Optimizing your Web presence through Google

The more active your senior living community is on Google, the more you’ll reap the benefits of search engine optimization (SEO), according to Stacy Case, a training specialist at G5, which specializes in search marketing.

Case led a Long-Term Living webinar Thursday on how senior living communities can boost their presence in Google searches—and therefore attract more leads—by leveraging two powerful offerings from the search engine giant: Google Place pages and Google+.

As Case noted during the presentation, more than 70 million online searches are specific to senior living and care, and therein exists a “tremendous opportunity” for providers to attract new occupants by optimizing their search engine footprint. Specifically, Google Place pages, which you’ve most likely seen when doing a search in Google Maps, aggregate data and reviews on businesses. They’re essentially a quick overview of your community, and they must be “claimed” to maintain and monitor activity.

Unclaimed pages open providers up to inaccurate information and critical opinions, so if you haven’t done so already, claim your community’s page today. (Instructions for claiming your business’s page can be found here after logging in with a Google account.)

Because Google Place pages feature competitive ads in the right hand sidebar, Case stressed the importance of keeping your community’s page stocked with engaging, positive content—such as photos, videos and a complete description of all your services—to distract viewers from the competition.

Adding a comprehensive list of contact information is also important. “The more opportunities you provide for people to contact you, the more likely they are to do just that,” Case said.

The second feature of Case’s instruction was Google’s relatively new social media website, Google+, and the business pages that can be built on the platform.

Much like Facebook pages, Google+ is another opportunity to extend your senior living brand online with the potential of improving search engine performance. To compare a “good” page to a “poor” page, Case contrasted the heavily populated Pepsi Google+ page to the drab and inactive Diet Coke page. As expected, the Pepsi page has far more Google+ users who have added the page to their circles.

Case noted that there are more than 100 million Google+ users, a number projected to grow to 400+ million by the end of 2012, and the number of people following a Google+ business page has increased 1400% since December.

To learn more about the benefits of Google Place pages and Google+, register for the archived webinar here.

Kevin Kolus

Kevin Kolus wrote for I Advance Senior Care / Long-Term Living when he was an editor. He left the brand in 2012. He is now senior communications manager at Cleveland Clinic.