SEO for Home Care: The Ultimate Guide
SEO for Home Care: The Ultimate Guide
When it comes to home care companies, generating leads through search engines can be challenging — especially when trying to manage costs, retain staff, and maintain quality care.
If you’re looking to start generating more leads through organic traffic, read our helpful SEO strategy guide for home health care services.
SEO Tips for At-Home Care Businesses
Find your target keywords.
Conduct keyword research. Generally speaking, SEO keywords are single words or short phrases that can be combined to generate different search results. This is the foundation of building search engine traffic. Make sure you’re targeting the right terms from the right audience.
Know your target audience.
Creating audience personas is a great way to start honing in on your target audience. When you know who you’re writing for, you can craft more accurate and compelling content that ranks for the search terms your ideal customer uses.
Focus on local SEO for home care.
Local SEO strategies leverage your site’s ability to rank for local search queries that contain your city or locale.
Here’s the best way to rank for local searches. Make sure your Google Business Profile (GBP) listing (formerly known as Google My Business) is optimized:
- The address and phone number should be accurate
- Medical services or service areas should be listed
- Try acquiring customer reviews for your GBP business account
Google Ranking Factors for Healthcare Businesses
There are hundreds of ranking factors that Google uses to decide what it shows to its users. The number one factor when ranking a healthcare business in the search results is trust.
Your healthcare site can build trust quickly by doing the following:
- Get an HTTPS-secure website.
- Create an author page for your blog content.
- Acquire more customer reviews.
- Showcase home health certifications and awards.
Keyword Research for Home Health Service Companies
Focus on keywords that tap into healthcare-related search queries. If you specialize in a niche or service in a core location, target keywords that relate to it.
Healthcare organizations should ensure they target the right keywords, the ones used by potential patients.
There are numerous free tools available. However, leveraging the expertise of a professional SEO agency or digital marketing company is a far more advantageous option.
Finding a professional SEO manager to conduct keyword research for your home health company will save you time and ensure you get the most profitable terms to target for your website. Furthermore, while keywords are a driving factor in SEO, you should avoid keyword stuffing (using too many or repeating too often).
Be it a blog post, the home page, or a services page, consider the number of keywords you are including and if the writing still sounds natural. You must identify the intent behind the medical industry keywords that you choose. If your customers have questions, write a blog and give them answers!
If it’s a keyword with high commercial or transactional intent behind it, dedicate it to one of your service pages – not a blog!
Remember that Google wants to serve its users helpful content. High-quality content is useful and relevant to users and their needs.
Take a look at what other high-ranking home healthcare websites are doing. Examine the search engine results pages for the most common search terms in your industry. The easiest way to start is to type it into Google and look at the results. Healthcare organizations should ensure they target the right keywords, the ones that customers use the most.
Create Relevant Content for Home Care
Think about what your customers would like to know. Use these ideas to create content that is not only engaging but informative. Engaging content doesn’t have to be a blog; it can be a video or infographic. Here are some SEO tips for your home care blog.
Don’t use the keywords from your health services pages. It’s a big mistake. This will confuse Google as to which page it should prioritize.
Here’s an example:
“Home health services” has a volume of over 22.2 thousand searches a month.
Rank your service page for this specific phrase by using the keyword in the URL, the title, and the meta description.
That means your blog content should focus on exact-match variants of similar terms:
- Who is qualified for home health care services?
- Does Medicare cover home health care services?
- What’s included in home health care services?
Make sure it is an exact match in the URL, heading, and first paragraph. Otherwise, you risk creating keyword cannibalization, a situation when two pages compete for the same keyword.
Creating content around your core services is a large component of successful healthcare SEO. After you write your blogs, you can create internal links to your core service page. Over time, this strengthens your web page and enables your business to rank for relevant keywords.
The more keywords you rank for, the more chances there are for new customers to start finding your website, no matter what they plug into Google.
On-Page SEO for Home Care Health Companies
- Meta descriptions: Include your target keyword, and keep it under 155 characters.
- Title tags: Make sure the title is unique to each page, includes a primary keyword, and accurately describes the page.
- Headers: Add an H1 header to each page; ensure it has your target keyword and a catchy title.
- URLs: Avoid numbers, dates, and filler words; add your target keyword, but make sure it’s not too long and difficult to remember.
- Internal links: Make sure pages on your website can be reached. The best way to find out what pages need more links is to look at your Google Search Console (GSC).
Off-Page SEO for Home Care
Get high-quality backlinks. Reach out for links from relevant institutions, organizations, and publications. Obtaining authoritative links will convince Google that your healthcare website is worth ranking. They serve as powerful referral sources.
Remember: not all backlinks serve to benefit your SEO efforts. Choose links that are related to the healthcare industry.
Get listed on directory sites ASAP. When someone searches for “home healthcare companies,” they’re bound to encounter a large number of directory listings.
Try to get positive reviews on these sites:
These sites allow your business to bring in more leads and expand your online presence. Red Crow has a directory management program that will handle dozens of these listings for you. Instead of spending hours updating multiple sites and trying to keep content and information consistent across the internet, Contact Us to learn about our program.
Technical SEO for Home Care
Make sure your site architecture is easy to navigate and sensible. This helps search engine crawlers find and index your pages on Google’s organic search results. If your site has any broken links or missing pages, fix them quickly with a 301 redirect to the appropriate web page.
Site speed is one of the biggest factors to consider. Research shows that site speed has a direct impact on conversions.
We Help Home Care Companies Get More Leads
If you’re in the home health industry, our team at Red Crow Marketing can help you get more website traffic, online visibility, and more potential customers going to your site. Contact us to get started.