June 11, 2024
Harnessing the Power of Senior Living SEO: Strategies to Boost Online Visibility for Your Community
A whopping 6,000 searches for senior living communities in the U.S. are made every hour. In this competitive online landscape, how can your community stand out and capture potential residents via your website?
Long story short: senior living SEO. Tailoring your SEO will enable your community to rank higher on Google and generate more leads on your website. Here we’ll go over key insights to incorporate into your senior living marketing strategy and boost online visibility for your community.
1. Understand the Unique SEO Needs of Senior Living Communities
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves connecting seniors and their families to the content they’re seeking. It’s achieved by incorporating relevant keywords that seniors use, so that Google and other search engines prioritize your community’s website over others.
For best results, you must understand how seniors and their loved ones (usually their spouses or children) behave online, as well as their goals and needs. Primarily, this is done by identifying relevant keywords on tools such as Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs or SEMrush. From here, your marketing team can optimize online content with their top preferences.
For example, to personalize SEO for retirement communities, you might use keywords for the community’s location, care levels and desired senior experiences. You’ll also want to nix keywords that give a negative impression, such as “facility.”
2. Tailor Content for Seniors and Their Families
75% of those looking for senior living communities research their options online. That’s why it’s critical to create high-quality content that meets their search needs. Typically this encompasses:
- Informative senior living guides
- Current resident testimonials
- FAQs about the community’s senior living care levels
- Social media posts that give an insider’s look into the community
Overall, your content marketing strategy should be personalized and engaging to seniors and their families. Keep in mind specific senior characteristics when preparing content. For example, potential residents may benefit from having:
- On-page transparency. Content and page layouts should be well-organized, so seniors can click around and find key information such as community amenities, pricing, etc.
- Easy-to-find contact information. Seniors may prefer phone or email, or else a simple contact form.
3. Optimize Website Structure and Technical Elements
Effective senior living SEO also goes hand-in-hand with technical elements. Your website’s UX and technical foundation will ensure that seniors can easily navigate your website and find the information they require.
Integrate senior-related UX, such as larger text size and limited scrolling. Be thoughtful with visual elements as well. For example, adding a virtual tour can pique seniors’ interest from home, especially if visiting in-person is complicated due to their health or mobility.
Technical elements are also crucial to improving your website’s performance. Do your due diligence to check that your site has senior-ready mobile responsiveness and voice search, which are popular options for older generations. You’ll also want to specify technical SEO such as:
- Content headings (H1, H2, H3, etc.)
- Meta tags and descriptions
- URL text
- Schema markup
- Sitemap
- Navigation
Often you have to handle these tasks on a regular basis in order to integrate new SEO, avoid duplicate content and resolve any errors (such as 404).
4. Build Authority and Trust Through Link Building
SEO is also a matter of building trust with users. Just consider that your website’s authority is a factor in ranking higher on Google and other search engines.
As part of senior living marketing, you can enhance your site’s authority with backlinks. Links to and from reputable sources on your website can increase your trustworthiness in the eyes of Google.
For the senior living industry, you’ll want to contact leading senior living experts, medical professionals and other community references. Getting backlinks with trusted community sites can also be helpful, such as local government and non-profit senior living resources.
Remember that a backlink strategy is a two-way street. When you connect with potential organizations, think of it as a partnership. You might offer space for guest blogs or mutual social media tagging.
No matter how you define your backlink strategy, focus on quality content and websites. Your community’s sense of credibility will grow when you create high-caliber backlinks instead of just adding them for the sake of it.
5. Leverage Local Senior Living SEO to Attract Qualified Leads
Local SEO is another effective way to reach seniors and their families online. This type of SEO is targeted towards your community’s geographic region and helps you capture searchers in your specific location.
To get started, simply add your city, state or region to your main keywords. For example, if you’re located in Chicago, your local SEO may include: “senior living in Chicago,” “senior living in Illinois” and “senior living in the Midwest.”
At the same time, you’ll want to optimize your online presence for local visitors or residents. Google My Business is a highly trafficked area that you’ll want to carefully curate. Update your contact info on your Business listing, including your address, phone number, website and open hours.
Additionally, you should manage customer reviews on third-party platforms, such as Google, Yelp and more. Have a regular check in place to respond to reviews and answer FAQs. You might even add images and videos that capture the essence of your community.
This also goes for anywhere you’re listed online, such as senior living directories or resource lists. Take the time to ensure your online presence is positive, informative and well-maintained.
6. Measure Success and Make Informed Decisions
Finally, your senior living marketing strategies should never be static. Continually track how your SEO is performing to make updates. Ideally, you can set up reports in Google Analytics with key metrics such as: bounce rate, pageviews, average session duration, CTR, conversion rate, ROI and more.
Once you can see what’s working (and not), you can identify improvements to empower your SEO for retirement communities. At this stage, you can research keyword rankings by leveraging tools such as Google Search Console and more.
From here, you can tweak your senior living SEO accordingly and work on driving stronger results for organic traffic and conversions. In short, using this data is critical to make decisions about SEO that get results. Continuous monitoring and improvements are essential to keep your senior living community aligned with dynamic search trends.
Boost Your Senior Living SEO With Us
SEO can be tricky to get right, but it’s extraordinarily powerful to boost your community’s online presence. Leverage our senior living SEO strategies to personalize your keywords and content. In particular, you’ll want to polish your technical SEO, local SEO and other areas such as link building.
Now that you have a good understanding of these leading strategies, it’s time to put them into practice! Overall, prioritizing SEO can have a direct impact on your senior living marketing and generate new leads for your community.
Ready to supercharge your senior living SEO strategy? Reach out to our experts for guidance on getting started.
