Speed & Performance
https://tools.pingdom.com/#62a5216aa6000000
https://tools.pingdom.com/#62a5219485400000
https://pagespeed.web.dev/analysis/https-zavzaseal-com/aedskcquml?form_factor=mobile
https://pagespeed.web.dev/analysis/https-zavzaseal-com-basement-waterproofing-long-island-ny/n0aijjo1ll?form_factor=mobile
https://www.webpagetest.org/result/230914_BiDcXX_9ER/
https://www.webpagetest.org/result/230914_AiDc3E_9AD/
| Full Page Load | 9.786s |
|---|---|
| Requests | 132 |
| Page Size | 5.2MB |
| Content Weight | Images - 66.71%, JS - 24.13%, CSS - 2.44%, Fonts - 4.73%, Other - 0.88% |
| Full Page Load | 5.491s |
|---|---|
| Requests | 117 |
| Page Size | 3.1MB |
| Content Weight | Images - 44.92%, JS - 40.15%, CSS - 4.06%, Fonts - 7.87%, Other - 1.16% |
As you can see, there is a big difference in page load times, page weight and number of HTTP requests per each page load. There are some things that website already has implemented, such as HTTP2, LiteSpeed cache… But it certainly is not enough. so I wont focus on the things that are done already. Lets get into things that we can and should improve, listed below without any specific importance of order.
1) Images – we need to optimize all the images. There are tools that offer automatic image optimization in the upload process, using their premium APIs, and it can be done manually as well. I saw most of the images were fitting in a normal size category, but then its enough to have 1 unoptimized image to ruin the whole page load performance of a page. For example, this gif image: https://www.agencyequity.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Merger-Acquisition-Services-May21.gif is 1.9MB in size, which is just way too much!
Rich Snippets
Make following changes:
Website Minor Fixes
- Fix Z Index on the menu dropdown. When you scroll all the way down to footer and hover on the menu item, dropdown is hidden behind the Footer section.
- Remove Submit a comment section from blog posts. We dont use comments and we should remove it, not simply hide it with CSS but actually take it out from DOM.
- We need Landing Pages for PPC. On average, dedicated landing pages convert 65% higher than website pages.
Missing Rich Snippets
Overall SEO & Backlink Profiles
| Metrics | Agency Equity | BizBen.com | BizBuySell.com | Insurance Journal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Domain Authority |
28 |
47 |
59 |
72 |
|
Spam Score |
2% |
5% |
1% |
1% |
|
Total Backlinks |
196,490 |
4,757,110 |
4,369,571 |
27,639,651 |
|
Total Linking Domains |
1,398 |
3,936 |
10,614 |
38,720 |
Domain authority is not a RANKING factor. Higher number on domain authority means that domain is popular based on its content and backlinks. It indicates how easily a website can rank on keywords in general, but auhtority rank (number) itself is not a ranking factor. Theoretically, domain with a Authority Rank of 10 can outperform in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) competitor domains with a domain authority number of 30 for example. I just want to make it clear, this number is not a deal breaker, but as we work on SEO, more quality backlinks we get and more keywords we rank for, this number will increase automatically, meaning that it will be easier for us to rank on other new keywords, than our competitors who have a lower domain authority rank.
28 is not a bad rank btw, but competitors have a better ranking on domain authority so we will need to outperform them with quality backlinks.
spam score indicates if any of the backlinks have a negative effect on the website rankings. 1-2% rate on spam score is ok since most of the websites that get backlinks organically, will have some amount of backlinks that are coming from websites that may have bad content, or be hosted on the same server that has other websites hosted with bad content etc…
We should monitor the spam score every month and if we ever get to 3%, we will need to request from google to deindex the negative backlinks to bring down the spam score rating to 1 or 2%.
If you compare the number of backlinks and total linking domains,
its clear where we need to invest the most time and efforts in – Backlinks.
Google Analytics
Average monthly visitors from January 1, 2020 up until May 2021 was 13,500.
From May we have a drop of monthly visitors to average of 10,000 and it holds on that number until August. In September we see a major drop again.
Lets compare August & September data from 2020 to 2021.
August
| Metrics | 2020 | 2021 |
|---|---|---|
|
Users |
15,156 |
10,460 |
|
Sessions |
21,764 |
14,509 |
|
Pages Per Session |
5.20 |
3.83 |
|
Average Session Duration |
03:07 |
02:30 |
|
Bounce Rate |
15.43% |
39.98% |
| Traffic Source | 2020 | 2021 |
|---|---|---|
|
Organic |
5,663 (35.3%) |
3,374 (30.4%) |
|
Paid Search |
1,354 (8.4%) |
1,137 (9.4%) |
|
Email |
1,126 (7%) |
3,010 (27.1%) |
|
Social |
172 (1.1%) |
441 (4%) |
|
Direct |
2,417 (15.1%) |
1,337 (12.1%) |
September
| Metrics | 2020 | 2021 |
|---|---|---|
|
Users |
14.956 |
6,357 |
|
Sessions |
21,258 |
8,327 |
|
Pages Per Session |
4.78 |
3.56 |
|
Average Session Duration |
02:41 |
02:19 |
|
Bounce Rate |
17.23% |
44.01% |
| Traffic Source | 2020 | 2021 |
|---|---|---|
|
Organic |
5,525 (34.7%) |
1,942 (29.3%) |
|
Paid Search |
1,210 (7.6%) |
526 (9.3%) |
|
Email |
2,126 (13.4%) |
2,233 (33.7%) |
|
Social |
1,039 (6.5%) |
318 (4.8%) |
|
Direct |
2,226 (14%) |
934 (14.1%) |
Compared to 2020 results, we have a minor drop in several factors, such as: Pages per session, Average Session Duration
When was the move from Joomla to WordPress done? Was the design / look and UI of the website saved from the old Joomla website? Is the current design same exact as it was when the website was based on Joomla CMS?
If not – we should look into old design and see what it had that was performing better in terms of design, why were users navigating through more pages and spending more time on the website than they do now. Design can be one aspect, there can be several other reasons too, which we will get into below.
Most concerning drop we have is in bounce rates. Bounce rates affect SEO SERP Rankings too.
Why do we have a double number in bounce rates compared to 2020?
Most likely factors here are:
- Website speed. If the website taking too long to load, users will leave quickly.
- More and more users install AdBlock extensions year to year. So, much more users would see messed up website now in 2021, than they would in 2020.
- Bad traffic? – if you are purchasing traffic, it can be some banner networks or anything like that, they maybe sending you traffic that doesnt contain the target audience, so they leave the website as soon as they load the landing page, because, simply, they are not interested in what website has to offer.
- As I mentioned above, website UI can be a factor, but if the design was exactly same before the move to WordPress, we can disregard this potential reason for the high bounce rates.
Mobile traffic is often a huge factor, but in our case, I saw numbers vary from 30% to 36% in pretty much every month I checked and compared. So, thats not where we should look for the problem source.
Google Search Console & Rankings
Google Search Console shows number of LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) and CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) issues for several pages. Most of them will be fixed automatically as we improve the website page load speed performance.
It was interesting to see some keywords that website used to rank for in September 2020 and has either completely lost the ranking, or has moved down (ranks worse now) in terms of SERPs.
I’ll display top 15 keywords in terms of monthly search volume below and you can download the full list of 500+ keywords by clicking Here: positions-compared-2020-2021
| Keyword | Monthly Search Volume | September 20 | September 21 |
|---|---|---|---|
| insurance agencies | 1900 | 6 | N/A |
| accuagency | 1400 | 7 | N/A |
| farmers sale | 1000 | 8 | 13 |
| uiece | 800 | 7 | 15 |
| siaa insurance | 800 | 8 | 35 |
| western united life | 700 | 10 | 11 |
| clear blue insurance | 700 | 9 | 14 |
| financial indemnity company | 600 | 7 | 8 |
| financial indemnity insurance | 500 | 6 | 9 |
| pronova partners | 450 | 5 | 7 |
| how to start insurance agency | 450 | 10 | 12 |
| starting an insurance agency | 350 | 8 | 12 |
| insurance agency for sale | 350 | 1 | 2 |
| prosperity life group | 350 | 9 | 15 |
Website already ranks on top positions of the several of the keywords that you asked me to check specifically. Such as:
- independent insurance agency for sale
- farmers insurance agency for sale
- insurance books of business for sale
- insurance books for sale
- Insurance Agencies for Sale (#5 rank)
- Insurance Agency Loans
Some of the keywords you provided have so low monthly search volume that they are not really worth to invest time and efforts. See the data table below
| Keyword | Monthly Search Volume | Current Ranking |
|---|---|---|
| Starting an Insurance Agency | 350 | 12 |
| starting an independent insurance agency | 100 | 10 |
| Insurance Agency Valuations | 20 | N/A |
| Insurance Agency Networks | 30 | 12 |
| Insurance Agency Aggregators | 40 | 12 |
| Insurance Agency Clusters | 50 | 5 |
| Insurance Agency Franchises | 20 | 47 |
| Insurance Agency Loans | 150 | 3 |
| Broker of Record Letter | 150 | 50 |
| Insurance Agencies for Sale | 200 | N/A |
Its interesting to check keywords that website ranks for in a range from 6 to 30. (from mid section of google first page up to 3rd page in google). These show a lot of opportunities that we can grab for additional target audience traffic.
See the table below or you can download the full CSV file By Clicking Here.
Take a look at these keywors above, take note on the ones you think are best fit for your target audience. Pushing on SEO for these keywords, will bring in additional target audience and since website is already ranking for these keywords, it will be relatively easy (read: quicker) to get to the top positions.
Besides those, there are some other keywords that is worth to explore. For example:
start insurance company – 600 monthly search.
These two keywords are similar and will fit in one group. When ranking for these, they will bring in about 1,000 – 1,200 target audience unique traffic every month.
Miscellaneous Bugs & Other Issues
A) Lets add a catch if popup for website visitor, if he has an adblock active on browser, to let him know we have banners. he will either disable adblock or not, but in any case, he will know why the website looks weird, so it wont affect the website reputation negatively.
B) in the top search bar, lets change the “Articles Key Word Search” placeholder text to “Search Articles” or something like that. Eitherways, if we leave “Keyword” in the placeholder, Keyword should be a one word.
C) Does the newsletter submission block perform well in the header section of the website? if it gets 0 or almost 0 subscriptions, Id recommend removing it from the cluster. Header section is already heavy with banners and triple navigation menu bars.
D) We have about 1200 pages without Meta Description. Meta Descriptions do not help the SERP Rankings directly, but they do help the Click-Through-Rates (CTR). here is the list of the pages: agency_equity_missing_description
E) Listing URLs are often buggy. Ex: https://www.agencyequity.com/listings/insurance-carrier-directory/express-scripts-hldg-co – Homepage link of the listing is buggy.
F) Lets add a catch if popup for website visitor, if he has an adblock active on browser, to let him know we have banners. he will either disable adblock or not, but in any case, he will know why the website looks weird, so it wont affect the website reputation negatively.
G) in the top search bar, lets change the “Articles Key Word Search” placeholder text to “Search Articles” or something like that. Eitherways, if we leave “Keyword” in the placeholder, Keyword should be a one word.
H) Does the newsletter submission block perform well in the header section of the website? if it gets 0 or almost 0 subscriptions, Id recommend removing it from the cluster. Header section is already heavy with banners and triple navigation menu bars.
Page load optimization, fixing the bugs described above, choosing proper keywords to go for as a next stage and working on the backlinks properly – is whats needed for a better SEO and better conversion rates.