The Nuts and Bolts of SEO and Why it Matters to your Senior Community

SEO means showing up and standing out in the search engines so that what you have to offer is united properly with what people are looking for. With senior communities, that means streamlining the process of finding the seniors who are looking for the housing and care that your community is ready and able to provide them with. Everything can now be found online, that means that seniors and their loved ones will be searching in Google for what communities are available in their area, and for which ones meet their particular needs.

While numerous options will pop up on the list in Google, there is a 45% chance that seniors will end up clicking to review one of the top three results.

If your senior community website is one of the few looked at by prospective residents, you then have a potential to turn that interaction into a solid lead with contact form and a contact number that is answered right away.

The problem, however, is that now a clutter of ads, instant answers and maps have forced down the listings that used to naturally appear visible in the rankings—making it even harder to get noticed in the online maze of important search terms. So many businesses are simultaneously competing for the pittance of natural rankings that are left. Creating a website and publishing content is simply not adequate—SEO is critically important for achieving the results you need. This reality, along with the highly competitive nature of SEO housing and care, creates a challenge.

Today, if you want to rank for important keywords that drive qualified leads from search traffic, you need a properly designed and implemented SEO strategy. By honing in on specific informational keywords, you can provide prospective residents with helpful content to build brand awareness, and grow your leads list.

SEO tips for solid leads to your senior community site

1. Conduct a thorough keyword research. Keyword, simply put, is just a descriptive of what people are typing into Google while searching—an important aspect of SEO. You will need to understand and target these words to maximize your efforts by knowing what specific words you want to rank for. You can then make the appropriate changes to your website content to reflect that. Keeping location in mind is important when conducting your keyword research.

• Navigational keywords: when the searcher is looking for a particular site
• Informational: when the searcher is seeking more general information.
• Transactional: when the searcher is aiming to make a purchase.

2. Understand site and page structure. Your navigation must be organized correctly with properly formatted individual pages. The most effective structure is pyramidical, with the home page at top, then categories and individual pages therein.
Anchor text is the clickable text of a link. Anchor text is used to assign a rank to the page that is being linked to. Linking to a page where your target keyword is “nursing home in New Hope,” can improve your rankings for that keywords.

When formatting pages, pay attention to title tags, meta descriptions and H tags.

• Title tags: keywords near the start show how the page fits what is searched for.
• Meta description: small paragraph under page title to attract clicks.
• Header tags: structure the web page into sub-headers

3. Design transactional and investigational landing pages. Transactional and landing page keywords found during your keyword search should drive traffic toward a specific conversation. The importance is to capture user’s contact information by adding value. And, finally, a call-to-action that compels the searcher to make contact.

4. Create the perfect blog content for your informational keywords. It is ideal to place numerous pieces of content of the same of similar topic, but using different keywords so that search engines can find it.

• Assess questions your prospective residents would commonly ask and Google them.
• Review Google’s “People also ask” questions for related search terms.
• Look on Quora for questions about senior housing and care.
• Use short and to-the-point sentences at a non-complex reading level.
• Use an easily readable font size (20 to 22 point).

5. Make your site mobile-friendly. At least half of users will likely access your site from a phone or tablet. Google now looks for the mobile version of a site first instead of the desktop version when placing search results.

• Your site should load quickly.
• Place the most important information above the scroll line.
• Buttons should be large enough to tap easily.

6. Optimize your site for lead generation. Your senior community will not benefit from all of these efforts if your site is not generating leads by including lead generation forms and a call-to-action at the bottom of each page.

7. Get listed in third-party website applications like Senior Communities Guide. Getting other sites to link to yours is beneficial (link building). As are links from other sites that point back to yours (backlinks).

8. Get high-authority backlinks. The two most effective ways to get the best backlinks are via guest postings and infographic promotions. Reach out to sites and blogs in the senior community and care arena, offer free content and link to your site within that content.

9. Create and optimize your Google “My Business Listings (MBL).” A critical aspect of local SEO is maintaining and up-to-date Google (MBL). It pulls your business name and contact information as well as reviews from your MBL profile that influence your rankings. It is helpful to keep your information current, respond to online reviews, add posts and upload photos. It often comes from a variety of sources to display relative information to searchers. This is another way of getting prospective residents.

10. Get citations. Citations are an online reference to a business that features its name, address, and phone number (NAP). Google uses NAPs as ranking signals for local search items.

11. Get reviews on Google, Yelp and your directory listing. When people see good reviews, they are far more likely to go to your senior community site and contact you. These online reviews are not just important for search rankings, they also build trust.

12. Use schema markup. This is code placed on your website that helps search engines better understand the contents of your page which Google recognizes, such as contact information that it uses to check that your Google business information is correct.

13. Optimize images for better search visibility. In order to help your site show up in search results that rely on a heavier use of images, add keywords to the image title, file name and alt text of your images.

• Be descriptive in the file name
• Use PNG or JPEG file formats
• Choose the best alt text (appears in its place if the image can’t be displayed.

14. Create and promote videos that help increase your online presence. Video content is an important tool for gathering interest. YouTube has vast exposure, and is the ideal place to house them. Senior Communities Guide can help you with video and 3D online tours.

• Geo tag them
• Include contact information
• Post them on Google Plus
• Link to your site

15. Analyzing your SEO results
Use Google analytics to understand where your traffic is coming from and the behavior of those who are searching. Use Google Search Console to find out how many impressions and clicks you are getting for keywords and what your ranking is with them. Make sure to follow them regularly for the primary indicators of performance.

• Rankings
• Traffic
• Conversions

Worth the effort
This all sounds like a lot to take in, not to mention, a whole lot of work. But once you have your site set up properly and maintain a best practices regime, your senior community will reap the rewards with much more targeted and higher qualified leads.

Need Help?
Contact Avallo Web Development for any SEO help on your community website. Avallo is a website partner to Senior Communities Guide. Call 763-488-1630 or email them.