September 6, 2024 • 40 mins
Unlock the secrets to skyrocketing your home care business with an optimized website and cutting-edge SEO! In our latest episode, Valerie and our leadership team walk you through the essentials of creating a website that Google will love in 2024. We break down effective content strategies and specific SEO techniques that elevate your rankings. Learn why mobile speed is non-negotiable for both user experience and SEO success, and discover how high-quality hosting and long-form content can propel your website to the top.
Dive deeper into advanced SEO strategies that go beyond standard plugins like Yoast SEO or Rank Math. We discuss the critical importance of handcrafted schema markup, which provides Google with comprehensive details about your organization. Find out why having a physical office—even if it’s just a home address—can improve your local search rankings and navigate the competitive landscape of big cities versus smaller towns. We also shed light on the long-term nature of SEO, emphasizing the necessity of ongoing content updates and setting realistic expectations for your ranking achievements.
To wrap things up, we highlight the key considerations for effective SEO, including the importance of hiring credible experts and maintaining high-quality, human-edited content. We caution against common pitfalls like auto-playing videos and stress the need for mobile friendliness. Gain insights from the success stories of Home Care Assistance and Home Instead Senior Care as we explore essential keyword strategies. Understand why having dedicated sections for various levels of care on your website can significantly boost your online presence. Tune in for actionable insights that will keep your home care business ahead in the digital landscape!
Visit our website at https://asnhomecaremarketing.com
Get Your 11 Free Home Care Marketing Guides: https://bit.ly/homecarerev
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
All right.
Increasing home care leads withyour website and enhanced SEO.
This is my favorite, myfavorite, favorite topic of all
time.
So thanks everybody for joiningus.
I'm just going to do a realquick introduction of everybody
on our leadership team.
I'm Valerie, and George is mybusiness partner and Mark is our
(00:31):
head of web development, andDawn is here and Lisa,
marseillais and Lauren.
Everybody from our team is hereNot everybody, but you know
we're all around.
We're all around.
We'll answer your questions, souse the Q&A for questions as we
go.
Yes, this is being recorded andI promise we will send out the
replay to everybody, and theirbrother and their brother and
(00:52):
their brother, so you willdefinitely see it.
It'll also be part of.
It'll be on our podcast channel, it'll be on YouTube, it'll be
on our website, it'll beeverywhere.
So if you follow our podcast,you'll be able to listen to it.
You won't see the visuals, butanyway, all right.
So on our agenda today 2024websites that make Google happy.
2024 content strategies thathelp Google rank your site.
(01:16):
Seo strategies that ASN uses tohelp clients see better ranking
results.
How we create and publishcontent is changing.
What works on the socialplatforms is shifting and the
strategies that worked in thepast don't now.
We need a new plan.
So I will tell you that in17-ish years of doing this, what
(01:39):
we do as a team and what youall should be doing, has changed
.
I don't know, every couple ofyears, I mean maybe not quite
that often, but we've gonethrough a whole lot of changes
and I don't think anything'schanged radically in the last
few years.
But we're going to talk aboutsome things I think are way more
important now than they've everbeen, that folks need to sort
of maybe get used to or use itto their advantage.
(02:02):
So we're going to talk aboutthat.
All right, this is my littlepicture of a Google monster.
So I asked AI to give me awatercolor picture of a Google
monster and this is what it cameup with.
So we're going to pretend likeour Google monster is very happy
, because if you make the Googlemonster mad, I can tell you
(02:22):
that you will disappear from theinternet.
If you make the Google monstermad and the ways that you make
Google monster mad are by tryingto do things that it doesn't
like, or duplicating yourbusiness location in Google
business profiles, or justthere's a whole slew of things
(02:43):
that makes the Google monsterangry, but we like to stay on
the very happy, happy side ofGoogle, and so we're going to
talk about all those thingstoday.
The first thing we're going totalk about are websites.
Some of you are our clients andyou might see yourself here and
a lot of you are not ourclients, but this is a
(03:04):
screenshot, or a couplescreenshots, of some of the
websites we've done recently.
This is not everything, butjust gives you kind of an
overview of what they look likeon mobile and on different
platforms.
Why do these websites makeGoogle happy?
All of these websites are greatin performance.
(03:26):
They do generate leads, and thequestion is why?
Why is Google happy about these?
So we're gonna talk about whyGoogle is so happy.
The first thing that makesGoogle happy is speed, speed,
fast, fast, fast, fast, fast.
So these two pictures that yousee on the screen right here are
you'll notice that it's amobile view of that website.
(03:50):
It's not your big desktop view.
So what does Google Monstercare about?
He cares about everythingmobile.
Since about 2018, google saidyou know what?
It's the mobile version thatreally matters, and I'm old so I
really like the desktop versionof everything, but mobile
matters.
Everybody's on that littlephone all day long, and so are
(04:11):
your clients or your leads, soare your caregivers or your
potential hires and yourreferral sources are all on
their phones all day long and ifthey're going to look at your
website, they're probably goingto look at it, at least at some
point, through a mobile device.
So having great speed on mobileis number one.
(04:34):
So you can see a couple of ourrecent websites are ranking very
well.
They're very speedy, there's noproblems.
We always want to get an Agrade on speed.
Now there are times when Googlewill make a change and all of a
sudden a website that was an Ayesterday might be a B today.
So we just go make a few tweaksand changes and it's back to an
(04:54):
A.
But that's what Mark's for.
Mark does all of that crazy,amazing stuff behind the scenes
to make our websites roll faster.
We also use very stuff behindthe scenes to make our websites
roll faster.
We also use very, very goodhosting, very high quality
hosting.
It's not your Google, I meanyour GoDaddy, you know shared
(05:15):
business hosting for 14 bucks amonth.
We use exceptional hosting onservers that are designed to
make sure that your website isdelivered at high speed.
You can't pay for that for 14bucks a month.
That's not how it works.
That is something that we arevery I guess it's very important
(05:36):
to us and we know it'simportant to our clients because
that's one of the ways we getthem to rank.
When we use SEO Speed is a topissue.
Rank when we use SEO Speed is atop issue.
If your website is slow, googlefeels like that is a bad user
experience.
If it loads slow on mobile,it's a bad user experience.
That makes Google mad and so itdoesn't want to show your
(05:56):
website because it's loading tooslow and that hacks people off
and they just leave and go tothe next website.
So speed is important and thatmakes Google happy.
All right.
The next thing that makesGoogle happy is long form
content.
Now, the content that is on ourclient's website is written by
(06:16):
us, so we don't ask our clientsto write.
We used to.
If you're, if you've beenaround the block with us for a
long time, we used to say youknow what you really need to
write this content.
It's your business, you shouldwrite it and that slowed our
process down quite a bit,because you guys are experts in
home care or whatever servicesyou provide.
You weren't born to be a writerthat's not your gig usually.
(06:40):
So we decided to have thecontent written for our clients,
and I'll talk about that in aminute.
But all of these pages that yousee, for instance, on this
website in this dropdown, arelong form written content,
usually about a thousand wordsor more, with pictures and all
kinds of other things thatGoogle really likes.
(07:01):
So long form content is whereit's at, and I'm going to show
you a little bit of a wordyscreen here.
You might want to screenshotthis because I don't want to
read all of these, but if youwanted to know why long form
content was a good idea Now.
So if you look at your currentwebsite and all you have is a
(07:22):
bulleted list of services likebathing, dressing, grooming,
feeding, ambulating, but youknow and that's it.
If that's, you know, your wholepage is basically a picture and
a bulleted list and you're notranking.
That's why that is notlong-form content.
That is short content and it'stoo short.
(07:42):
So long form content givesGoogle a depth of information.
It increases engagement becausethey got to read higher keyword
density, so we can fit a lot ofdifferent keyword phrases in
that long form content that helppeople and Google understand
what this page is about.
It shows your authority andexpertise.
(08:04):
I mean, you wouldn't have along form content page if you
didn't know a whole lot aboutthat service.
More opportunity for backlinks,comprehensive answers to user
queries.
One of the things that you'llnotice about the websites that
we build is that there's usuallynot on every page, but most
pages, most service pages, havea frequently asked question at
(08:25):
the bottom.
So whatever we didn't cover uptop, we put in, and it's in an
accordion style so it's nottaking up a bunch of space, but
there's a section of frequentlyasked questions at the bottom
and this is really important forSEO and it's really important
for the user, who you know.
They may have skimmed your pageand didn't really find the
answer to that question theywere wondering about.
(08:47):
But bam, they can see that inthe frequently asked questions
at the bottom that there it is,there's the question that they
were going to ask.
So we do that specific to theservice on almost every page.
We write Improve userexperience.
Of course, if they'restructured well, then you know
that's a nice user experience.
Of course, if they'restructured well, then that's a
nice user experience.
It reduces your bounce rate.
(09:07):
People are bound to stay thereand not bounce around and bounce
right off your website.
It encourages people to shareyour pages and it supports
multiple search intentionsbecause it's covering a lot of
different parts and pieces ofthat service.
(09:27):
Okay, how does long form contentget written?
So at ASN, like I said, wewrite the website content for
you, because we know that's notsomething you want to take the
time to do.
However, we always want you toedit the content as needed.
So we create a website and putall the pages up for you, we put
all the content there, we putall the pretty pictures in and
(09:49):
then we tell you go for it.
And our clients get theopportunity to read those pages,
take out what they don't likeor what don't want, or rephrase
something if they'd like.
You know, some people add to alot of that and some people say
you know what?
This is great, I love it, gowith it.
So clients get to edit theircontent.
We write 1000 to 1500 words perpage and they are all search
(10:14):
engine optimized, but they arewritten for the reader first.
So where you might have abulleted list of services, like
our bulleted list of whatcompanion care means.
We also have that bulleted listbecause we know that people
want to know.
What does that include?
Just give me the small list.
But then after that our longform content will start and talk
(10:35):
about the benefits of companioncare and, you know, the respite
care opportunities and allthose other things.
So we start with a bulletedlist a lot not every time, but
we start with that and then,because we know the reader is
just going to want to, you know,sort of just breeze through
that page really quick.
So that's kind of how we do ourlong form content.
Again, if you have anyquestions about how we're doing
(10:57):
this for SEO or for websites,just go to the Q&A section and
ask your question.
I can't see that, so stop me ifthere's a question.
Is there anything I need toknow?
We're good right now, okay, cool, all right.
The next thing I want to talkabout that makes the Google
monster super happy, and this islike chocolate chip cookies for
(11:18):
Google, and that is schema code, and that sounds so nerdy.
Schema code what is that?
It's what's on the menu, andthis is a long explanation, so
I'm just going to read themiddle of this page.
If a web page is about a recipe, the schema code that you put
behind the scenes this is stuffyou don't see.
(11:39):
It's only what Google sees.
Schema code can specificallytell Google where the recipes
title, ingredients and cookingtime are.
This makes it easier for Googleto know exactly what's on the
page and to show it in searchresults in a more helpful way.
It's like a special box at thetop of the page with key details
.
So this makes Google happybecause it can provide a better
(12:01):
experience to people searchingfor things online.
So we want to do all we can doto make Google happy.
So schema is really important,and what we know is that schema
tells Google who you are, yourorganization, where you're
located, how long you've beenthere, what services you provide
.
So every service page has itsown set of schema, what type of
(12:23):
business your organization is.
So is it a home healthcarebusiness?
Is it a doctor's office?
Is it a plumber or roofer?
We don't, we don't servicethose people, but that's what
it's looking for.
What?
What are you?
What do you do?
Who your key employees are.
So your owners, your CEO, yourpresident or whoever it is that
might be the face of the company.
(12:44):
We try to put those people inthat schema code so that Google
understands that Valerie is thefounder and co-owner and George
is the co-owner, and so when wetalk about those people behind
the scenes, google puts two andtwo together how people feel
about your organization.
So all of your reviews, or somesection of your reviews, can be
(13:06):
added to that schema so thatGoogle knows you know people
really like this organization.
And then it also tells Googlehow many videos, articles, news
items, frequently askedquestions and reviews are on
your website.
So the content.
So we, with schema code, wegive authority, trust, content
the type of organization you are, the services you provide, how
(13:27):
long you've been in business,where you're located and the
name of your organization.
And that is like a recipe toGoogle.
Google never sees the beautifulparts of your website with the
pretty pictures or the customimages that you had taken of all
your team.
It'll never see that.
All it sees is the text and thecode behind the scenes.
(13:48):
So the more help you giveGoogle, the better off your
website will perform.
So how does schema get on yourwebsite?
Well, most developers, mostwebsite developers and SEO folks
rely on plugins to do theirschema, and that's only about
half, or even less, than what iswhat we can do with schema.
(14:10):
We can give Google so muchinformation that it wants, and
when you rely on a plugin to dothat, oh, we use Yoast SEO or we
use Rank Math or we useall-in-one SEO.
That's fine to use those, butif you're not adding additional
schema to help Google understandmore about your organization,
(14:31):
then you're missing half thebattle there.
It's really important to dothat.
So we handcraft the schema.
Some plugins do some of it justkind of by nature, but we
handcraft a very specific typeof schema so that we can tell
Google who your organization is,where your locations are and
all the other things you see onthis page.
(14:52):
So it's handcrafted by us andthat's automatic for all of our
websites.
Any questions?
We're good, all right.
So SEO for home care let's talkabout that.
No-transcript solicits you orcalls you today is going to tell
(15:29):
you that they do SEO betterthan so-and-so, because A, b, c,
d, e and everyone has adifferent opinion in the SEO
world about what's good, what'sbad, what you should do, what
you shouldn't do, what Googlewants, what it doesn't want, and
I think that common senseshould be the rule Do good, make
(15:49):
Google happy, and then therewards will follow, and it's
not overnight.
This isn't instantgratification by any means.
Most humans who are good at SEO, like our team, will never tell
you everything they do, becausethey don't want their
competitors to know their secretsauce, and I can say that's
pretty true.
We do a lot of cool things.
They're all you know, somethingthat Google would very much
(16:13):
like and within all of Google'srules and regulations.
But we're not going to sayevery little thing on our
website because you know we gotto keep some of it for ourselves
and we want you, our client, todo better than everybody else
out there.
This is number three.
It's easier to rank in a cityor a town where you have a
(16:33):
physical office, so if you havea physical office presence,
you're always going to rankbetter there.
Some of you have a Googlebusiness profile that is
considered a service areaprofile Very common in home care
.
It's very common for, like aroofer, plumber, painters
because they don't.
People don't come to theiroffice, right, they go to
(16:55):
people's homes or businesses todo their job.
So they have a service areathat they cover.
And it's okay to have a servicearea, but you still, even if
your address doesn't show up onGoogle, you still want to make
sure you have a physical addressthat is a real address.
It cannot be a PO box, a UPSstore box.
It cannot be a place where youjust virtually get your mail and
(17:18):
take phone calls and you don'treally have an office there.
Google's very specific about it.
It's their rules and if you dohave a physical office somewhere
and it can be your house, I'lltell you that I have you and I
know some of you are veryprivate about that and you don't
want your home location to beon Google or whatever.
I get it, it's totally fine.
(17:40):
I am exactly the opposite.
I am on the grid as much aspossible.
So so the physical office is inSt Charles, missouri, and if
you look it up, you can lookanywhere.
It's my house, this is my houseand I don't want you to come
here.
Necessarily I'll meet you atthe coffee shop, but you need to
(18:01):
have a physical office and I Ilet it go.
And for 16 years I've had oneclient show up here that thought
it was an office Boy.
Were they surprised?
So we don't advertise that.
But that is the truth andthat's what happens.
And no one has ever tried tocome here and kidnap the home
care marketing expert or herkids.
(18:22):
So I don't know, I just kind ofroll with that.
It's harder to rank in a city ortown where you do not have a
physical office, but it's notimpossible.
So let's say your office is inSt Louis, missouri, and you want
to rank in St Charles Missouri,which is a suburb, and you want
to rank there.
It is very possible for us torank you there Very possible,
(18:42):
absolutely but it's going totake longer because you have no
physical location, no address.
So it's going to take longer todo it.
But it's definitely somethingwe do every single day, so not
an issue, but it just takeslonger.
Obviously, manhattan is harderthan West Winnemucca Nevada.
West Winnemucca Nevada is themiddle of nowhere, so it's
(19:03):
really easy to rank for that.
So if you see somebody puttingcase studies up on their website
where they say, oh, I got themranked right away for ABC town.
If you look up ABC town andit's a population of 50,000,
then you know why they rankedreally fast for that town.
Because there's no one there.
(19:24):
So it's easy to rank folks inplaces where there is a lower
population.
There's less competition.
Obviously it's very hard to dosomething like Manhattan, miami,
dallas.
Those are much harder to rankfor and take a lot more work.
Seo is a long-term strategy.
(19:44):
I would say six to 12 months iswhat you should give it.
It's not a one and done.
It's a continuous addition ofcontent both on your site and
off your site to help Googleunderstand the importance of you
, your business and yourservices.
So it's a long-term strategy.
(20:05):
Do not believe the person whoguarantees first page results
for all keywords.
That will never happen.
If you or your SEO person hasmade Google mad, you will find
it very hard to turn that around.
It can be done.
But sometimes we run across awebsite or a town for a website
that is for some reason stuckwhen all the other towns for
(20:27):
that website are doing great,for some reason stuck when all
the other towns for that websiteare doing great, and I just
know, if I do a deep dive I'mgoing to find that there are
some old shenanigans that havebeen done by someone in SEO that
made that website not rank wellfor that specific town.
It made Google mad, and so nowwe certainly are having a hard
time ranking them, and if I lookinto it deep enough, I can
(20:48):
usually at least have a goodidea of what happened.
So just be careful who you hireand be careful of who you trust,
because that's a rough thing toget through.
You might see great resultsreally fast, but hold on to your
hat because it could betemporary.
So there are definitely ways toget somebody to rank really
(21:09):
fast in, but hold on to your hatbecause it could be temporary.
So there are definitely ways toget somebody to rank really
fast in a certain town, but assoon as Google figures out what
that SEO person did, it mightbackfire.
So be careful.
You want long-term good results.
You want every time Google'salgorithm changes, you want to
be able to survive that.
So you definitely want along-term positive result.
(21:32):
Every keyword phrase can't benumber one at the same time, but
so you're going to see ebbs andflows.
I'm number one, I'm number five, I'm number nine, I'm number
two.
You're going to see it go upand down depending on what the
focus is for that website thatmonth, that week, that day.
But having a consistently nicefirst page result is what you're
(21:54):
looking for.
Any questions?
Speaker 2 (21:57):
We're good.
Yeah, we have one question inthere.
Sure, can you give an exampleof the fast results?
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Give you an example of a fast result.
You mean like ranking numberone for home care.
Well, you could.
I mean, I don't have a websitewhere I can show you that really
fast or how that's done.
I've seen SEOs do some kind ofbackhanded things and they can
(22:30):
get their client to rank, butit's temporary.
It looks great for like acouple of weeks or maybe even a
month, but as soon as that SEOwalks away or as soon as Google
catches on, boom, it crashes andit's back to, you know, page
four.
So just be careful who you hire.
Be careful you hire, that's allI mean.
You know, if people have beendoing SEO for a really long time
(22:52):
and they have great reviews,then chances are you're in good,
you're in a good place.
If they, if you don't have anyreviews or you can't, you know
you look at their case studiesand they look kind of like oh
yeah, you ranked them in a bunchof small towns and you know, is
it real?
You know, just towns, this is,you know, is it real?
(23:13):
You know, just do your duediligence and you get what you
pay for.
That's another thing you shouldknow.
You get what you pay for.
If somebody is ultra cheap,they're probably not doing
nearly the work or they're there.
It's offshore, which I don't.
I don't care if it's offshore,if it's done correctly, but that
would be maybe not a red flag,but definitely a pink flag
(23:35):
raising up out of the sand there.
So SEO factors that matter,content, content quality.
So it can't be, you know, 100percent AI written and just yuck
.
It can't be unique, whoeverwrites the content.
If they use AI which, let'sface it, that's going to happen
If they use AI, that's fine, butit has to be edited down for a
(23:59):
real human being to read andunderstand and be able to scan
with their eyes and be able towalk through their eyes and be
able to walk through.
If you write with AI and youdon't read it and you just post
it and you don't take the timeto understand what it's saying,
eventually you're going to finderrors in there because AI makes
things up.
(24:20):
So I can see that as we look foryou know, one time I asked AI
give me five quotes fromprofessionals about dementia
research and it did.
It gave me five great quotesand two of them were completely
made up.
They sounded great, like Iwanted that to be my quote, but
(24:42):
they were totally.
The person was like Dr JohnSmith.
So I Googled it and it totallydidn't exist.
It will make things up to makeyou happy.
So you can't rely on AI foreverything it's you know, edit
it, read it, make sure you knowwhat's right.
So content quality is important.
Keywords I'm going to talkabout that.
Backlinks, yes.
(25:02):
User experience that goes backto the speed and how it looks on
mobile.
The user experience needs to beclean, easy to read, not moving
parts all over the place.
The other thing about userexperience and I hope nobody
does this in 2024.
If your website plays a videoor music as soon as you hit the
(25:25):
page, I'm out, and so are allthe other Gen Xers Nobody wants
to hear that.
Don't have it play music.
Don't have your website playany music or video, oh God.
Or, if it plays a video, makesure the volume is automatically
turned off.
So I don't care if their mouthis moving, but that would scare
me to death if I had headphoneson and all of a sudden
(25:47):
something's you know loud andplaying.
Don't do that.
So user experience is important.
Mobile friendliness, engagementand location All of those
things are very important.
So we use all these things I'mtelling you about to help Google
understand this stuff.
All right, are we still good onquestions?
Okay, so I'm going to talk toyou about two different kinds of
(26:09):
SEO.
Now, everybody's going todefine this differently.
Every company that you look atis going to have a different
package plan, so I'm just goingto tell you ours just so you
kind of have an idea of whathappens.
When we build a website, weautomatically do a bunch of
stuff and we automatically do abasic one-time SEO of all the
(26:30):
pages and all the behind thescenes stuff.
So we automatically write longform content.
We automatically add all thetitle tags and meta descriptions
.
They're all search engineoptimized correctly.
We automatically use keywordsthroughout.
We automatically add schema toservice pages and location pages
.
We automatically test for speedand make sure it's an A, our
(26:50):
images are properly labeled,every page has H1 titles and a
few other basics.
That is a normal process for usinside of a website build and
it should be for everyone.
But I will tell you right nowthat we get called to fix
people's websites that we didnot build.
So a lot of web developers arenot SEO people and so they'll
(27:13):
build you a website but the nameof your homepage is test-home
or homepage-2 instead ofHomeCare in West Winnemucca,
nevada, by ABC HomeCare.
So they don't SEO anything.
They just build you a prettywebsite but it never ranks
because it's not been taken careof on the back end and Google
(27:38):
doesn't know what this istalking about.
It's just homepage dash two.
So a basic setup for usincludes all the basic SEO that
you need to be in good shape.
And then we have an enhanced SEOprogram, which is ongoing work,
which I believe is importantfor everybody, and most of our
(27:59):
clients purchase this.
So enhanced SEO means we'redoing all the basic stuff, but
we're adding location pagesevery month and more long form
stuff and backlinks from localpublications online and more
schema code for each locationpage.
We add video, audio and we havea bunch of offsite strategies
that we use.
Your Google business profile isoptimized and ongoing posts go
(28:23):
into that.
You get monthly reporting.
So we're on top of it, we'relooking at it, we're working
with you.
You may change.
You know the pounds that you'rereally interested in ranking
for.
So to me, enhanced SEO ongoingis important strategy to keep in
mind, but just make sure thatif you have a website built,
that it is at least at the veryat the very least, some basic
(28:46):
stuff needs to be done.
All right, okay, let's talkkeywords.
Everybody wants to know whatthe best keyword phrases are, so
I'm going to start by tellingyou what the keyword phrases are
not, and this is going tosurprise some of you.
My number one no for a keywordphrase which you're going to.
Some people are going todisagree with this, but I'm
(29:06):
telling.
I'll tell you why.
Home health aid this is a hugeno and the reason it's a no.
I know you have home healthaids, I know you provide home
health aids, but this is a jobseeker search.
This is a job seeker search100% of the time.
Now there will be a handful ofpeople who will type in home
(29:27):
health aid because they want ahome health aid, but that is not
usually the case, so it's a jobseeker search.
Hha, cna, home care jobs,careers, home care careers,
caregiver jobs.
Even the word caregiver is nota keyword that I would optimize
a website for, a home carewebsite.
Because, again, it's a jobseeker search.
(29:50):
Because it's again it's a jobseeker search, not every.
There are thousands ofinstances of the word caregiver,
in-home caregiver, caregiverfor seniors.
There's all kinds of variationson that theme, but caregiver by
itself is not something that Iwould ever optimize a website
for and I can tell you that I'vecome across websites that that
(30:16):
that we have analyzed for aclient and somebody built it and
who wasn't in the home carebusiness at all, who had never
understood, didn't understandhome care usually some offshore
thing and they just looked upthe top keyword phrases or just
went with whatever the clientthought might be a top keyword
(30:37):
phrase and the whole website wasSEO for phrases like home care
jobs.
Because if you really want toknow, home care jobs or home
health care or home care careersis one of the top searches.
But that does not mean that youwant your website to be SEO'd
all over the place for thatkeyword phrase.
But somebody who doesn'tunderstand the home care
(30:59):
business might think that's agreat thing, right?
So they're going to go in andSEO your whole website for home
care jobs.
Now I haven't seen that lately,but in the past I've seen it
quite a bit.
Seen that lately, but in thepast I've seen it quite a bit.
Wrong keyword phrases all overthe place, because the person
that built the website doesn'tunderstand home care.
A companionship is debatable,but I'm not looking for
(31:22):
companionship that will denotedating and dating sites and
things like that.
I would say in-homecompanionship might be a good
variation on that, but not justcompanionship by itself.
You want to make sure that thekeyword phrases you're using
have the word home in them Homehealth care, home care,
(31:42):
non-medical home care.
I'm going to show you the listin just a second Housekeeping,
laundry, transportation anderrands.
No, these are not things thatpeople are typing in.
They do not understand what allof this means in terms of home
care.
So if they're looking forhousekeeping for a senior, they
really are looking for some kindof housekeeping service.
(32:04):
They're looking for laundryservices.
They're looking for laundryservices, not home care.
So these are ones by themselvesto kind of stay away from.
Does that make sense?
Do you have any questions?
Speaker 2 (32:15):
We have a question, all righty.
So what do we do if we wantboth clients and caregivers?
How to SEO for both?
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Oh yeah, absolutely.
You have one page that youabsolutely want to SEO the heck
out of, for you know your jobseekers, you want your job
seekers, I totally get that too.
So you have one page, or maybetwo or three depends on what
you're hiring or who you'rehiring, what licenses they hold.
So you might have a careerspage that is SEO for home care
(32:47):
jobs, and then you might, ifyou're hiring RNs, you might
have one that is home homehealth nurse jobs or home health
jobs for RNs, or you knowwhatever you can.
You'd have to do a littleresearch on it.
But you can have a whole careersection of your website.
That's great.
But I've seen entire websitesthat have the word home care
(33:09):
jobs all the way through on theback end, and that's not what
you want.
So, yes, designate a page ortwo to your careers, that is an
excellent idea, but it's neverthe whole website.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Great, and there's another.
Another question there too.
Besides analyzing competitorswebsites and using Google Trends
, what other tools do yousuggest for finding keywords?
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Well, we like to use SEMrush.
I think there's a free version.
There's another one calledAhrefs, but SEMrush is
S-E-M-R-U-S-H.
That's my favorite.
Everybody's got differentopinions.
There are some other ones thatare read.
That might be better that youcan, you know, look at or just
(33:59):
you know, keyword research kindof stuff.
But SEMrush typically is what Iwould use to analyze what's
going on.
Okay, so here are some yeskeywords and this is a big, big
list.
So we're going to start at thetop and this has changed over
the years.
I've I've watched this for solong now that I I I was shocked
(34:20):
at how much this has changed.
So it's tricky.
But these are yes words.
Anything with a yellow arrow isa no word because you are not
car and home insurance.
But if I did a keyword researchand I said what are the top
keyword phrases and that's whatI did today for this screenshot
(34:41):
what are the top keyword phrasesfor home care?
This is the list it wouldreturn.
Now I want you to know that homehealth care is up at the top
and you can see that.
It says the volume is 27,100,same as home health care near me
.
They're both neck and neckright.
There are 70,000 iterations ofthe word home health care Not
(35:03):
kidding.
So in a million, over a millionsearches a month.
Now this is nationwide in theUnited States.
This is not in West Winnemucca,nevada, or your town.
Your town might have 20searches for home health care
every month, or 200 searches,but nationwide 27,000.
(35:23):
So when you look at yournumbers compared to these,
they're going to besignificantly smaller.
But if you want to know on alarge scale what's going on,
this is it.
So home care comes in numberthree.
Now you all know and I know,that there's a challenge there
If I'm a home care agency, insome states and in some areas of
the country I can say a lotabout home health care.
(35:44):
I can use that wordinterchangeably and it doesn't
hurt me.
The state's not going to comeafter me.
But in a lot of states wherehome care is highly regulated
and you know who you are, youcannot say the word home health
care if you're a non-medicalhome care agency.
So you have to be reallycareful about how you choose
your words.
Just because home health careis number one might be a super
(36:07):
bad idea for you, right?
And it's also a bad idea foryour competitors.
So nobody's using that becausethey're in the non-medical world
in your area.
In some areas, you definitelywant that to be part of your
routine because it doesn'tmatter.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Or maybe you are a home health care agency so great
.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
So use that word as much as you want, but we have to
be careful between medical andnon-medical home care.
Somebody that doesn'tunderstand home care the way we
do will never know that.
They will never understand theconundrum of every single
state's licensing requirements,or no requirements at all, like
here in Missouri.
And we're the wild west and youcan be whatever you want, so
(36:50):
you can see these keywords.
So it used to be.
I want you to know.
Let's go way down here toHomestead Senior Care.
Homestead Senior Care.
It says that there are 9,000searches a month, 9,900.
Now I'm telling you that.
I know that used to be 30,000,and homestead senior care was
(37:12):
the number one or number twokeyword phrase in the United
States for some period of time.
Now Google algorithms havechanged and so it might not be
if these numbers might be morecorrect today than they were
back then, but it used to behomestead senior care.
And then let's see, go all theway down to the bottom.
(37:32):
One, two, three, four.
From the bottom you see, homeCare Assistance.
Home Care Assistance was numbertwo after Home Instead Senior
Care.
Now Home Care Assistance haschanged their name to the key,
and so Home Care Assistance isstill well searched, but it's
not nearly as searched as itused to be.
(37:52):
So it's down to six thousandsix hundred per month.
Anyway, just interesting thosetwo brands had had they had it
nailed, so they did really wellin a home care search.
So you can see, for Biota isdefinitely up there.
And then car and home insurancewhat is that?
I don't know why that's inthere.
(38:13):
And then you have Synergy morecar insurance, home and stay car
insurance.
First Light Preferred Home Care, car and home insurance.
First Light home and carinsurance, I don't know.
Access Home Care, and then BestCar and Home Insurance Company.
So those yellow ones are onesyou obviously would not use.
But you can just kind of get afeel for what the most keyword
(38:35):
search keyword phrases are.
And what it doesn't tell you ishow many different versions of
that keyword are searched, whichis in another whole nother
place in SEMrush, and that's70,000.
And it's probably the same forhome care, maybe more for home
care by itself.
So these are some of thekeyword phrases you'd want to
(38:56):
think about.
Now.
A lot of you also offer veryspecific services and you want
to be search engine optimizedfor those services Parkinson's
in home care.
Alzheimer's in home care,dementia, home care, memory care
at home.
Alzheimer's in home care,dementia, home care, memory care
at home those are keywordphrases that you definitely want
to have in your suite ofservices and on in service pages
(39:17):
listed for.
Because, even though they're notlisted here, if someone has
Alzheimer's disease or has afamily member with Alzheimer's
disease or dementia, they'regoing to start searching stuff
like how do you care for aperson withzheimer's at home?
Can you care for a person withalzheimer's at home?
And if you were to look at someof the content that we've
(39:37):
written over time in ourfrequently asked questions,
that's almost always some formof that question is almost
always there because people typethat in all the time it's a
long tail keyword phrases, butyou don't want to miss that
client, that potential client,because you didn't have that set
of words on your website.
So some generic services andsome very specific to disease
(40:00):
processes are really Valerie, wehave a question.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
What if your home care company has all three
levels of care hospice, homehealth and private duty?
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Very nice.
So I would make sure that youhad a section of your website
devoted to private duty and asection divided for home health
care and a section for hospice,so you can do this all in one
website.
You just have to be veryspecific about your pages.
So, under non-medical home careor home care however you want
to label it you would make sureyou have your companion care,
(40:33):
personal care services, you know, whatever it is that you would
like to list under non-medical,and then under the home you know
big home health care page, thenyou would have underneath that
all of your you know.
All right.
Increasing home care leads withyour website and enhanced SEO.
This is my favorite, myfavorite, favorite topic of all
time.
So thanks everybody for joiningus.
I'm just going to do a realquick introduction of everybody
on our leadership team.
I'm Valerie, and George is mybusiness partner and Mark is our
(00:31):
head of web development, andDawn is here and Lisa,
marseillais and Lauren.
Everybody from our team is hereNot everybody, but you know
we're all around.
We're all around.
We'll answer your questions, souse the Q&A for questions as we
go.
Yes, this is being recorded andI promise we will send out the
replay to everybody, and theirbrother and their brother and
(00:52):
their brother, so you willdefinitely see it.
It'll also be part of.
It'll be on our podcast channel, it'll be on YouTube, it'll be
on our website, it'll beeverywhere.
So if you follow our podcast,you'll be able to listen to it.
You won't see the visuals, butanyway, all right.
So on our agenda today 2024websites that make Google happy.
2024 content strategies thathelp Google rank your site.
(01:16):
Seo strategies that ASN uses tohelp clients see better ranking
results.
How we create and publishcontent is changing.
What works on the socialplatforms is shifting and the
strategies that worked in thepast don't now.
We need a new plan.
So I will tell you that in17-ish years of doing this, what
(01:39):
we do as a team and what youall should be doing, has changed
.
I don't know, every couple ofyears, I mean maybe not quite
that often, but we've gonethrough a whole lot of changes
and I don't think anything'schanged radically in the last
few years.
But we're going to talk aboutsome things I think are way more
important now than they've everbeen, that folks need to sort
of maybe get used to or use itto their advantage.
(02:02):
So we're going to talk aboutthat.
All right, this is my littlepicture of a Google monster.
So I asked AI to give me awatercolor picture of a Google
monster and this is what it cameup with.
So we're going to pretend likeour Google monster is very happy
, because if you make the Googlemonster mad, I can tell you
(02:22):
that you will disappear from theinternet.
If you make the Google monstermad and the ways that you make
Google monster mad are by tryingto do things that it doesn't
like, or duplicating yourbusiness location in Google
business profiles, or justthere's a whole slew of things
(02:43):
that makes the Google monsterangry, but we like to stay on
the very happy, happy side ofGoogle, and so we're going to
talk about all those thingstoday.
The first thing we're going totalk about are websites.
Some of you are our clients andyou might see yourself here and
a lot of you are not ourclients, but this is a
(03:04):
screenshot, or a couplescreenshots, of some of the
websites we've done recently.
This is not everything, butjust gives you kind of an
overview of what they look likeon mobile and on different
platforms.
Why do these websites makeGoogle happy?
All of these websites are greatin performance.
(03:26):
They do generate leads, and thequestion is why?
Why is Google happy about these?
So we're gonna talk about whyGoogle is so happy.
The first thing that makesGoogle happy is speed, speed,
fast, fast, fast, fast, fast.
So these two pictures that yousee on the screen right here are
you'll notice that it's amobile view of that website.
(03:50):
It's not your big desktop view.
So what does Google Monstercare about?
He cares about everythingmobile.
Since about 2018, google saidyou know what?
It's the mobile version thatreally matters, and I'm old so I
really like the desktop versionof everything, but mobile
matters.
Everybody's on that littlephone all day long, and so are
(04:11):
your clients or your leads, soare your caregivers or your
potential hires and yourreferral sources are all on
their phones all day long and ifthey're going to look at your
website, they're probably goingto look at it, at least at some
point, through a mobile device.
So having great speed on mobileis number one.
(04:34):
So you can see a couple of ourrecent websites are ranking very
well.
They're very speedy, there's noproblems.
We always want to get an Agrade on speed.
Now there are times when Googlewill make a change and all of a
sudden a website that was an Ayesterday might be a B today.
So we just go make a few tweaksand changes and it's back to an
(04:54):
A.
But that's what Mark's for.
Mark does all of that crazy,amazing stuff behind the scenes
to make our websites roll faster.
We also use very stuff behindthe scenes to make our websites
roll faster.
We also use very, very goodhosting, very high quality
hosting.
It's not your Google, I meanyour GoDaddy, you know shared
(05:15):
business hosting for 14 bucks amonth.
We use exceptional hosting onservers that are designed to
make sure that your website isdelivered at high speed.
You can't pay for that for 14bucks a month.
That's not how it works.
That is something that we arevery I guess it's very important
(05:36):
to us and we know it'simportant to our clients because
that's one of the ways we getthem to rank.
When we use SEO Speed is a topissue.
Rank when we use SEO Speed is atop issue.
If your website is slow, googlefeels like that is a bad user
experience.
If it loads slow on mobile,it's a bad user experience.
That makes Google mad and so itdoesn't want to show your
(05:56):
website because it's loading tooslow and that hacks people off
and they just leave and go tothe next website.
So speed is important and thatmakes Google happy.
All right.
The next thing that makesGoogle happy is long form
content.
Now, the content that is on ourclient's website is written by
(06:16):
us, so we don't ask our clientsto write.
We used to.
If you're, if you've beenaround the block with us for a
long time, we used to say youknow what you really need to
write this content.
It's your business, you shouldwrite it and that slowed our
process down quite a bit,because you guys are experts in
home care or whatever servicesyou provide.
You weren't born to be a writerthat's not your gig usually.
(06:40):
So we decided to have thecontent written for our clients,
and I'll talk about that in aminute.
But all of these pages that yousee, for instance, on this
website in this dropdown, arelong form written content,
usually about a thousand wordsor more, with pictures and all
kinds of other things thatGoogle really likes.
(07:01):
So long form content is whereit's at, and I'm going to show
you a little bit of a wordyscreen here.
You might want to screenshotthis because I don't want to
read all of these, but if youwanted to know why long form
content was a good idea Now.
So if you look at your currentwebsite and all you have is a
(07:22):
bulleted list of services likebathing, dressing, grooming,
feeding, ambulating, but youknow and that's it.
If that's, you know, your wholepage is basically a picture and
a bulleted list and you're notranking.
That's why that is notlong-form content.
That is short content and it'stoo short.
(07:42):
So long form content givesGoogle a depth of information.
It increases engagement becausethey got to read higher keyword
density, so we can fit a lot ofdifferent keyword phrases in
that long form content that helppeople and Google understand
what this page is about.
It shows your authority andexpertise.
(08:04):
I mean, you wouldn't have along form content page if you
didn't know a whole lot aboutthat service.
More opportunity for backlinks,comprehensive answers to user
queries.
One of the things that you'llnotice about the websites that
we build is that there's usuallynot on every page, but most
pages, most service pages, havea frequently asked question at
(08:25):
the bottom.
So whatever we didn't cover uptop, we put in, and it's in an
accordion style so it's nottaking up a bunch of space, but
there's a section of frequentlyasked questions at the bottom
and this is really important forSEO and it's really important
for the user, who you know.
They may have skimmed your pageand didn't really find the
answer to that question theywere wondering about.
(08:47):
But bam, they can see that inthe frequently asked questions
at the bottom that there it is,there's the question that they
were going to ask.
So we do that specific to theservice on almost every page.
We write Improve userexperience.
Of course, if they'restructured well, then you know
that's a nice user experience.
Of course, if they'restructured well, then that's a
nice user experience.
It reduces your bounce rate.
(09:07):
People are bound to stay thereand not bounce around and bounce
right off your website.
It encourages people to shareyour pages and it supports
multiple search intentionsbecause it's covering a lot of
different parts and pieces ofthat service.
(09:27):
Okay, how does long form contentget written?
So at ASN, like I said, wewrite the website content for
you, because we know that's notsomething you want to take the
time to do.
However, we always want you toedit the content as needed.
So we create a website and putall the pages up for you, we put
all the content there, we putall the pretty pictures in and
(09:49):
then we tell you go for it.
And our clients get theopportunity to read those pages,
take out what they don't likeor what don't want, or rephrase
something if they'd like.
You know, some people add to alot of that and some people say
you know what?
This is great, I love it, gowith it.
So clients get to edit theircontent.
We write 1000 to 1500 words perpage and they are all search
(10:14):
engine optimized, but they arewritten for the reader first.
So where you might have abulleted list of services, like
our bulleted list of whatcompanion care means.
We also have that bulleted listbecause we know that people
want to know.
What does that include?
Just give me the small list.
But then after that our longform content will start and talk
(10:35):
about the benefits of companioncare and, you know, the respite
care opportunities and allthose other things.
So we start with a bulletedlist a lot not every time, but
we start with that and then,because we know the reader is
just going to want to, you know,sort of just breeze through
that page really quick.
So that's kind of how we do ourlong form content.
Again, if you have anyquestions about how we're doing
(10:57):
this for SEO or for websites,just go to the Q&A section and
ask your question.
I can't see that, so stop me ifthere's a question.
Is there anything I need toknow?
We're good right now, okay, cool, all right.
The next thing I want to talkabout that makes the Google
monster super happy, and this islike chocolate chip cookies for
(11:18):
Google, and that is schema code, and that sounds so nerdy.
Schema code what is that?
It's what's on the menu, andthis is a long explanation, so
I'm just going to read themiddle of this page.
If a web page is about a recipe, the schema code that you put
behind the scenes this is stuffyou don't see.
(11:39):
It's only what Google sees.
Schema code can specificallytell Google where the recipes
title, ingredients and cookingtime are.
This makes it easier for Googleto know exactly what's on the
page and to show it in searchresults in a more helpful way.
It's like a special box at thetop of the page with key details
.
So this makes Google happybecause it can provide a better
(12:01):
experience to people searchingfor things online.
So we want to do all we can doto make Google happy.
So schema is really important,and what we know is that schema
tells Google who you are, yourorganization, where you're
located, how long you've beenthere, what services you provide
.
So every service page has itsown set of schema, what type of
(12:23):
business your organization is.
So is it a home healthcarebusiness?
Is it a doctor's office?
Is it a plumber or roofer?
We don't, we don't servicethose people, but that's what
it's looking for.
What?
What are you?
What do you do?
Who your key employees are.
So your owners, your CEO, yourpresident or whoever it is that
might be the face of the company.
(12:44):
We try to put those people inthat schema code so that Google
understands that Valerie is thefounder and co-owner and George
is the co-owner, and so when wetalk about those people behind
the scenes, google puts two andtwo together how people feel
about your organization.
So all of your reviews, or somesection of your reviews, can be
(13:06):
added to that schema so thatGoogle knows you know people
really like this organization.
And then it also tells Googlehow many videos, articles, news
items, frequently askedquestions and reviews are on
your website.
So the content.
So we, with schema code, wegive authority, trust, content
the type of organization you are, the services you provide, how
(13:27):
long you've been in business,where you're located and the
name of your organization.
And that is like a recipe toGoogle.
Google never sees the beautifulparts of your website with the
pretty pictures or the customimages that you had taken of all
your team.
It'll never see that.
All it sees is the text and thecode behind the scenes.
(13:48):
So the more help you giveGoogle, the better off your
website will perform.
So how does schema get on yourwebsite?
Well, most developers, mostwebsite developers and SEO folks
rely on plugins to do theirschema, and that's only about
half, or even less, than what iswhat we can do with schema.
(14:10):
We can give Google so muchinformation that it wants, and
when you rely on a plugin to dothat, oh, we use Yoast SEO or we
use Rank Math or we useall-in-one SEO.
That's fine to use those, butif you're not adding additional
schema to help Google understandmore about your organization,
(14:31):
then you're missing half thebattle there.
It's really important to dothat.
So we handcraft the schema.
Some plugins do some of it justkind of by nature, but we
handcraft a very specific typeof schema so that we can tell
Google who your organization is,where your locations are and
all the other things you see onthis page.
(14:52):
So it's handcrafted by us andthat's automatic for all of our
websites.
Any questions?
We're good, all right.
So SEO for home care let's talkabout that.
No-transcript solicits you orcalls you today is going to tell
(15:29):
you that they do SEO betterthan so-and-so, because A, b, c,
d, e and everyone has adifferent opinion in the SEO
world about what's good, what'sbad, what you should do, what
you shouldn't do, what Googlewants, what it doesn't want, and
I think that common senseshould be the rule Do good, make
(15:49):
Google happy, and then therewards will follow, and it's
not overnight.
This isn't instantgratification by any means.
Most humans who are good at SEO, like our team, will never tell
you everything they do, becausethey don't want their
competitors to know their secretsauce, and I can say that's
pretty true.
We do a lot of cool things.
They're all you know, somethingthat Google would very much
(16:13):
like and within all of Google'srules and regulations.
But we're not going to sayevery little thing on our
website because you know we gotto keep some of it for ourselves
and we want you, our client, todo better than everybody else
out there.
This is number three.
It's easier to rank in a cityor a town where you have a
(16:33):
physical office, so if you havea physical office presence,
you're always going to rankbetter there.
Some of you have a Googlebusiness profile that is
considered a service areaprofile Very common in home care
.
It's very common for, like aroofer, plumber, painters
because they don't.
People don't come to theiroffice, right, they go to
(16:55):
people's homes or businesses todo their job.
So they have a service areathat they cover.
And it's okay to have a servicearea, but you still, even if
your address doesn't show up onGoogle, you still want to make
sure you have a physical addressthat is a real address.
It cannot be a PO box, a UPSstore box.
It cannot be a place where youjust virtually get your mail and
(17:18):
take phone calls and you don'treally have an office there.
Google's very specific about it.
It's their rules and if you dohave a physical office somewhere
and it can be your house, I'lltell you that I have you and I
know some of you are veryprivate about that and you don't
want your home location to beon Google or whatever.
I get it, it's totally fine.
(17:40):
I am exactly the opposite.
I am on the grid as much aspossible.
So so the physical office is inSt Charles, missouri, and if
you look it up, you can lookanywhere.
It's my house, this is my houseand I don't want you to come
here.
Necessarily I'll meet you atthe coffee shop, but you need to
(18:01):
have a physical office and I Ilet it go.
And for 16 years I've had oneclient show up here that thought
it was an office Boy.
Were they surprised?
So we don't advertise that.
But that is the truth andthat's what happens.
And no one has ever tried tocome here and kidnap the home
care marketing expert or herkids.
(18:22):
So I don't know, I just kind ofroll with that.
It's harder to rank in a city ortown where you do not have a
physical office, but it's notimpossible.
So let's say your office is inSt Louis, missouri, and you want
to rank in St Charles Missouri,which is a suburb, and you want
to rank there.
It is very possible for us torank you there Very possible,
(18:42):
absolutely but it's going totake longer because you have no
physical location, no address.
So it's going to take longer todo it.
But it's definitely somethingwe do every single day, so not
an issue, but it just takeslonger.
Obviously, manhattan is harderthan West Winnemucca Nevada.
West Winnemucca Nevada is themiddle of nowhere, so it's
(19:03):
really easy to rank for that.
So if you see somebody puttingcase studies up on their website
where they say, oh, I got themranked right away for ABC town.
If you look up ABC town andit's a population of 50,000,
then you know why they rankedreally fast for that town.
Because there's no one there.
(19:24):
So it's easy to rank folks inplaces where there is a lower
population.
There's less competition.
Obviously it's very hard to dosomething like Manhattan, miami,
dallas.
Those are much harder to rankfor and take a lot more work.
Seo is a long-term strategy.
(19:44):
I would say six to 12 months iswhat you should give it.
It's not a one and done.
It's a continuous addition ofcontent both on your site and
off your site to help Googleunderstand the importance of you
, your business and yourservices.
So it's a long-term strategy.
(20:05):
Do not believe the person whoguarantees first page results
for all keywords.
That will never happen.
If you or your SEO person hasmade Google mad, you will find
it very hard to turn that around.
It can be done.
But sometimes we run across awebsite or a town for a website
that is for some reason stuckwhen all the other towns for
(20:27):
that website are doing great,for some reason stuck when all
the other towns for that websiteare doing great, and I just
know, if I do a deep dive I'mgoing to find that there are
some old shenanigans that havebeen done by someone in SEO that
made that website not rank wellfor that specific town.
It made Google mad, and so nowwe certainly are having a hard
time ranking them, and if I lookinto it deep enough, I can
(20:48):
usually at least have a goodidea of what happened.
So just be careful who you hireand be careful of who you trust,
because that's a rough thing toget through.
You might see great resultsreally fast, but hold on to your
hat because it could betemporary.
So there are definitely ways toget somebody to rank really
(21:09):
fast in, but hold on to your hatbecause it could be temporary.
So there are definitely ways toget somebody to rank really
fast in a certain town, but assoon as Google figures out what
that SEO person did, it mightbackfire.
So be careful.
You want long-term good results.
You want every time Google'salgorithm changes, you want to
be able to survive that.
So you definitely want along-term positive result.
(21:32):
Every keyword phrase can't benumber one at the same time, but
so you're going to see ebbs andflows.
I'm number one, I'm number five, I'm number nine, I'm number
two.
You're going to see it go upand down depending on what the
focus is for that website thatmonth, that week, that day.
But having a consistently nicefirst page result is what you're
(21:54):
looking for.
Any questions?
Speaker 2 (21:57):
We're good.
Yeah, we have one question inthere.
Sure, can you give an exampleof the fast results?
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Give you an example of a fast result.
You mean like ranking numberone for home care.
Well, you could.
I mean, I don't have a websitewhere I can show you that really
fast or how that's done.
I've seen SEOs do some kind ofbackhanded things and they can
(22:30):
get their client to rank, butit's temporary.
It looks great for like acouple of weeks or maybe even a
month, but as soon as that SEOwalks away or as soon as Google
catches on, boom, it crashes andit's back to, you know, page
four.
So just be careful who you hire.
Be careful you hire, that's allI mean.
You know, if people have beendoing SEO for a really long time
(22:52):
and they have great reviews,then chances are you're in good,
you're in a good place.
If they, if you don't have anyreviews or you can't, you know
you look at their case studiesand they look kind of like oh
yeah, you ranked them in a bunchof small towns and you know, is
it real?
You know, just towns, this is,you know, is it real?
(23:13):
You know, just do your duediligence and you get what you
pay for.
That's another thing you shouldknow.
You get what you pay for.
If somebody is ultra cheap,they're probably not doing
nearly the work or they're there.
It's offshore, which I don't.
I don't care if it's offshore,if it's done correctly, but that
would be maybe not a red flag,but definitely a pink flag
(23:35):
raising up out of the sand there.
So SEO factors that matter,content, content quality.
So it can't be, you know, 100percent AI written and just yuck
.
It can't be unique, whoeverwrites the content.
If they use AI which, let'sface it, that's going to happen
If they use AI, that's fine, butit has to be edited down for a
(23:59):
real human being to read andunderstand and be able to scan
with their eyes and be able towalk through their eyes and be
able to walk through.
If you write with AI and youdon't read it and you just post
it and you don't take the timeto understand what it's saying,
eventually you're going to finderrors in there because AI makes
things up.
(24:20):
So I can see that as we look foryou know, one time I asked AI
give me five quotes fromprofessionals about dementia
research and it did.
It gave me five great quotesand two of them were completely
made up.
They sounded great, like Iwanted that to be my quote, but
(24:42):
they were totally.
The person was like Dr JohnSmith.
So I Googled it and it totallydidn't exist.
It will make things up to makeyou happy.
So you can't rely on AI foreverything it's you know, edit
it, read it, make sure you knowwhat's right.
So content quality is important.
Keywords I'm going to talkabout that.
Backlinks, yes.
(25:02):
User experience that goes backto the speed and how it looks on
mobile.
The user experience needs to beclean, easy to read, not moving
parts all over the place.
The other thing about userexperience and I hope nobody
does this in 2024.
If your website plays a videoor music as soon as you hit the
(25:25):
page, I'm out, and so are allthe other Gen Xers Nobody wants
to hear that.
Don't have it play music.
Don't have your website playany music or video, oh God.
Or, if it plays a video, makesure the volume is automatically
turned off.
So I don't care if their mouthis moving, but that would scare
me to death if I had headphoneson and all of a sudden
(25:47):
something's you know loud andplaying.
Don't do that.
So user experience is important.
Mobile friendliness, engagementand location All of those
things are very important.
So we use all these things I'mtelling you about to help Google
understand this stuff.
All right, are we still good onquestions?
Okay, so I'm going to talk toyou about two different kinds of
(26:09):
SEO.
Now, everybody's going todefine this differently.
Every company that you look atis going to have a different
package plan, so I'm just goingto tell you ours just so you
kind of have an idea of whathappens.
When we build a website, weautomatically do a bunch of
stuff and we automatically do abasic one-time SEO of all the
(26:30):
pages and all the behind thescenes stuff.
So we automatically write longform content.
We automatically add all thetitle tags and meta descriptions
.
They're all search engineoptimized correctly.
We automatically use keywordsthroughout.
We automatically add schema toservice pages and location pages
.
We automatically test for speedand make sure it's an A, our
(26:50):
images are properly labeled,every page has H1 titles and a
few other basics.
That is a normal process for usinside of a website build and
it should be for everyone.
But I will tell you right nowthat we get called to fix
people's websites that we didnot build.
So a lot of web developers arenot SEO people and so they'll
(27:13):
build you a website but the nameof your homepage is test-home
or homepage-2 instead ofHomeCare in West Winnemucca,
nevada, by ABC HomeCare.
So they don't SEO anything.
They just build you a prettywebsite but it never ranks
because it's not been taken careof on the back end and Google
(27:38):
doesn't know what this istalking about.
It's just homepage dash two.
So a basic setup for usincludes all the basic SEO that
you need to be in good shape.
And then we have an enhanced SEOprogram, which is ongoing work,
which I believe is importantfor everybody, and most of our
(27:59):
clients purchase this.
So enhanced SEO means we'redoing all the basic stuff, but
we're adding location pagesevery month and more long form
stuff and backlinks from localpublications online and more
schema code for each locationpage.
We add video, audio and we havea bunch of offsite strategies
that we use.
Your Google business profile isoptimized and ongoing posts go
(28:23):
into that.
You get monthly reporting.
So we're on top of it, we'relooking at it, we're working
with you.
You may change.
You know the pounds that you'rereally interested in ranking
for.
So to me, enhanced SEO ongoingis important strategy to keep in
mind, but just make sure thatif you have a website built,
that it is at least at the veryat the very least, some basic
(28:46):
stuff needs to be done.
All right, okay, let's talkkeywords.
Everybody wants to know whatthe best keyword phrases are, so
I'm going to start by tellingyou what the keyword phrases are
not, and this is going tosurprise some of you.
My number one no for a keywordphrase which you're going to.
Some people are going todisagree with this, but I'm
(29:06):
telling.
I'll tell you why.
Home health aid this is a hugeno and the reason it's a no.
I know you have home healthaids, I know you provide home
health aids, but this is a jobseeker search.
This is a job seeker search100% of the time.
Now there will be a handful ofpeople who will type in home
(29:27):
health aid because they want ahome health aid, but that is not
usually the case, so it's a jobseeker search.
Hha, cna, home care jobs,careers, home care careers,
caregiver jobs.
Even the word caregiver is nota keyword that I would optimize
a website for, a home carewebsite.
Because, again, it's a jobseeker search.
(29:50):
Because it's again it's a jobseeker search, not every.
There are thousands ofinstances of the word caregiver,
in-home caregiver, caregiverfor seniors.
There's all kinds of variationson that theme, but caregiver by
itself is not something that Iwould ever optimize a website
for and I can tell you that I'vecome across websites that that
(30:16):
that we have analyzed for aclient and somebody built it and
who wasn't in the home carebusiness at all, who had never
understood, didn't understandhome care usually some offshore
thing and they just looked upthe top keyword phrases or just
went with whatever the clientthought might be a top keyword
(30:37):
phrase and the whole website wasSEO for phrases like home care
jobs.
Because if you really want toknow, home care jobs or home
health care or home care careersis one of the top searches.
But that does not mean that youwant your website to be SEO'd
all over the place for thatkeyword phrase.
But somebody who doesn'tunderstand the home care
(30:59):
business might think that's agreat thing, right?
So they're going to go in andSEO your whole website for home
care jobs.
Now I haven't seen that lately,but in the past I've seen it
quite a bit.
Seen that lately, but in thepast I've seen it quite a bit.
Wrong keyword phrases all overthe place, because the person
that built the website doesn'tunderstand home care.
A companionship is debatable,but I'm not looking for
(31:22):
companionship that will denotedating and dating sites and
things like that.
I would say in-homecompanionship might be a good
variation on that, but not justcompanionship by itself.
You want to make sure that thekeyword phrases you're using
have the word home in them Homehealth care, home care,
(31:42):
non-medical home care.
I'm going to show you the listin just a second Housekeeping,
laundry, transportation anderrands.
No, these are not things thatpeople are typing in.
They do not understand what allof this means in terms of home
care.
So if they're looking forhousekeeping for a senior, they
really are looking for some kindof housekeeping service.
(32:04):
They're looking for laundryservices.
They're looking for laundryservices, not home care.
So these are ones by themselvesto kind of stay away from.
Does that make sense?
Do you have any questions?
Speaker 2 (32:15):
We have a question, all righty.
So what do we do if we wantboth clients and caregivers?
How to SEO for both?
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Oh yeah, absolutely.
You have one page that youabsolutely want to SEO the heck
out of, for you know your jobseekers, you want your job
seekers, I totally get that too.
So you have one page, or maybetwo or three depends on what
you're hiring or who you'rehiring, what licenses they hold.
So you might have a careerspage that is SEO for home care
(32:47):
jobs, and then you might, ifyou're hiring RNs, you might
have one that is home homehealth nurse jobs or home health
jobs for RNs, or you knowwhatever you can.
You'd have to do a littleresearch on it.
But you can have a whole careersection of your website.
That's great.
But I've seen entire websitesthat have the word home care
(33:09):
jobs all the way through on theback end, and that's not what
you want.
So, yes, designate a page ortwo to your careers, that is an
excellent idea, but it's neverthe whole website.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Great, and there's another.
Another question there too.
Besides analyzing competitorswebsites and using Google Trends
, what other tools do yousuggest for finding keywords?
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Well, we like to use SEMrush.
I think there's a free version.
There's another one calledAhrefs, but SEMrush is
S-E-M-R-U-S-H.
That's my favorite.
Everybody's got differentopinions.
There are some other ones thatare read.
That might be better that youcan, you know, look at or just
(33:59):
you know, keyword research kindof stuff.
But SEMrush typically is what Iwould use to analyze what's
going on.
Okay, so here are some yeskeywords and this is a big, big
list.
So we're going to start at thetop and this has changed over
the years.
I've I've watched this for solong now that I I I was shocked
(34:20):
at how much this has changed.
So it's tricky.
But these are yes words.
Anything with a yellow arrow isa no word because you are not
car and home insurance.
But if I did a keyword researchand I said what are the top
keyword phrases and that's whatI did today for this screenshot
(34:41):
what are the top keyword phrasesfor home care?
This is the list it wouldreturn.
Now I want you to know that homehealth care is up at the top
and you can see that.
It says the volume is 27,100,same as home health care near me
.
They're both neck and neckright.
There are 70,000 iterations ofthe word home health care Not
(35:03):
kidding.
So in a million, over a millionsearches a month.
Now this is nationwide in theUnited States.
This is not in West Winnemucca,nevada, or your town.
Your town might have 20searches for home health care
every month, or 200 searches,but nationwide 27,000.
(35:23):
So when you look at yournumbers compared to these,
they're going to besignificantly smaller.
But if you want to know on alarge scale what's going on,
this is it.
So home care comes in numberthree.
Now you all know and I know,that there's a challenge there
If I'm a home care agency, insome states and in some areas of
the country I can say a lotabout home health care.
(35:44):
I can use that wordinterchangeably and it doesn't
hurt me.
The state's not going to comeafter me.
But in a lot of states wherehome care is highly regulated
and you know who you are, youcannot say the word home health
care if you're a non-medicalhome care agency.
So you have to be reallycareful about how you choose
your words.
Just because home health careis number one might be a super
(36:07):
bad idea for you, right?
And it's also a bad idea foryour competitors.
So nobody's using that becausethey're in the non-medical world
in your area.
In some areas, you definitelywant that to be part of your
routine because it doesn'tmatter.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Or maybe you are a home health care agency so great
.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
So use that word as much as you want, but we have to
be careful between medical andnon-medical home care.
Somebody that doesn'tunderstand home care the way we
do will never know that.
They will never understand theconundrum of every single
state's licensing requirements,or no requirements at all, like
here in Missouri.
And we're the wild west and youcan be whatever you want, so
(36:50):
you can see these keywords.
So it used to be.
I want you to know.
Let's go way down here toHomestead Senior Care.
Homestead Senior Care.
It says that there are 9,000searches a month, 9,900.
Now I'm telling you that.
I know that used to be 30,000,and homestead senior care was
(37:12):
the number one or number twokeyword phrase in the United
States for some period of time.
Now Google algorithms havechanged and so it might not be
if these numbers might be morecorrect today than they were
back then, but it used to behomestead senior care.
And then let's see, go all theway down to the bottom.
(37:32):
One, two, three, four.
From the bottom you see, homeCare Assistance.
Home Care Assistance was numbertwo after Home Instead Senior
Care.
Now Home Care Assistance haschanged their name to the key,
and so Home Care Assistance isstill well searched, but it's
not nearly as searched as itused to be.
(37:52):
So it's down to six thousandsix hundred per month.
Anyway, just interesting thosetwo brands had had they had it
nailed, so they did really wellin a home care search.
So you can see, for Biota isdefinitely up there.
And then car and home insurancewhat is that?
I don't know why that's inthere.
(38:13):
And then you have Synergy morecar insurance, home and stay car
insurance.
First Light Preferred Home Care, car and home insurance.
First Light home and carinsurance, I don't know.
Access Home Care, and then BestCar and Home Insurance Company.
So those yellow ones are onesyou obviously would not use.
But you can just kind of get afeel for what the most keyword
(38:35):
search keyword phrases are.
And what it doesn't tell you ishow many different versions of
that keyword are searched, whichis in another whole nother
place in SEMrush, and that's70,000.
And it's probably the same forhome care, maybe more for home
care by itself.
So these are some of thekeyword phrases you'd want to
(38:56):
think about.
Now.
A lot of you also offer veryspecific services and you want
to be search engine optimizedfor those services Parkinson's
in home care.
Alzheimer's in home care,dementia, home care, memory care
at home.
Alzheimer's in home care,dementia, home care, memory care
at home those are keywordphrases that you definitely want
to have in your suite ofservices and on in service pages
(39:17):
listed for.
Because, even though they're notlisted here, if someone has
Alzheimer's disease or has afamily member with Alzheimer's
disease or dementia, they'regoing to start searching stuff
like how do you care for aperson withzheimer's at home?
Can you care for a person withalzheimer's at home?
And if you were to look at someof the content that we've
(39:37):
written over time in ourfrequently asked questions,
that's almost always some formof that question is almost
always there because people typethat in all the time it's a
long tail keyword phrases, butyou don't want to miss that
client, that potential client,because you didn't have that set
of words on your website.
So some generic services andsome very specific to disease
(40:00):
processes are really Valerie, wehave a question.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
What if your home care company has all three
levels of care hospice, homehealth and private duty?
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Very nice.
So I would make sure that youhad a section of your website
devoted to private duty and asection divided for home health
care and a section for hospice,so you can do this all in one
website.
You just have to be veryspecific about your pages.
So, under non-medical home careor home care however you want
to label it you would make sureyou have your companion care,
(40:33):
personal care services, you know, whatever it is that you would
like to list under non-medical,and then under the home you know
big home health care page, thenyou would have underneath that
all of your you know.
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