Potential clients for senior care live right within your community. When you learn how to improve your local SEO, the right digital strategy will put them right in front of you. Internet search engines have become the “go-to” place for locals to check out care for seniors. Internet visibility is vital to let people in need know that you’re available and willing to help.
Why use local SEO, or search engine optimization? It’s a strategy that incorporates the kinds of keywords that people looking for to find senior care in your local area.
Much like how to plan general SEO strategies, how to improve local SEO is similar, but it focuses on the target audience within your local geographical area. It’s an ideal strategy for your senior care business to draw their clients from within your regional area.
Using keywords that mention cities and towns near you will attract seniors that need care in your area. Their families may also be searching for senior care on the internet because they want their senior relatives to be close enough to visit and be available for emergencies.
Local SEO for Senior Living Facilities
The care and attention that you’ve put into your Assisted Living Facility show by the way you maintain your grounds and by the welcoming interior that greets your visitors. When you make a similar effort to develop a local SEO strategy, the people living in your area will be able to find you easily when they’re doing a search online for assisted living in (zip code) ( near me) ( city), etc..
There is great value in learning how to improve local SEO.
Why Home Care Agencies Need Local SEO
There are important reasons to learn how to rank on Google maps, especially if your home care agency uses multiple offices in different geographical areas. Keywords that include names of local towns and cities will drive internet traffic to each facility.
Read along to discover local SEO tips that work.
How to Optimize for Local SEO
To start the process of learning how to rank on local SEO, you’ll need to get familiar with some digital marketing terms and their meanings. These are the strategies that will help you get the most out of your local SEO efforts to draw traffic to senior home care agencies, senior living facilities, and nursing homes.
· Local link building
· NAP
· Google my business
· Reviews
· Location page
· Citations
GMB Optimization
GMB is an acronym for Google My Business. Google set up this platform for businesses to advertise their locations and contact numbers on Google search and maps, but it doesn’t happen automatically. You need to go into Google My Business and claim the physical location of your senior care agency. There you can create a business listing and when someone does a search, it will be shown on the front page of Google. You’ll be able to add a photo of your facility and contact information including your hours of business.
By creating a Google My Business listing, Google will also put your business on Google Maps. These listings will boost your SEO efforts and increase visibility with search engines. Other platforms, like Facebook, also give you opportunities to claim local business opportunities.
Local Link Building
Link building is a strategy that will enhance local SEO. A backlink is when another website mentions your site and links it back to your website. In a sense, it’s like an endorsement or referral from the website that carries your link. Search engines view backlinks from other businesses within your industry as relevant items when ranking your home care agency in search engines. Large local businesses are sure to rank high in search engines when other area businesses also link back to your website.
NAP
NAP is an industry term for name, address, and phone. A simple thing that you can do to improve local SEO is to keep your contact information consistent and identical across all online business listings, social media platforms, and citation listings.
Review Collection
Google reviews are a valuable resource for people looking for evidence that your home care agency provides kind, compassionate care. That’s a good reason to encourage current clients to leave you a good review. The second reason to strive for lots of good reviews is that Google views reviews as important criteria when ranking your listing.
By encouraging satisfied customers to give you a review, seniors or their adult children will have the motivation that they need to consider using your agency for senior home care. Five-star reviews are a good reflection of your reputation.
Local Page
Home health care agencies that have several locations within the state or across the country can increase the local SEO performance for each office by creating dedicated location pages for each office. Doing this may give you an edge over your competition because your competitors may not be doing it. By having local online business listings for each location, it brings localized customers directly to a particular office and you get the added benefit of highlighting job openings in the same area.
Citations
Citations are similar to business listings. Essentially, it’s anywhere that your NAP is listed online. Some of the places that you might find citations are:
· Listing directory
· YellowPages-style listing
· Business profile on social media (Yelp, Facebook, etc.)

Structured vs. Unstructured Citations
When you’re working on your plan for how to do local SEO better, try to make the most of citations by setting up postings for structured and unstructured citations.
Structured citations take the form of formal online directories that allow you to input your NAP and other information like hours and a few details about your company.
Don’t overlook the benefits of creating unstructured citations as well. These entries take the form of mentioning your business’ NAP and other information on other sites like:
· Blog posts
· Websites
· News sites
· Wikipedia
· Anywhere else that Google deems to be a quality source
Post Local Events on Online Calendars in Your Community
People in your community love coming to events, so why not consider hosting one of your own? When you advertise a community event such as a health fair or job fair, Google views it as a quality backlink from an authoritative source to your site, which improves local SEO. As you promote events through social media and other platforms, you get even more quality backlinks.
News outlets often have online calendars of community events and this is yet another excellent place to advertise your event and get a few more online mentions. It’s a great SEO strategy even if few people see your NAP on a community calendar.
A Digital Expert Is the Key to Simplifying SEO
The fact that Google is always evolving is to your benefit because it continually gives you new opportunities to tap into your target audience.
The problem with a digital landscape that’s continually changing is that it’s difficult for business owners to keep up with it and still meet the daily demands of their businesses. That’s why hiring a digital marketing professional can be one of your greatest assets. A professional marketer is current on the latest local SEO strategies which will get your business listed on the Google maps local tri-pack, which highlights the top three local businesses during a local search. Investing in an expert marketer will continually give you more online exposure for local SEO which is the ultimate key to getting more customers and give you a formidable edge against the competition.
Karina has spent most of her career working in the senior care industry, mostly as a digital marketing manager for home care and nursing home facilities. With 8+ years of hands-on experience in digital marketing to her credit, Karina also worked as a consultant for senior care businesses. As someone who cares deeply for seniors and has expert skills in digital marketing, Karina founded SeniorCareClicks to fulfill her passion for her permanent career.
Karina and SeniorCareClicks have been featured in Home Health Care News, HomeCare Magazine, Forbes, The Nursing Home Podcast, and other media. Karina is “the premier expert in senior care marketing”!