In the pandemic era, senior living marketing has become more complicated. Website and social media content are important to your senior living digital marketing efforts. However, remember that SEO involves many components. One of them is the process of finding online listings to claim for your senior living community.

By doing so, you are upping your local SEO game, which means more web traffic to your senior living center website. Let’s consider some important online listings to claim for your senior living community.

Online Listings To Claim for Your Senior Living Community: Google My Business (GMB)

Not every senior living community understands why the Google My Business profile is so important to SEO (actually, local SEO). The ones that don’t understand are the same ones having difficulty increasing their web traffic and increasing move-ins.

With GMB, consistency is everything. That means the info in your GMB needs to match exactly what’s on your website and various areas located across the internet. And those senior living communities that aren’t ranking well? There’s a good chance their GMB lacks consistency. Google decides how legit you are by whether these exact matches can be found across the internet. 

When there is inconsistency, Google will assume something isn’t right. When Google decides something isn’t right, it’s a pretty good indicator that they will downgrade your website’s ranking.

For example, if a senior living community changes its phone numbers, GMB needs to be updated right away. Take no chances here—even with something seemingly insignificant. For example, don’t use the abbreviation for street in one place and not another.

As you identify online listings to claim for your senior living community, remember that your GMB is like a test as far as Google is concerned. Fill it out as completely as possible and Google will have a better opinion of your senior living community. It’s a simple enough exercise, yet some senior communities never bother to complete as much of their profile as they can.

Details—even small ones—count. Mundane things like your sales office hours and other basic information should be up to date at all times. Some senior communities don’t stay on top of this—and they do it at their own peril.

Inaccurate details may not affect your ranking—at least not directly. However, if a person discovers a business isn’t open when they’re supposed to be, a bad online review isn’t far behind.

When changes are made at a business, those changes need to be reflected in Google My Business as well.

Online Listings To Claim for Your Senior Living Community: Yelp

Yelp reviews are a big deal to Google. Without question, they can affect rankings. Consequently, you want as many positive reviews as possible. 

It’s here why conflicting GMB listings can come back to haunt you. Remember our example of making sure your physical address is correct everywhere they reside? If Yelp reviewers spot a wrong address for your location in GMB, they won’t hesitate sharing this in an unflattering review. To top it off, they’re likely to reward you with a poor rating. 

If your Yelp reviews are few in number, just one bad review could seriously bring down your average rating. For something as simple as not remembering to update your new address, you could be paying quite a price. Therefore, don’t be negligent about your GMB. 

As you consider online listings to claim for your senior living community, don’t forget just how vital online reviews are. In general, you need to reply to these reviews whenever possible. It doesn’t matter whether the reviews are positive or negative.

By responding, you show that you’re concerned about what the public says. Google notices that as well. For anyone looking at this business, the owner’s earnest reply speaks volumes about the company’s commitment.

Getting more reviews is always the right idea. It’s what makes GMB shine. For this to happen, you need to:

• Ask residents and their adult children to leave reviews. That may sound obvious but people often need to be asked.
• The process needs to be easy for them to accomplish.

Improving Your Senior Living Digital Marketing is Easier Than You Think

GMB, Facebook and Yelp are all obvious online listings to claim for your senior living community. Simply by claiming these listings, providing accurate information about your community and monitoring the pulse of online review sites, you are upping your marketing game for your senior living community. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help.