If your facility or service offered has a website or some sort of web presence, there is a good chance you’ve heard of the term “SEO”. The term Search Engine Optimization encapsulates a number of different marketing tactics that help get your senior care services in front of the right audience. These SEO tactics can involve making changes to both your website in addition to building your brand through other channels including Social, Email Marketing, Link Building, and more. In an attempt to keep this post both digestible and actionable, we’ll cover 3 quick Local SEO tips to help your senior care service increase its visibility in your local market.
Local Search Engine Optimization tactics are a great way to help smaller websites connect with the local population who are performing searches online in their target geography. Google, and other popular search engines like Bing, Firefox, and Internet Explorer, look at a user’s geographic location when they perform a search whether they include a local term in their search query or not. What this means is, if Joe Smith searches “assisted living residences” in Atlanta and Jane Doe searches “assisted living residences” from her home in Detroit, the two will see a different set of search results. As one would hope, each search includes a set of local results specific to the city each person is performing that search from. Today, we’ll cover 3 Local SEO tips to help you increase your visibility with search engines in 2018.
Create and Claim your Google Business Page
Let’s take a look at the two images from above. One way to increase your visibility and rise up the list of results is to create, claim, and maintain your Google My Business page. Each and every business that has a physical address, whether it be a care residence or business office, should get started by visiting https://www.google.com/business/. All you need to register your business is an active Gmail account which you will use to log in and out of your Google My Business account. The first and most important step is to login, find your business where it is located in Google Maps, and claim your business listing by requesting a post card from Google. In order for Google to confirm you represent the business you claim to, Google will mail a postcard with an activation code to the physical address where you claim your business is located. The code is typically only active for 30 days so business owners must login and enter the verification code within that time or else the code will expire and a new postcard will need to be requested.
Within your Google My Business account owners have the option to post new content, display business hours, link to social profiles, update images,and even build a website! Be sure to carefully review all of the business categories available to you accurately represent your business. Claim your business listing and be in control of what people interested in your service see and read first. Did we mention this is a FREE business listing? Get started today!
Encourage Reviews and Questions with your Google My Business Listing
Now that you have created your Google My Business page, encourage your customers or residents to review your facilities and services that accurately depict your business offerings. In 2018, very few people like to make decisions online without hearing others experiences with the business or product. Google understands this and therefore will reward businesses who have a higher number of positive reviews for their business. To leave a review in Google users must be logged into their Gmail account which will be linked to their review. There is a clear correlation in Google’s local search results between the number of positive reviews and the position of many business listings.
Something new we started to see within business listings in 2017 and into 2018 is the Questions & Answers section where internet users can ask a question publicly and business owners can respond. This increased engagement between customers and business owners offer a simple way to get popular questions answered fast. The more active your business listing is, the better it will perform and reach more internet users.
Include Location-Based Keywords in Page Titles and Headings
Our last and final tip is a tried and tested tactic used by local businesses since the beginning of SEO. If you serve a specific market, city, or town, include location-based keywords in your page titles and headings within the content of your web pages. If my retirement community is located in Las Colinas, Texas, then I’ll want to be sure to include “Las Colinas” or”Las Colinas, TX” or “Las Colinas, Texas” within my page titles and headings. By doing this, we are essentially communicating to Google that anyone looking for information on retirement communities in Las Colinas will want to see my page or my site because each page includes content and information related to that topic. Taking one step back, Las Colinas is close to the densely populated city of Dallas, it would also be a good idea to target potential residents currently living in Dallas by creating content that informs visitors about the quality services located a short drive away.
SEO and specifically Local SEO, provides opportunities for the small niche care and service providers to compete in their local markets. A carefully and strategically designed website can thrive against large national brands with a focused local approach to their content and online promotion. If you are new to SEO and local promotion following these three recommendations is a great place to start. You don’t need a full-service digital marketing firm to increase visibility of your service and drive a few extra leads each month. Let these recommendations be the tip of your exploration into increasing your online presence and local SEO optimizations for your website.