In today’s competitive digital landscape, it’s vital for senior living communities to optimize their online presence. Whether a senior living community is looking for more residents or more staff, using search engine optimization (SEO) effectively can help communities attract their target market and stand out. Over the years we’ve come to specialize in senior living SEO and have developed the following list of our 6 best SEO practices for the industry.
1. Keyword Strategies: Top vs. Bottom of the Funnel
Understanding the sales funnel is critical when developing a keyword strategy. For senior living SEO, keyword selection should vary based on the user’s stage in the decision-making process.
- Top of the Funnel: These keywords target users in the awareness stage of the sales cycle. Top of the funnel searches are usually more informational rather than transactional, which makes them more likely to appear in AI overviews. Examples include:
- “What is assisted living?”
- “Signs it’s time for senior care”
- “Benefits of senior living”
- Bottom of the Funnel: These users are closer to making a decision and are looking for specific solutions. Targeted keywords for this stage are typically more transactional, which will allow you to see a quicker return on investment as it is the lowest hanging fruit.
- “Senior living communities in [location]”
- “Independent living near me”
- “Memory care costs in [city]”
Ideally, you would want to target both ends of the funnel so that you are with a potential customer on their entire journey. But, if you don’t have the resources to tackle both at once, we recommend prioritizing the bottom of the funnel keywords so that you can turn prospects into leads quicker.
2. Local SEO: Targeting Prospects Close to You
For senior living communities, families and seniors typically look for options in specific locations. This means ensuring your community appears in local searches is crucial. Here’s how you can enhance your local SEO:
- Google Business Profile Optimization: Claim and optimize your Google Business profile, ensuring your location, hours, contact information, and services are up to date. Google Business Profile posts are a great way to boost your rankings and promote your business. You can even include specific keywords into your posts for increased visibility.
- Local Keywords: Incorporate local keywords such as “senior care in [city]” or “retirement community near [neighborhood]” throughout your website’s content.
- NAP Consistency: Ensure your Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP) are correct across your website, directories, and social media platforms.
- Reviews and Testimonials: Encourage reviews from current residents and their families. Positive feedback boosts your local SEO ranking and builds trust. Reviews on your Google Business Profile have a significant impact on its ranking.
“Senior living falls into what we call the “your money, your life” category, meaning the decisions these users are making directly impact the happiness, stability, and health of themselves or a family member. This is where reviews and testimonials make the most impact. By building your reviews you’re not only building trust in your community and services, you’re also helping your local visibility. It’s a win-win!” – Alaina Kamppila, Senior Living SEO Strategist
By optimizing one of our senior living clients for local SEO, Blakeford, located in Nashville, TN, we saw a 50% increase in traffic from Tennessee specifically!
3. Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): AI Searches and GPTs
Generative AI search engines use AI to provide a searcher with information about their query, pulling from other online sources. You have likely already seen these AI search results from a Google search (pictured above) or an AI platform such as ChatGPT.
“Generative AI search engines are the future of search. For senior living organizations, ensuring their website and brand are being shown on these platforms as trusted resources for potential residents and their families will be crucial for their continued success” – Dan Prynne, SEO Manager.
AI-generated Google search results show up more commonly for some industries, one of them being healthcare, which includes many senior living-related queries. Here’s a few methods to getting your website to be pulled into AI overviews:
- Target informational keywords: If you’re not targeting any keywords that are based around providing a searcher with information, you’re less likely to appear in AI overviews. For the example above, you can see that the top 3 sources Google is pulling from are based around providing the user with information.
- Include original statistics, quotes, and citations: Both search engines and GPTs love original content, especially authoritative content such as original and relevant statistics and quotes. This makes your content more likely to be pulled in to AI overviews.
- Get listed on industry relevant directories: Many directories are pulled into AI-based search results because they have lots of information all in one place. This is especially useful for queries like “best senior living communities in [city].” While your own site may not be in the overview, someone can easily access it by navigating to the directory that was pulled into the AI overview.
4. Technical SEO: The Foundation
A well-optimized website should be easy for both users and search engines to navigate. Technical SEO involves optimizing elements behind the scenes to improve performance and rankings. Some key areas include:
- Mobile Optimization: Ensure your website is responsive and mobile-friendly. Many families will search on smartphones, so having a site that loads quickly and is easy to navigate is essential.
- Site Speed: A slow website is problematic for many reasons, but most importantly slow load speed will bring your SEO rankings down and make your site harder to use, which is especially important for seniors. Use tools to compress images, enable browser caching, and minimize code to improve speed.
- Schema: Implement structured data (schema) specific to senior living communities. This helps search engines understand your content and display important information like location, pricing, and services in rich snippets or AI overviews.
- Sitemap Optimization: Sitemap optimization plays a vital role in boosting search engine visibility for senior living communities. A well-structured sitemap ensures that search engines like Google can easily crawl and index your site’s pages, helping them understand the content and organization of your website.
5. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): Turn Seniors into Residents
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) focuses on turning website visitors into leads or residents. Having an increase in traffic due to SEO is great, but that traffic means very little without converting them into a lead. For senior living communities, CRO might involve the following strategies:
- Clear Calls to Action (CTAs): Use prominent CTAs like “Schedule a Tour,” “Request Pricing,” or “Contact Us Today.” Ensure that these buttons are easy to spot on every page.
- Lead Forms: Simplify the process for visitors to request more information or schedule a visit. Shorter, well-designed forms are more likely to be completed.
- Interactive Tools: Consider adding interactive elements like cost calculators, virtual tours, or quizzes to engage visitors and guide them through the decision-making process.
- Trust Factors: Quotes, testimonials, videos from residents, reviews and more can encourage hesitant users to contact you. If other people are raving about your senior living community, they’ll see it as more trustworthy.
“This is crucial for a senior living community. When the stakes are so high, we have to approach a user’s movement through their website from a place of heart. We want them to feel that their concerns are heard as they establish their first impression of our brand–not that they are just being funneled through a rapid pipeline. This can be a scary change. The more love and understanding we show them even at the first impression, the more likely they will be to feel at ease and submit a conversion.” – Sasha Matejka, Senior Living SEO Strategist
Conversion Rate Optimization in the senior living space is proven to get results. For one of our clients, The Wesley Community, CRO led to a 122% increase in contact form fills and a 150% increase in tour requests!
6. Content Marketing: Building Trust and Engagement
Content marketing is an essential aspect of senior living SEO. The goal is to create informative, engaging content that addresses the needs and concerns of seniors and their families. Some content marketing strategies include:
- Blogging: Write blogs addressing common questions and concerns, such as “How to Choose the Right Senior Living Community” or “The Benefits of Independent Living.” Blogging not only positions your community as an expert but also supports keyword optimization.
- Video Content: Consider creating virtual tours of your facility or resident testimonial videos. Video content is highly engaging and builds trust, which may make a senior choose your facility.
- Educational Resources: Offering downloadable resources such as guides, checklists, or FAQs on senior care can establish your community as a helpful resource, nurturing leads through the decision process.
It’s important to note that pages with these types of content are great for SEO. They help improve rankings for the site as a whole because search engines see them as authoritative content, and they also give you the ability to target more keywords because you’re creating new pages. For example, with Home of the Good Shepherd, one of our senior living SEO clients, we’ve seen multiple blogs within their top 10 most-visited pages across their entire website.
Putting the Senior Living SEO Puzzle Together
Effective SEO for senior living communities has many pieces to the puzzle. It requires a holistic approach that combines keyword strategies, local SEO, GEO, technical optimization, content marketing, and more. By implementing these best practices, your senior living community will not only increase visibility but also attract the right visitors and turn them into new residents. SEO is a powerful tool to drive growth, build trust, and stay competitive in the ever-growing senior living market. Need help getting started? Reach out to one of our senior living marketing specialists today for a FREE audit!
