Is your senior living community stuck with a non-ranking site? This happens more often than you’d think. Despite your best SEO efforts, you just can’t seem to get your site to rank.
You’ve researched your keywords, added all the correct metadata, improved the technical elements of your website, and created a robust content strategy. So why are you struggling on the search engine results page (SERP)?
Getting a stubborn website on the SERP is a question every senior living marketer asks themselves at least once, and for good reason. At least three out of four leads research their options online before scheduling an in-person visit.1 If they aren’t finding your community when they search, they aren’t coming in for a visit—and they definitely aren’t becoming residents.
The truth is nearly 40% of prospective residents click on the first organic search result they see.2 Less than 10% will bother viewing the second page of results.3 You need to be on the first page to connect with your target market.
What Should You Do If Your Senior Living Website Doesn’t Rank?
Non-ranking websites are frustrating, especially when you think you’ve done your SEO due diligence. But ranking issues are rarely an anomaly. Here’s what you can do to improve your non-ranking senior living site.
1. Promote Your Site with More
On paper, you’ve completed all the checklists. But keywords, site structure, and content plans only get you so far in the real world. Actively promoting your website is key to moving the SEO needle. Consider ways to increase your brand awareness with your target audience like publicizing your site during a podcast or writing a guest article for a prominent magazine.
This type of brand exposure increases the impact of your messaging and encourages your audience to visit your website and learn more about your communities. Additionally, each promotion is an opportunity to secure backlinks to your website. Backlinks from trusted sources improve your domain authority and are an important building block of your SEO.
Users respond well to this type of marketing because organically discovering a senior living organization comes with a certain level of trust.
2. Write Longer Content
You’re creating engaging, relevant content, but is it the right kind? Besides the writing itself, one of the most significant factors influencing SERP ranking is the length of your content.
Top-ranked pages typically have about 2,000 words of unique content.4 Longer pages like these provide enough context for Google to assess your content’s meaning and intent accurately.
Check in with your competitors and evaluate the length of the content of their pages. If their content is longer than yours, don’t be surprised if they’re earning a higher rank on the SERP. Then, start working on fresh long-form content and focus on providing value for your visitors by answering questions and sharing helpful information.
3. Assess Competitor Keywords
Speaking of competitors, when was the last time you thought about your website’s target keywords? If your keyword strategy is based on highly competitive keywords, you’re creating roadblocks to a successful digital marketing plan. This also applies if you’re targeting the wrong keywords to support your community’s business goals
Conduct research to assess what keywords your competition is vying for. If your competitors are targeting the same keywords as your non-ranking site, rethink your strategy. Take some time to consider what their websites are doing right to rank for those valuable keywords. Are there steps you can take to improve your site’s rankings for those senior living keywords?
Consider changing your strategy to target less competitive keywords, or focus on long-tail keywords that highlight your community’s differentiators.
4. Check for Penalties
Non-ranking sites might be working against a manual algorithmic penalty levied by Google. You read that correctly. Your senior living website may have a penalty you don’t even know about!
Google is hyper-aware of black hat SEO practices. As a result, the tech giant has become increasingly thorough about evaluating pages for keyword stuffing, invisible text, and duplicate content. To ward off bad actors, Google has conducted mass de-indexing to combat fraudulent link building.
If you’ve tried everything to help your page rank and still can’t get onto the first SERP, a Google penalty could be the issue. To see if your site is subject to a penalty, look in the “Manual Actions” section of Google Search Console.
Whether you’re starting fresh, or looking to improve your current site’s ranking and digital performance, Dreamscape Marketing can help. Contact us at 888.307.7304 to schedule a discovery call to learn how to get started boosting your rankings today.
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