Any body who's succeeding in local business these days will tell you that having an online presence is important when it comes to finding leads and new customers for your business. This is why most small businesses have their own websites and blogs because it helps them connect with more people. Having a website or blog is a good start, but there are a few more tactics you can use when online marketing for assisted living facilities that you should be doing to help your business get found locally. We are currently in a digital age, which means that we have to adapt and use technology to our advantage. One of the ways to do that is through local online marketing, which can be used in the following ways:
1) Have a Responsive Web Design
Getting a lot of traffic on your website is important to your success. These days, more people are accessing websites with their mobile devices, which make it important that your site is mobile device friendly. A responsive web design simply means that your website design adapts to whatever device is being used to view it, allowing the visitors to have the same access to all the features as they would if they were viewing the site from the computer. The size and width of the screen can stretch and adapt to any device or size. This is actually a component of Google's algorithm now for what makes a site more successful in search results.
2) Create Consistent Local Blog Content
Creating content is the single most important thing you can do to help your search results. By consistently creating great content around keywords that you're trying to target you'll start to get more traffic and better leads. In addition to content around your keywords and business offering you'll want to provide useful information to the reader. The type of local content you should create should provide them with useful information about the area, information about the schools in the neighborhood, statistics, events and any other thing you think they will find useful. By mixing in terms to do with your city or town you'll start to get picked up for local terms and start ranking better locally. Local content marketing for assisted living can greatly increase your search presence.
3) Setup Up Your Business with Google My Business
Google has now made it easier than ever to set your business up for local search. If you haven't done this yet, do it now. Go to Google my business page and claim your business location. When you verify your address Google will send a postcard to your place of business with a PIN number to verify your location and claim your Google plus page. At the same time you'll get your business registered with Google Maps. Simply verifying your business location by taking this step will HUGELY increase your local search presence.
*Getting verified on Google Business Listing helps your community get indexed in local search results
4) Ask for Reviews on Google Plus and Yelp
Reviews have become increasingly important in Google's search algorithm. By asking your favorite clients to give you reviews on Google Plus and Yelp you're proving that you're an established legitimate business in the eyes of search engines and people looking for your product or service. Word of mouth is a very powerful tool, and you can use it to your advantage by asking clients who used your services in the past, and were pleased with the results, to leave reviews for you on the network they used to find you. The positive reviews will help convince potential clients that you are the best option for them.
*Getting reviews for your senior living community will help you stand out from competitors and give you the upper hand when prospects are researching your community
5) Spread Content Via Social Media & Respond to Customers
Having a social media presence is important when it comes to increasing the visibility of your small business. Participating in social media can really be a full time job if you want it to be. For most small businesses this simply is not an option. In terms of social media at the minimum I would suggest 1) auto-posting your blog content across your channel and 2) responding to any direct complaints, comments, or reviews left by customers on one of your websites. Spreading your blog content over social media gets it exposure and get more people looking at it and potentially linking to it. Responding to customers on social media shows them that you care, your proactive, and that you're on top of customer service. Social media is the new customer service department - don't neglect it.
