Introduction

The ambition with this document is to provide a first glance analysis for the vertical car insurance (assicurazione auto) where we will look into what it takes to reach top 5 organic SEO rankings on the Italian S.E.R.P.

We will try to find patterns and learning and thus be able to provide the reader with a actionable conclusion and course of actions.

URL structure

In this 1^st section of the analysis we have fetched the 1^st five ranking organic websites on Google.it when search for “assicurazione auto” in order to see what kind of URL structure the top ranking sites use.

As you can notice on the table above three out of five use “sub domains” while two use classical “folders”. What is surprising to see is however the lack of “https protocol” installed, only one player uses this even though Google expressly says that this is a ranking factor.

Another interesting thing but non-surprisingly factor is that they all use “exact match” keyword in the URL.

CMS

In this part of the analysis we wanted to investigate if there were some learnings to be learned based on choice of CMS.

All the main players use custom CMS so there is no real evidence to be found in this part.

Link profile

Specific ranking page

Having strong and good links is fundamental for a high competitive vertical such as insurance. We have thus pulled data from Majestic SEO to analyze the very page that ranks on the S.E.R.P.

There is no clear winner in evidence considering the data above. The number one ranker has indeed most external backlinks but has however a lower trust flow compared the 3^rd ranked website.

Root domain

Drilling deeper into the situation with links and content we have considered the link and page statistics for the root domain.

Even in this case it is difficult to draw a proper conclusion besides the fact that content, links and spread of domains linking to the site is fundamental.

Social Signals (Does Facebook likes influence rankings)

In this section, we have tried to see if there is any evidence of that likes influence directly on organic rankings.

Based on the data above we see no direct influence by likes on the organic rankings but there may be other benefits of social media such as spread content, get referring traffic and interaction and this may have a more direct influence on your SEO rankings.

Conclusions

Going through the main ranking factors we know of we have seen the following:

• It is a benefit having the exact match in the URL.
• There is a lack of implementation of HTTPS and this may be an advantage an aspiring competitor can use.
• Links and spread of links is fundamental for rankings.
• Having a massive content strategy with a good number of pages indexed on Google is crucial.
• There is no direct correlation between likes on Facebook and organic rankings.

Suggested actions for a website that want to rank top 5 on Google

By following these steps, you will become competitive on the S.E.R.P:

• Ensure that the on-page optimization is up to quality.
• Ensure that you have dedicated landing pages for competitive keywords.
• Ensure that you have in place a proper content marketing strategy.
• Ensure that you work in a massive yet qualitative way with your link building.

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