Want to discover a cost-effective way to provide value to others while enhancing your senior living strategy? Through Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, you can do just that.
What Is SEO?
SEO is about improving your website’s visibility to search engines, increasing their ranking factor while producing more organic traffic and conversions. This can be done through touchpoints like:
- Copywriting
- Targeted Blog Topics
- Website Design
- Optimized Images
- Inbound Linking
- Social Media
- And More!
Why Is Senior Living SEO Important?
Search engine optimization in senior living is important because of senior living’s competitive market. Whether you’re an independent living community, assisted living community, memory care community, or offer long-term care or health services, you want to be easily found online so you can be a resource for those you may be able to serve. A successful SEO strategy will help your community be visible to people searching for your brand, and people that haven’t heard about your community yet!
As a senior living SEO company, we can make this easier through proven tactics we implement to make your website not only simpler to find but higher ranking as well. Get an inside look at just a few of the many senior living SEO strategies we implement below.
7 Senior Living SEO Tips for Success
1 | Write content to your target audience.
Whether you are writing to adult children or potential residents, knowing and writing to your audience is key. Providing high-quality content to answer questions your audience is asking while talking straight to them in a natural tone makes for the greatest success.
Our favorite tip: Write to the audience like you are the audience and you have a very specific question that needs to be answered, and then, answer it.
2 | Use effective keywords.
Doing keyword research will help you optimize your site while helping you rank for the terms you want to be known for. When you research keywords, you’ll want to be cognizant of search volume and keyword difficulty. Answering a question no one is searching for won’t bring in traffic, but answering a question organizations all over the world are tackling might mean your community gets lost in the noise.
Additionally, you’ll want to focus on target keywords that reflect the core of what your page is about. Location-based keywords can help you reach your target audience in a specific area.
3 | Provide unique content.
There is plenty of information and content available online, so it’s important to provide unique content that is unlike what your competitors are sharing. Remember, there are only so many times someone can write about what to look for in a senior living community without content being duplicated.
Not only does this make it harder to come up with anything unique or new, but it also decreases the likelihood that people searching for this topic will even find you in the search engine result pages (SERP) to begin with. Here at SageAge, we love finding unique content to help you land on the first page of search results.
4 | Establish a plan – and stick to it.
Plan out your content, SEO campaigns, and senior living marketing strategy. All these should be integrated for the best results. Remember to periodically assess what’s working and what isn’t working in your strategy while adjusting if or when it’s necessary. Great tools for assessing your SEO campaigns are Google Analytics, Google Search Console, SEMrush and Moz.
5 | Keep your business listings up to date.
When people search for you or for a senior living community nearby, what comes up in the search results? You’re likely to see Google My Business profiles and local listings. It’s important to keep these updated and optimized to enhance your local search engine ranking.
Make sure your senior living website is accurate, your phone number is correct, and that you share an accurate portrayal of your services so others can easily access the resources they need.
6 | Enhance the user experience.
Site Speed
Let’s be realistic: No one will waste time waiting for a slow website to load. Optimize your site speed so you can give prospective residents and families the information they need sooner. Even beyond user experience, Google and other search engines use site speed as one aspect of your rankings, and will show your site higher or lower on the results page depending on how long it takes to load.
There are many optimizations developers make that are invisible but will improve user experience and rankings.
Formatting
The right formatting makes a big difference for search engine crawlers and user experience. Make sure you’re using boldface type, incorporating headers, and creating bulleted sections for ease of reading and navigation.
HTML Codes
Items like title tags and meta descriptions help search engines understand the content that is on a website’s page. This is also what your prospective residents and their families will see when you come up in search results. You’ll want to make sure these sections are clear, give an overview of what they will read, and are concise enough that they won’t be cut off.
Adding alternative text (ALT text) to your imagery and graphics ensures search engines understand everything the user sees on a page.
7 | Review and revise your work.
Make sure to regularly go through old content to update it for current SEO practices. Drafting out of date or underperforming content will help overall site speed and enhance the rankings of existing pages. Pieces of content that are performing well can see a bump in traffic from content and media additions.
How We Can Help With Your Community’s SEO Needs?
All this and more make a good SEO strategy that will help you increase brand awareness and drive sales. If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed, don’t worry; our SageAge team members are experts on how to propel your senior living community to the top of SEO rankings.
To learn more about how SageAge can enhance your search engine optimization with our SEO services, or to learn more about our digital marketing offerings, contact us today.
SageAge: Here for You, Always
SageAge is a multiple-award-winning strategic growth, marketing and consulting organization that operates exclusively in the unique senior living marketplace. For more information, please call or email Melinda Schmitz at 816.349.0464/melinda@sageage.com.