Personal lines search is settled. Four aggregators and a handful of direct insurers absorb almost all of it, they spend more on a single campaign than most brokerages turn over, and the searcher wants a price in ninety seconds. There is no angle there.
Commercial and specialist lines are the opposite. They are queries where a form cannot produce a quote, where the buyer needs someone to interpret the risk, and where the search volume is small enough that the aggregators have never bothered. That is the whole opportunity.
Which lines are actually winnable
| Who owns the search | Can a broker win it | |
|---|---|---|
| Car and home insurance | Aggregators and direct insurers | No — do not spend here |
| Public liability for trades | Mixed, with weak local coverage | Yes, especially by trade |
| Professional indemnity | Specialist brokers and a few insurers | Yes, if segmented by profession |
| Fleet and haulage | Specialist brokers | Yes — high value, low volume |
| Pub, restaurant and hotel cover | Scheme brokers | Yes, and often uncontested |
| High-net-worth household | Specialist brokers | Yes — small volume, large premiums |
Segment by profession, not by product
“Professional indemnity insurance” is a contested head term with a vague searcher behind it. “Professional indemnity insurance for architects” is a different proposition: low competition, an identifiable buyer, and a page you can write with genuine authority because you know what an architect’s exposure looks like.
Repeat that for surveyors, IT contractors, management consultants, physiotherapists and recruiters and you have a set of pages that collectively outperform anything you could achieve on the head term, at a fraction of the effort. Each one should name the profession in the heading, reference the relevant professional body’s minimum cover requirement, and explain what a claim typically looks like in that field.
What FCA rules require on the page
Financial promotions must be clear, fair and not misleading, and Consumer Duty raises the bar on whether a retail customer can actually understand what they are reading. In practice this shapes three things on every page you publish.
- Your regulatory status must be visible. Firm name, FCA Register number and the standard authorisation wording, normally in the footer so it appears sitewide.
- Claims need substantiation. “Cheapest cover” and “best broker” are the sort of phrasing that attracts attention you do not want. “Access to twelve specialist insurers” is verifiable and reads better anyway.
- Do not imply a quote you cannot honour. Indicative pricing on a commercial page is risky unless the conditions are stated plainly next to it.
None of this is a constraint on ranking. Search engines and AI assistants both reward pages that state who you are, what you are authorised to do and what a policy actually covers — which is precisely what compliance is already asking of you.
Why brokers do unusually well in AI answers
When someone asks an AI assistant what insurance a small letting agency needs, the model has to assemble an answer from pages that explain cover rather than sell it. Aggregator pages are built for price comparison and contain very little explanatory text. Broker pages, written properly, contain exactly the material the model needs.
This is one of the few sectors where a well-written independent firm can be cited alongside national brands, because the national brands have optimised their pages for conversion rather than explanation. A page that answers “do I need employers’ liability if I only use subcontractors” in plain English is more quotable than any quote form.
What a realistic programme looks like
Eight to twelve profession-specific or trade-specific pages, each properly researched, built out over two or three quarters. Your Google Business Profile completed and categorised as an insurance broker rather than an insurance agency, which are separate categories and rank differently. Then reviews, which brokers chronically under-collect despite having some of the most grateful clients in financial services — a client you got paid out after a fire will write you anything you ask for.