Here’s a hard truth. At any given moment, people online can shape your reputation in a good way or a bad way. What can you do to keep your community’s image positive online? Without question, the answer is effective senior living reputation management.

Based on our experience with hundreds of healthcare clients, Dreamscape Marketing recommends concentrating on the following areas to enhance your senior living community marketing efforts and build your reputation:

Make Sure Google Knows Who You Are

Many, many websites on the internet sit relatively unseen. Some deserve to be unseen. Others have done well creating their website but there was no savvy web developer involved to make certain it was properly optimized to make search engines happy. Without search engines knowing your website exists, the whole point of a website becomes moot.

Every website has (or should have) the ultimate goal of being on page one of search engine results pages (SERPS). If your living senior community isn’t showing up prominently in SERPS, you have a problem that must be addressed. Steps must be taken to assure that your search engine optimization (SEO) is effective and up to date.

Seniors and their adult children may not be familiar with the name of your senior living community. Therefore, a good ranking on Google is crucial when they start searching for terms like “senior living communities near me.” If you aren’t on page 1 for a search term like that, you will always face an uphill battle as you try to increase the number of move-ins each month. 

Here’s something else that could affect your Google ranking. Many seniors and their families don’t necessarily know the right terms to search. It’s quite possible that they’re using either outdated terms or terms that don’t actually relate to their situation. For example, seniors who would be perfect candidates for independent living who mistakenly search using terms like “nursing homes” or ‘retirement homes.” They are going to get a lot of results for facilities that aren’t right for them. Factors like this need to be taken into consideration as you design your keyword strategy for landing pages and blogs. Senior living reputation management means that you have to find your audience even if they don’t know the right way to find you.

Directory Listings & Social Profiles Are a Direct Reflection of Your Reputation 

You control all aspects of your senior living community website. How you develop it and write content for it as a very direct affect on your Google ranking. However, not everything that affects your ranking is directly controlled by you. What happens on other websites can be influenced by you, but obviously not controlled by you. Effective senior living reputation management dictates that you look beyond your own website so that you can influence how other websites perceive you.

When your senior living community is listed on other websites, it’s important to make sure the description of your community is accurate and complete. It should also have a compelling description and visually dynamic photographs. Incomplete or inaccurate information in a listing can do you more harm than good.  

Another important thing to keep in mind is that descriptions of your senior living community must be consistent across all online channels. Whether it’s social profiles or directories, this is an aspect of senior living reputation management that must not be handled to be put on the backburner.

Don’t Underestimate the Power of Online Reviews

Nothing speaks as well of your senior living community as when others praise you. Online reviews are a powerful tool for increasing the number of move-ins each month. When you are able to cultivate a large number of positive reviews about your community, you have a powerful marketing tool working in your favor.

You should never just sit back and wait for these reviews to roll in. You need to encourage satisfied residents and residents’ family members to say good things about you. Remember that they won’t necessarily do that on their own, no matter how much they like you. When they post their feedback about your community on senior-living-related review sites, you’re receiving a level of good will that you probably couldn’t create on your own.

A major component of senior living reputation management is simply monitoring your online reviews. You don’t want any unfair negative reviews to go unaddressed. Let’s face it: some negative reviews are inevitable. In fact, it might seem odd if you have none at all. However, you don’t want to remain silent while things are said that may be demonstratively false, and make sure you’re representing your senior living brand appropriately.

Senior Living Reputation Management is Key to Your Success

In today’s online environment, it would be a serious mistake to underestimate the value of your online reputation. Simply by adhering to the above guidelines for senior living reputation management, your community can more effectively reach your target audience.