Reaching Senior Care Clients: SEO for Senior Living

Your business’ website is a powerful tool that helps prospective residents, their families, and other senior living professionals learn about your residence, services, and amenities before they reach out. However, this is only true if your prospective clients end up on your website in the first place. 

Helping your ideal residents find you online begins with an understanding of how search engine optimization works to support your business’ discoverability.  

SEO is a collection of ongoing strategies that help search engines like Google find your website and show your listing in the search results. More than 25% of people click the first organic search result, and over 55% click a result in the first three (Search Engine Journal, 2020).  

An effective SEO strategy will result in your residence showing up higher in search results, making it easier for prospective residents to find the information they’re looking for, and ultimately, choose you as their care provider. 

One of the most important aspects of your senior living digital marketing strategy is ensuring that your brand and the content you create is discoverable on search. This helps your prospective clients find valuable information about your residence and establish trust with you based on what they find online. Two high-impact ways to improve your search rankings:  

Performing an SEO audit on your website to get a sense of which topics are most relevant to clients who are searching for your specific residence.  

Using what you find during your audit and keywords to create content that helps your residence rank closer to the top of a future client’s search results. 

For in-depth information about tools and SEO tactics for senior living, click here.  

Showcasing your residence’s exceptional programs, beautiful amenities, and tightknit community can help prospective clients move more quickly through the Senior Living Buyer’s Journey Regular posting on social media gives future residents and their loved ones, or senior care professionals valuable qualitative insights into daily life at your residence.  

With nearly a quarter (23%) of senior living sales coming directly from online sources (Creating Results, 2018), nurturing and gaining the trust of prospective residents and their families is paramount to generating more move-ins.   

Keeping your profiles up-to-date and populated with positive reviews and testimonials, benefits the discovery of your business through search engines, and places your residence in front of seniors and their families who are already present on social media. 

1. Develop client personas: Ensure that you gain a deep understanding of the people- prospective residents and their loved ones- that you intend to communicate with. Getting a sense of who will be interacting with your online content allows you to create relevant, effective digital media to drive more senior living sales. For more information on personas, click here.  
2. Determine where to post: Based on the client personas you’ve developed; you’ll be able to make inferences about where and how these clients spend their time online. Once you’ve determined where these individuals are most like to come across your content, you’ll be able to effectively focus your digital content creation efforts.  
3. Platform best practices: Bear in mind that the most effective types of posts, content topics or even posting times will differ between platforms. What works great for your residence’s Facebook audience may not be nearly as effective on places like Instagram or LinkedIn. Keeping track of performance metrics like Click-Through-Rate or Conversions will ensure that your residence has the necessary data to adjust your strategy.  
4. Create high value content: This is a lot easier said than done—the content that your brand crates should speak to your expertise in the senior living space but should also work to support the development of trust and credibility with potential future residents. Below, we’ve defined a few topic areas to help you decide what to share while you’re building your digital presence:  

Think of social media like the “behind-the-scenes" insight into the activities of your facility. While much of your content will be polished and intentional, consider sharing off-the-cuff moments with your staff and residents. These photos and videos will add a personal touch to your digital marketing strategy and give future residents the ability to imagine themselves staying with you.  

Keep reading to get a sense of the types of share worthy content your residence could share:   

Updates to Your Space  

Upgrading your facilities is worth sharing, even if it’s not a major overhaul of your suites or amenities. Consider taking process photos of things like: 

• Repainting suites and common areas  
• Updating window treatments- like fresh curtains or blinds. 
• Planting new trees and flowers to amp up curb appeal.  

Even small improvements are still worth posting about:  

• An extra-deep cleaning of a common area 
• New, ultra-luxurious bed linens  
• Fashionable new uniforms for staff   

Your current residents and their families will appreciate the intentional, tangible improvements to your space, but further, prospective clients learn what to expect from their experience with your residence.  

Premium Resident Programming 

Delivering exceptional programming is both an investment in your long-term occupancy strategy, and your digital media strategy. Often, seniors move into facilities because they need added personal or medical support– but many are also seeking community and companionship. Showcasing that your programs serve a diverse array of interests and abilities can be a significant differentiator between your residence and a competitor’s. An abundance of programming that matches residents’ needs and interests is significantly more attractive than a one-size-fits-all approach to senior recreation. 

Sharing how-to guides for specific hobbies, photos and videos of the events or classes, or invitations to visitors or prospective residents to take part in the activity can have serious SEO benefits. Program-related content encompassed both niche and popular keywords, as well as supports the creation of relevant content across your entire digital footprint.  

Reposting Positive Reviews  

Positive reviews from residents and their families shared across your social media channels, in your email newsletter, and on specialized websites like caredupon.ca, are invaluable. Soliciting reviews and referrals from existing residents can be a great addition to your SEO strategy.  

Here’s how Cared Upon differs from other review sites:   

• Care providers have full control over their residence’s listings   
• Each review is vetted for honesty and accuracy before it’s posted   
• Care providers can resolve negative reviews before they’re shared  
• The platform is specifically tailored for prospective residents, their families, and Senior Living Advisors  

Senior Living Advisors, social workers, hospital discharge coordinators, and other healthcare practitioners are an indispensable resource to both care providers and prospective residents.  

Their deep relationships with multiple care residences give them the unique ability to deliver highly specific insights to those seeking care. Often, they’ll be the first to know about your upgraded facilities and culture-rich communities. As independent contractors, each advisor’s personal strategy is reliant on their intimate knowledge of your residences, your service offerings and the information that’s directly available to them.  

On-page SEO primarily impacts what visitors to your website see, but it also helps search engines discover, read and categorize your content so it can be shown as a relevant search result. The words, images and graphics that prospective residents and their loved ones see on your site also have behind-the-scenes SEO elements involved; this is due to the coding that makes up your website. Optimizing things like HTML tags, loading speed, .txt files, schema markup, and mobile compatibility may require the assistance of a webmaster or developer. However, there are a few SEO best practices that you can help support senior living professionals’ recommendations of your residence. 

Tips for on-page optimization for senior living professionals:   

• Write and share keyword-rich content about your residence  
• Consider what senior living professionals may be looking for on your website 

Off-page SEO is a little less technical and a little more human—it's about building relationships. This type of SEO is much more like traditional networking. Off-page SEO focuses primarily on how the content you make for your senior living service or residence is shared and received around the internet. The goal of your off-page SEO strategy is to build “backlinks”- simply put, you’ll want other websites to send their visitors back to yours.   

Networking-based tips for off-page optimization:  

• Use social media to connect with other senior living authorities  
• Share your audience with others in the senior living niche in exchange for recommendations or shares  
• Leverage media appearances— offer yourself up for relevant interviews for articles, news stories and podcasts 
• Offer guest posts to relevant senior care content creators 

Amplifying the reach of your residence’s messaging shouldn’t always look like an advertisement–being recommended by other senior living professionals is a great way to build credibility and a strong digital presence.