People get into the home care field because they have a passion for helping others, and with such aspirations, it is counter-intuitive to think that someone you hire to help your business would do something that could hurt it. However, as much as we’d love to believe that everyone who claims to be a professional in his or her field is dedicated to ethical, skillful work, there are plenty of folks who take advantage instead.
For example, search engine optimization (SEO) is a service that every business, large or small, needs in today’s digital marketplace. This service is as complex as it is vital, which means, to do it right, you need the help of an expert. But hiring a home care SEO expert is not as easy as you might think. To ensure the security of your website, you need to carefully choose an SEO provider who knows how to do the work right and who can cater to your specific business needs when marketing to seniors online.
But, how do you know if the home care SEO provider you’ve hired is helping or hurting your home care agency’s website? Here are a few tips from corecubed’s home care SEO experts to help you determine:
Helping: Your SEO provider monitors and corrects website errors regularly.
Hurting:Your SEO provider corrected site errors when he first started working with you and says there are none now.
Fixing website errors is not a one and done effort. The rapidly changing nature of the Internet leaves all websites prone to regular site errors, such as broken links, duplicate content, and missing meta data, to name a few. A helpful SEO expert will regularly fix website errors to ensure your site runs smoothly.
Helping: Your SEO provider has extensively researched what keywords are being used when searching for in-home care services in your market and uses those keywords in your site and meta data in a balanced and organic way.
Hurting: Your SEO provider uses an unnatural amount of the same keywords on every page of your site and in all of your meta data to make sure you don’t miss any possible searches.
Using keywords in your content and meta data is an important part of your SEO strategy, but it is only one small piece of the puzzle. Often, unethical SEO practitioners try to stuff keywords into page content and meta data to increase the chance that the pages will be found in a Google search. However, Google continues to crack down on sites that overuse or “stuff” keywords, and this practice could lead to your site dropping in the search results. Instead, Google prefers that your content be well written, useful and relevant to your audience, and any SEO provider worth their salt will be aware of that.
Helping: Your SEO provider researches, vets, and works hard to acquire high quality backlinks for your site each month.
Hurting: Your SEO provider uses manipulative linking tactics to get backlinks or only seeks low quality backlinks.
External inbound backlinks are one of the most important parts of any SEO effort. Without good links pointing to your website, it’s hard to rank higher than your competitors. Your SEO provider should have a process in place for earning high quality backlinks for your site. Some home care SEO providers, however, use manipulative linking strategies such asusing “link farms” or “link rings” where fake or low-value websites are built purely as link sources to artificially inflate popularity. Low quality backlinks can damage your reputation with Google and compromise your visibility in searches, so it is important to work with an SEO provider who focuses on quality link earning!
These are just a few tips to help you determine if your SEO expert is the real deal. To learn more, check out our webcast on this very topic!
Do the terms “website errors,” “keywords,” and “backlinks” leave your head spinning? You’re not alone! SEO is a complex, highly-specific, and ongoing process, and most businesses need an SEO expert to ensure that they’re doing everything possible to rank well. If you need an SEO provider that not only knows SEO, but understands the home care industry as well, the corecubed home care SEO team has your back! If you need help with marketing senior living services, contact us today to learn more about our home care marketing and SEO services!