New resident leads are the lifeblood to growing and sustaining senior facilities. For senior living communities, finding sources of new resident leads is a never-ending task. While you probably can’t eliminate the search altogether, you can make the process much, much easier. How? Search engine optimization.
Search engine optimization, also called SEO, is a crucial component of every marketing campaign. But SEO often gets pushed down the priority list when you try to create and execute an SEO strategy on your own. The concept of SEO can be a little confusing, the rules seem to change from month to month, and without the help of an expert, you’re never sure you’re doing it right.
As SEO experts, we can help you understand what SEO is and why you need a dynamic SEO campaign to help you generate more leads with less effort.
What is SEO Anyway?
The goal of an effective SEO strategy is to elevate your website’s place on the search engine results page (SERP). When you properly execute an SEO strategy, your online visibility is significantly increased. And while digital marketing fads do come and go, SEO is more than a trendy buzzword. Every piece of data available supports SEO as a proven tactic to increase brand awareness and grow your business.
For proof, you need to look no further than yourself. You know that when you do a Google search, you almost always click on one of the top five results. Well, customers searching for a senior living community do as well. Searchers click those first five results 67% of the time, while a mere 0.78% ever bother to click links further down. Your senior living center needs to appear on that first page, and SEO is how you get there. With the right SEO strategy, your senior living community will quickly become one of the top five search results for elder care.
And when your ranking goes up, your site visits and new resident leads will naturally increase. There are a few specific ways SEO accomplishes this. Here’s how.
Capture the Locals
Your local senior population is most likely a considerable part of your target demographic. And chances are, seniors near you are already looking for you online. Studies show that three out of four adults over age 65 use the internet regularly. What’s more, in the last two years, searches including the words “near me” have increased by 200%.
Seniors are online, and they’re looking for goods and services, including senior care, in their communities. About 46% of search engine queries have local intent, which means the user is seeking a specific business or service near them.
When you prioritize your SEO strategy and specifically optimize your site for local search, you position yourself to capture a whole new group of new resident leads who are looking for a quality senior care center like yours.
Focus on Mobile
You probably won’t be surprised to learn that mobile online traffic already exceeds desktop online traffic globally. And that difference is only increasing. Experts estimate that by 2025, nearly three-quarters of internet users will access the internet only through mobile devices.
Seniors are avid smartphone users and follow the same trend of mobile internet access. According to AARP, 86% of people aged 50-59, 81% of people aged 60-69 and 62% of people aged 70 and older own smartphones.
They’re using their devices to communicate with family and friends, check out social media, pick what restaurant they want to visit on a Saturday night, and yes, research senior living communities. A robust mobile SEO strategy ensures you’ll capture this group of smartphone-wielding seniors.
Connect with Decision-Makers
Despite the gains made by seniors adopting technology, many still depend on loved ones to search online, including for senior living centers. In fact, a large portion of older Americans have a close family member or guardian help with their important life decisions.
These family decision-makers are usually Generation X or baby boomers, so they’re no strangers to the internet and are likely to respond favorably to a targeted SEO strategy. Remember, 91% of Generation X and 85% of baby boomers are online. A well-designed and maintained SEO campaign to capture these audiences will most certainly lead to new residents.
Improve Your Senior Living Social Media
Social media alone won’t directly improve your SEO, but there are significant indirect benefits to actively using social media. Whether you’re adding new website content, creating a social media post or writing a blog article, aim to create practical, engaging content people want to share. These shares are where SEO comes into play.
The more users share your content on social media, the more backlinks your website will have. Backlinks are important, because they’re a known ranking factor—one of the elements Google’s algorithm considers when determining a page’s rank on the SERP. Back to those incredibly desirable results on the first page, they typically have 3.8 times more backlinks than those on subsequent pages. So following the thread: creative posts highlighting your senior living community lead to more shares that cultivate more backlinks that improve your SEO. And that results in more new resident leads for you.
We can help you determine the right digital strategy using SEO to help you find more residents. Call us today at 888.307.7304.
