With the change of year, many of us have made resolutions to better ourselves in 2014. However, now is a great time to make some SEO resolutions. Whether these were on your 2013 to do list and never achieved or brand new concepts, these 5 strategies are sure to help give your SEO a boost and generate new leads for 2014! (Bonus goals for the extra motivated.)

• • 1- Clean House – There is no time like the present to take a look at all of your agency outlets and clean up. Make sure your business name, address and phone numbers are consistent on social, your website, local listings, and any additional sites you subscribe to (ex. LinkedIn, Yelp, Yellowpages). This will not only increase your authority with Google but assure the right information is getting to your clients.
    • Bonus Goal: Create brand consistency. It is clearly important to make sure contact information is the same across the board, but it is also key to create a solidified brand. Use the same marketing slogans and tone when describing your agency in everything you do.
  • 2- Editorial Calendar – It is no surprise that we are big proponents of an organized editorial calendar. If you have not created one in the past, now is a great time to map out your year or month if that sounds too ambitious. Insurance agencies have a wealth of knowledge at their fingertips. Share what you know with FAQ blogs, use our monthly topics, or use your community as inspiration. Organizing your content will ensure a good mix and more relevant material for your site.
    • Bonus Goal: Guest Blogging. Take a look at your industry connections and see what information others can share with your readers, or take the knowledge you have and contribute to an insurance blog.
  • 3- Long Tail Keywords – If you are actively blogging, there is no better strategy to utilize this year than Long Tail Keywords. Think of long tail keywords as popularly searched terms or phrases – with more specific search traffic. For example, a standard keyword – or head term – may be “car insurance”. However, a long tail keyword could be “affordable car insurance in Rhode Island”. The longer search query has less competition and therefore higher probability to rank in search engines. You should include these long tail keywords in your blog title and meta descriptions.
  • 4- Share your blogs via social – If you are doing the work by writing blogs, why aren’t you sharing your voice via social media?! A great resolution for 2014 is making sure the posts you write are promoted on your social channels with links back to your blog! Not only are your unique blogs great content for your social profiles, but it also increases traffic to your site.
  • 5- Google+ – If you haven’t created a Google+ profile for your agency yet, 2014 is the year to get started! A business page for your agency allows you to share social content, create business relationships with industry insiders and clients as well as publicize good reviews. A well maintained Google+ page with complete information works directly with your Google+ Local Page to increase your authority in Google’s search algorithm.
    • • • • Bonus Goal: Google Authorship. If you have not heard of Google Authorship you have most likely seen it for yourself. When an author has Google Authorship they are indexed with their picture next to their post and linked to their Google+ account. This has an incredible affect on where your blogs appear in the search results.

    Portnet has a great blog about the Google+ experiment, how authorship works and how to set it up.

    Use some of these strategies and start the New Year off on the right SEO foot.

    Cheers to 2014!