you seem to have a good Domain name so you may potentially be able to sell it. I would put it up for sale just to see if you get any bites.

[seth121]

For PPC networks I would stick with google at first simply because it dominates the market at the moment. But there is also yahoo! and bing. You can use the other 2 but they have less market share, but you may actually do better on those. PPC is getting increasingly complex. If you want to do well at PPC you should make a list of negative keywords so your ads don't come up for irrelevant searches. You can use up to 10,000 negative keywords in your PPC campaigns. This can save you 25% on cost because you will have less irrelevant clicks. Look on PPChero.com they have an article about how to use negative keywords. I would say you should invest the time into doing some research on setting up your negative keywords to save money.

As for adbrite that run ads between pages and what not can be good but it takes some tweaking. That gets a bit more complex as well. First I would start off with PPC and then optimize that and then move onto adbrite. Google also has one like adbrite as well. PPC is great for getting information quickly and then optimizing for the market. Make sure your ads are integrated with google analytics to get the full amount of data.

If you want more research data I use googletrends.com, and googleinsights.com to check markets that are on the rise or declining.

Heres an article on how to use them.

http://www.ppchero.com/case-study-using-google-trends-to-discover-new-ppc-opportunities/

If you use googleinsights.com you can check what words are heavily searched and which ones have been searched a lot recently. It also shows a geographic map where most of those searches are coming from. For instance if most of the search is coming from the U.S, Canada and Australia you got a strong market...but if most of the search volume is coming from places like Uganda, India, Philllipines, then those volumes are most likely being manipulated and I wouldn't enter a market where those places account for the largest volume.

Also if the largest search is from European countries or Australia then it would be best register a .co.uk domain or a .au domain instead of the international .com simply because local search plays a factor. For instance the domains that are geographic to that area will have priority over the .com. So an australian looking up boat insurance will most likely get more relevant results with a .au domain than a .com

[seth121]

oh yeah and if you want some third tier advertising engines here you go

http://www.ppchero.com/comparison-of-third-tier-engines/

[AlexMoen]

Great site! I would have assumed you'd have more car insurance companies offered though. I entered my old zip code in San Diego and only 2 places popped up.

As for marketing, I agree with what's been said here- don't focus too much on trying to get to the front page of Google, especially if you're not already very familiar with SEO and PPC (unless you have relatively unique or niched keywords). I'd try focusing in on groups and companies that might be interested and pitching them. Or possibly becoming active on car forums (or something similar). Or by articles or blogs. Be creative.

[erazer]

Great site! I would have assumed you'd have more car insurance companies offered though. I entered my old zip code in San Diego and only 2 places popped up.

As for marketing, I agree with what's been said here- don't focus too much on trying to get to the front page of Google, especially if you're not already very familiar with SEO and PPC (unless you have relatively unique or niched keywords). I'd try focusing in on groups and companies that might be interested and pitching them. Or possibly becoming active on car forums (or something similar). Or by articles or blogs. Be creative.

Alex, thanks for the feedback! Certain states offer more options for car insurance quote comparisons than others. Odd though that your area offers only two options.

Thanks for the marketing tips as well. The article marketing angle plus the blog/forum participation plan is something I'm working on too.

[dethsith8655]

Your site is very impressive. I don't know if anyone else addressed this, but my major concern would be, what is the niche?

Insurance quoting is a hugely competitive market and I am afraid that your efforts will be washed in a sea of "more of the same".

I would find some way to focus on a small market. Here are some suggestions
1. Insurance for intelligent people.
2. Insurance for exotic sports cars.
3. Insurance for people with DWIs and DUIs

Offer something no one really focuses on. Do the research, and truly find the best options over who is just willing to write you a check.

[seth121]

I second the insurance for DWI's and DUI's...a lot of potential in that one.