​Top 10 SEO Tips for Increasing Traffic to Your Home Care Agency Website

By Stacie Gillespie, Director of Search Marketing, corecubed 

If it feels as though your website is not performing optimally and the competition is leaving you in the dust when it comes to winning new business, one reason could be that your competitors have a smarter SEO strategy and digital presence.

Try a quick search for “elderly care” from your desktop or mobile device, or both – do your competitors appear in more search results than your home care agency? Do they appear higher up than your agency on the first or second page of search results? 

Achieving premium rankings and a strong internet presence for your home care agency website requires an expert digital marketing team that is trained both in current SEO best practices and home care industry consumer behavior. 

It’s also advantageous to work with professionals who have earned a degree or even an advanced degree in digital marketing. There are still many “dabblers” in digital marketing, but universities now offer full bachelors and masters programs dedicated to digital marketing, digital media, user experience, human-computer interaction, and more. 

Additionally, working with a Certified Google Partner, like corecubed, provides assurance that you have contracted with professionals who can:

• Create and execute a well-researched and ongoing SEO or PPC strategy
• Research, implement, and track performance of keywords that drive traffic
• Devise and optimize consumer-focused content for metadata and alt tags
• Implement a heat map to analyze visitor interaction and user experience
• Write and optimize website content for home care consumers that showcases your agency as an expert care provider and answers questions they are asking
• Research backlink opportunities and manage outreach on your agency’s behalf
• Optimize your internet presence outside of your website, such as on your Google My Business listing, your social media company pages, your directory listings, and more
• Make sure that your website is technically sound and that nothing is broken or set up in a way that search engines might punish or reject

To get your website in tip-top shape and increase traffic in 2021, the digital marketing experts at corecubed recommend the following top 10 SEO tips for home care agencies:  

1. Keywords 
Know your audience and understand how they search. Do they search more for “senior care” or “elderly care?” Also, use a localized approach for your keyword list and understand the volume of search for keywords. For example, if you optimize your website for the keyword “home care in Baltimore” rather than simply “home care,” you will be able to better target people in your market and you will have a much better chance of ranking for those keywords. But if there is low search volume for “home care in Baltimore,” or if there is a tremendous amount of competition for that phrase, understand what to do next with that research and knowledge. corecubed provides SEO clients with customized keyword and local market research to determine what keywords consumers are using in their target markets, how often, and how much competition there is for those keywords. 

2. Metadata and On-Page Keyword Work
Use your localized keyword list to implement an original title and meta description on each page of your website. Also be sure to integrate your localized keywords into the body copy throughout the pages of your website. The higher you place keywords on a page, the better it is for SEO. As an example, main titles and opening paragraphs carry more weight than sub-titles or closing paragraphs.   

3. Blog Content 
On a regular basis, post new, helpful and educational content that is relevant to the consumers and referral partners who would be searching for your services. Blogging is a great way to do this. Always utilize your localized keywords, as appropriate, throughout your blog content.  

4. Alt Tags
Be sure that all of the images on your website include an alt tag. An alt tag is text that is added to an image (not a caption) that describes what is occurring in the image. It is often used to assist visually impaired users and has become extremely important in light of recent ADA compliance requirements. 

5. Backlinks 
Take stock of your backlinks regularly (at least once per quarter) to look for and remove any spam links that can hurt your SEO efforts. Disavow spam links as a best practice and always work on building high-quality backlinks. It’s also important to understand that you shouldn’t reach out to just any website to increase the number of backlinks pointing to your site. Instead, you want to make sure a website selected for a possible backlink has a high domain authority and quality score before doing any outreach. Think quality over quantity when it comes to backlinks, as that will generate the best SEO performance.   
  
6. Local SEO 
Claim your listings on internet directory websites and keep information up to date on Google Maps, Google My Business and Yelp profiles. Be sure to incorporate your researched market keywords as frequently as possible.   

7. Competitors
Research what your competitors are doing when it comes to search marketing. What are the keywords for which they rank? What backlinks point to their sites that would be worth pursuing for your site as well? The more you understand about your competitors’ SEO performance, the better your chances of competing and outperforming them in search results. For each SEO client, corecubed performs comprehensive competitor research in order to make informed and strategic decisions about how to effectively use SEO to increase website traffic.  

8. Online Reviews
You should always be asking clients and family members for reviews. You can provide a direct link to your Google My Business page that makes it easy for people to leave a review. Make sure you highlight positive reviews and testimonials and promptly respond to any negative reviews. Because more than 92% of consumers now read online reviews to judge a business, corecubed offers RISE, an online review management system to help home care owners collect customer feedback and positive online reviews to improve agency reputation and enhance SEO.  

9. Page Speed
Stay on top of your current page speed and make improvements when necessary. However, don’t expect to have a “perfect” score. Page speed varies from minute to minute, so work on achieving a Google PageSpeed score of 60-70 or better, and then focus your attention on other SEO-boosting tasks. As part of corecubed’s comprehensive SEO strategy for clients, site metrics like page speed and others are regularly tracked in order to work on performance improvements.  

10. Social Media 
If you’re going to have a social media presence, make sure that you’re active. Post content that is engaging, helpful, and educational to those who might have aging parents or need in-home care themselves, and always include a link back to your website. Facebook drives the best results for home care businesses.     
Your agency’s website is one of your top marketing investments and an essential sales tool. When properly maintained and optimized, it will work hard for you, sending viable leads to you for further nurturing and outreach. With knowledgeable, experienced SEO professionals working for you, you can rest assured that your website will reach more of those in need of your services. To learn more about corecubed and how to tap into  home care industry knowledge and expertise for your agency, call 800.370.6580, x1. 
 

Stacie Gillespie is Director of Search marketing for corecubed. She works with clients to develop customized search marketing strategies. Stacie holds a Master of Science in Digital Marketing and a Bachelor of Business Administration in Integrated Marketing Communications, and has also earned a Google Analytics Individual Qualification and passed the Google Fundamentals and Google Search Ads exams to become Google Ad certified. These are professional accreditations Google offers to individuals who demonstrate proficiency in Google Ads and Analytics.