Assisted Living Search Engine Optimization: Your Guide To Gaining Traffic

Assisted living provides a solution for over 800,000 Americans who need help with daily living activities but do not require full-time skilled nursing care. Seniors and loved ones considering assisted living facilities often begin their searches online. Assisted living search engine optimization helps ensure your facility gets seen among the over 30,000 assisted living and other residential care communities in the U.S.

What Is Assisted Living Search Engine Optimization?

When potential residents or their families search for information related to assisted living, search engines such as Google provide a ranked list of results with the most relevant results at the top of the list. Search engine optimization is a collection of techniques that help your assisted living site rank at or near the top of these search results.

In addition to the general search results, search engines also provide local results that focus on relevant businesses that are within a certain distance of the searcher’s location. Because most assisted living residents choose a facility near where they already live, it is important to rank well in both the general and local search results.

Is Assisted Living Search Engine Optimization Worth It?

The first few listings on the search engine results page get the majority of clicks. SEO helps you rank higher on the search engine results page (SERP), resulting in more visitors to your site. This benefits your assisted living facility in several ways.

Saves Money Over Buying Ads

SEO costs less than buying ads and can boost your rankings for a longer period as long as you keep your content up to date. The more SEO content you produce, the better your results get.

Builds Trust

Choosing an assisted living facility is a big decision for residents and their families. SEO techniques reassure families that they are making the right choice by building your facility’s reputation as a trusted provider.

Informs the Public

Potential residents and their families usually have a lot of questions about assisted living. The content you produce to boost your assisted living search engine optimization also provides useful information to families.

Attracts Targeted Traffic

Because your SEO content answers the specific needs of the people searching for it, the traffic you get will be people who are already interested in assisted living. This targeted traffic is easier to convert than traffic from other marketing channels that may include people who are not currently considering assisted living options.

Assisted Living Search Engine Optimization Strategies

Most SEO techniques depend on improving your rankings for relevant keywords. You can find keywords by exploring Google (the “People Also Ask” menu is a good place to look) or using a dedicated keyword tool such as SEMrush, Ahrefs or Moz. You can also use your best judgment and knowledge as an assisted living industry expert to make an educated guess on what people might be searching for online. Alternatively, consider outsourcing your SEO needs to a specialist to help you create a list of keywords and a plan to utilize them that gives you the highest possible chance of ranking. 

When choosing keywords, think about what you would search for if you were trying to find your business. Seek out highly relevant keywords with low competition to get the best results. Once you have your keywords, there are a variety of ways you can use them in your SEO efforts.

Because you are mainly targeting people in your local area, you should include locally relevant keywords, such as “assisted living facilities in my town.” Include the name of the city where your facility is and the names of surrounding towns as keywords in your content. Also include variations on search terms, such as “senior living facility” or “retirement home.”

Create an SEO Blog About Senior Living

Relevant, high-quality content is the most important factor search engines consider when ranking sites. Writing blogs about assisted living and other topics of interest to potential residents and their families is a good way to introduce a high volume of quality, relevant content to your site.

Build your blogs around locally relevant keywords, but use them sparingly. Overstuffing your blogs with keywords can harm your assisted living search engine optimization. Try to focus on one primary SEO keyword per blog and use it naturally throughout the content. 

Focus on the concerns and questions your target audience has. SEO blogs are often most successful when they answer specific questions or go in-depth on informational topics. Seniors and their families have a lot to consider when choosing an assisted living community. Blogs give you a place to provide helpful information while also growing your site. Aim to publish a new blog about once per week.

Analyzing Competing Senior Living Sites

Assisted living SEO is competitive. Keep an eye on what sites are already winning the top organic spots on Google for questions relevant to your industry to get an idea of what works and what doesn’t. Look for niche questions or keywords that may not already be well-covered online and see if you can become the authority. Winning a few low-competition keywords helps make your site look more authoritative to Google and gives you a better chance of competing for more competitive topics down the road. 

Finally, while you should take a look at other assisted living facilities that have strong search engine optimization, you should also make your content unique. Don’t plagiarize or closely reproduce the same content everyone else is publishing. Find a way to put your spin on it or highlight ways that your facility uniquely addresses a problem or concern.

Optimize Your Assisted Living Web Pages

In addition to posting new blog content, revisit your existing web pages to optimize them. The strategy for web pages is different than blogs in that you’ll likely be targeting simpler words or phrases that describe the services you offer. Simply making sure the webpage looks great, loads quickly, and contains a clear, accurate description of what is being provided goes a long way. Google isn’t very good at guessing what something is without it being clearly spelled out. Getting right to the point, especially in your title and headings, helps search engines and readers alike connect the dots.

Build Internal and External Links

Links from other authoritative sites to your site boost your credibility with visitors and search engines, driving more traffic to your site. These are referred to as backlinks, and they play a significant role in how much traffic a blog or webpage receives. You can encourage links by producing high-quality content that other sites will want to share with their audience. Contact regional media to pitch stories about your facility or your residents and ask them to link to your site. You can also offer to write guest posts for relevant sites in exchange for a backlink. Get your site listed in industry directories, and make sure there is a link to your site in your Google Business profile.

Link building on your assisted living website is essential to your search engine optimization. However, not all link-building tactics are equal. Low-quality links may be flagged by Google and can actually hurt your rankings. Working with a reputable company that uses white-hat link-building techniques ensures that you get quality links while removing the need for a dedicated SEO team in-house.

Internal links are another consideration. These are the links you place yourself in your SEO content that connect the different pages of your site together. They help guide visitors and search engines from one page to another, ensuring all your content gets indexed and encouraging visitors to spend more time on your site. One common place to include an internal link is in the call to action at the end of a blog. 

Audit Your Content for SEO

Periodically assess your assisted living search engine optimization content to determine what is and isn’t working and make tweaks. Tools such as Google Analytics and Google Console can help you identify opportunities to improve. You may begin to discover that certain search engine optimization strategies work better for your site than others. For example, if blogging about senior living gets you results, it may be time to consider posting more often. 

Regularly Update Your SEO Content

Search engine algorithms change frequently, which can cause your rankings to go down. Additionally, fresh content gets higher rankings than content that has gone stale.

Add new content to pages that are performing well to give them a boost, and edit or update underperforming content. Update your keywords to match current SEO practices and changes in the marketplace.

When properly maintained, each piece of content can be a lasting asset to your website that continues to bring in organic traffic over time. Some easy ways to update content are to remove any dated information, address any industry changes, and update the publication date of the content when you repost. 

Maintain Your Assisted Living Search Engine Optimization

In addition to focusing on individual SEO blogs, update your website and Google Business profile to reflect current information about your business and anything that has changed since the content was originally produced. Check your links to make sure they still work, and look for any technical issues, such as slow-loading pages. Optimizing your assisted living website for use on mobile devices is also essential, as Google now considers mobile usability a top priority. 

Post on Social Media

Social media is not a search engine optimization strategy, but it can support your efforts to bring more traffic to your assisted living site. SEO and social media complement each other, as you can easily make posts to go along with your blogs. Potential residents want to know what life is like at your facility. Share photos, stories, and reviews on social media.

How Can BKA Help With Assisted Living Search Engine Optimization?

BKA provides high-quality SEO strategy and content creation that we customize to meet your specific needs. We offer a variety of assisted living search engine optimization plans and services to fit your budget and your goals. Contact us today to find out more about how we can help.