Search-engine optimisation
Search-engine optimisation, or SEO, is the process of setting up your Website so that it ranks well for particular keywords within the organic search results of major search engines, including Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. (Chaffey & Smith 2013, p. 352). According to Jones (2008), having a great Website is simply not enough, in order to be competitive within the search results, your website must be search-engine friendly and you also must take steps to convince that your Website is an authority and your content is relevant to particular keywords related to your business. In this post, we will look into the case of Allianz, monitoring its traffic as well as its top keywords that send traffic to the site to illustrate the importance of keyword relevance to successful SEO.
Allianz.com.au
Allianz is a German multinational financial services company with its core business and focus in insurance and risk management products and services. According to Alexa (2014), its subsidiary in Australia allianz.com.au ranks 1611th in the country in terms of average daily visitors and pageviews with relative high bounce rate and low conversion rate compared to industry standard
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With its Australian domain, the country unsurprisingly accounts for 78.9% traffic to the site followed by India (10.7%) and United Kingdom (3.7%). In terms of demographics, the site attracts more female and highly educated audience. Also, the search traffic and upstream sites data provided by Alexa suggests that more than 30% of visits to the site come from search engine (down 25% over last 3 months implies the increases in other traffic sources such as direct and referral) and majority of visitors comes to the site through Google sites (33.8% and 8.3% for google.com.au and google.com respectively).
The key phrases from visitors who arrive the site (Alexa, 2014) and the ones defined in the its page source are as follows:
When we search with the keywords in meta tag, the Google search engine results (as at 25 September 2014) were as follows:
Search for ‘Insurance’: #3
Search for ‘Car insurance’: #3
Search for ‘Home insurance’: #3
Search for ‘travel insurance’: #4
Search for ‘life insurance’: #2
Search for ‘Insurance quotes’: #4
Search for ‘Business insurance Allianz’: #1
Search for ‘Allianz insurance’: #1
As we can see, using keywords effectively can enhance the site’s visibility and exposure, increase site traffic and attract prospective clients (Chen et al 2011). However, despite the fact that broad keywords tends to generate higher level of search volume (e.g. ‘insurance’ generates 1,180,000,000 results while ‘Allianz insurance’ generates only 13,500,000 results), more specific keyword phrases can produce more qualified traffic and higher browser-to-customer conversion rates. Therefore, focus less on generating massive lists of keywords and more on generating a keyword lists that directly relate to our Website give us a better shot at ranking well on search engines (Jones 2008). As stated by Dou et. al. (2010), search engine ranking can have branding implication as Internet users tends to evaluate the unknown brands more favorably if they are displayed before the well-known brands in search engine results pages. As a market challenger, Allianz could employ relative ranking to differentiate their brand from competitors, enhance awareness of brand to catch up with the market leader.
REFERENCES
Jones, K. B., 2008, Search Engine Optimization: Your visual blueprint for effective Internet marketing, John Wiley & Sons.
Chaffey, D., Smith, P.R., (2013) E-Marketing Excellence, Routledge, 4th edition.
Allianz.com.au traffic statistics by Alexa (n.d.), allianz.com.au Site Info, retrieved September 25, 2014, from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/allianz.com.au
Chen, C. Y., Shih, B. Y., Chen, Z. S., & Chen, T. H., 2011, ‘The exploration of internet marketing strategy by search engine optimization: a critical review and comparison’, African Journal of Business Management, 5(12), 4644-4649.
Dou, W., Lim, K. H., Su, C., Zhou, N., & Cui, N., 2010, ‘Brand positioning strategy using search engine marketing’, MIS Quarterly, 34(2), 261-279.
Memphis Agency, 2008, Search Engine Optimisation: Overview and Case Studies, retrieved 24 September 2014, from http://www.thememphisagency.com
e-Marketing Excellence 