Do Assisted Living Facilities Need A Blog?

As an assisted living facility, you are tasked with the health and comfort of those among society’s most vulnerable. Being tasked with such an important responsibility, it’s only natural that people will be incredibly wary about who they entrust with their elderly family and friends. Your priority, resultantly, is to come across as a trustworthy and reliable business. You want to emphasize the compassion and expertise of your staff, as well as the affordability of your service. Doing this through traditional advertising, such as television or newspaper ads, is a tried and true method, but in this article, we’ll be discussing another, often underutilized way of enhancing your perceived credibility: blogging. 

It might sound strange, but creating and contributing to a blog is a great way to appear more credible and trustworthy to potential customers. It also comes with a myriad of other benefits, such as improved visibility, increased traffic, and enhanced social media marketing.

blog assisted living

Blogging as a Business

When you’re told you should be blogging for your business, what does that mean? Blogging is simply when you create a special page on your website that features blog entries. These blogs are usually written by yourself or some other staff member, but there are companies that use consulting firms, like SEO Design Chicago, to do it for them. Blogging is done as an alternative way to conduct digital marketing and interact with customers.

As for what the blog should be about, well, it can be anything that’s even remotely related to you! You can write about the industry you’re in, give advice on how to utilize your service or product, and even do product reviews. Most commonly, however, blog entries are written as an answer to some questions. This can be a general question, serving as an introduction to your industry, or a specific one. Both types of questions have their unique benefits, but we’ll get more into that later.

Making a Website

Before we can delve into the strategies and benefits of business blogging, it’s imperative that you get a website. Lots of small businesses either want or have one already, and it’s near impossible to host an effective blog without your own. When people are so careful with their research on assisted living facilities, not having a website is a veritable death sentence.

blogging for assisted living facilities

Why Should Assisted Living Facilities Blog?

So, why should you care about blogging? The first answer, naturally, is that it gets you more customers. It does this in a myriad of ways, many of which are described below. Additionally, it works wonders for improving your image online. Blogs tend to be more personable and targeted than traditional advertisements, which can help draw people in. In fact, blogs have demonstrated themselves to be a highly cost-effective method of generating new leads. Here are some reasons you need to start blogging for your business.

Visibility

The first, and perhaps most important, reason to blog is that it improves your online visibility. Every time you create a new blog entry, you gain a new page that people can find online. For people who are actively searching for you, this makes it much easier to find you. An even bigger benefit, however, is that it makes it much easier for people to stumble upon you by accident. Many people’s business inquiries start with topical questions and search terms, not with specific businesses. The more relevant pages you have, the more likely someone is to notice you and visit your website. This is what turns blogging into a marketing tactic of its own.

Helps with SEO

Connected to online visibility generally, blogging is a great way to improve the search engine optimization (SEO) on your website. SEO is a deceptively intimidating name for what is really a simple concept. It is a term that describes efforts undertaken to make your website more visible to search engines like Google. On a basic level, SEO strategies try to ensure that your website appears on the search results page when people search for topics related to your area of business. The end goal, however, is to put your website at the very top of the organic search results. Lots of people only click on the first few links they are shown by Google, making SEO an incredibly cost-effective means to getting new customers.

assisted living seo

Approachability

Another draw of blogs is that they are far more intimate than traditional advertisements could ever be. It is much easier to convey passion and voice when you aren’t cramming all the words into a small newspaper slot or 30-second radio ad. Although your blogs generally shouldn’t exceed 3000 words, that still leaves more than enough space to say whatever you please. You can tell a story, analyze a product, or investigate a topic easily and with room to spare.

As mentioned earlier, however, most blog entries are made in response to a question, and their entire purpose is to answer that question. Making a post that answers a general question, such as how you carry out a particular service, is a good place to start with your assisted living facility blog. These kinds of questions are popular, and making a related post is great for the aforementioned SEO considerations. These kinds of posts, often called “evergreen” posts, also tend to compound in value over time. This is because, since people are always asking this question, people are bound to stumble onto your blog eventually.

Answering more specific questions, however, shouldn’t be discounted. Few things feel more gratifying than when you have a narrow concern that is cleanly answered somewhere online. Such posts demonstrate a measure of depth and expertise on your part, which is all the better for getting new customers. If you want, you can even use your blog to answer questions posed by people who contact you. Doing so is a great way to interact with your customers by making them feel heard. People who see this practice from you will also feel encouraged that you take the time to publicly share your answers to the concerns of others.

SEO and Blogs

To understand how SEO works, you first need to understand how a website is constructed. Everything on the website itself—the text, the formatting, the number of links, etc.— is a part of the website’s metadata. Search engines like Google use this metadata to determine how relevant a given website is to the entered search terms. The more relevant you are, the higher you appear on the page.

Making your website more relevant to the topics related to your business, then, become your top priority. Doing this requires some knowledge about what Google looks for, which we can summarize here. Generally, your first step is identifying your keywords. Keywords are words that people might use to search for your business, some examples of which being:

  • Assisted living near me (or near a location, such as Dallas)
  • Nursing homes
  • Residential care centers
  • Senior living communities
  • Independent living facilities
  • Senior assisted living

These should give you an idea, but be sure to use keywords that specifically reflect the services you offer. Once you have your desired keywords, you need to pepper them throughout your website, using them freely and often. This means, as you might’ve guessed, in your blog entries as well. Consistent keyword usage in your blogs can help tremendously with your SEO, as it increases the number of avenues that customers can use to reach your business.

assisted living facility blog

Importance of Links 

Another SEO consideration, when it comes to blogs, is that you should be using lots of links. Links are one way that Google, and online visitors, will gauge your credibility. A high, although not excessive, number of links in your blog will help push it to the top of the search results. Additionally, the more blog entries you have, the more often you can connect them to each other via links. Before they know it, the visitor will have immersed themselves into your content, which is fantastic for turning them into a lead.

SEO Design Chicago Can Help Assisted Living Facilities

If any of the above information was confusing, don’t worry, SEO Design Chicago can help. We specialize in all matters relating to digital marketing, up to and including blog writing for assisted living facilities. If you want to leave your blog entries in the hands of professionals, you’ve come to the right place. We use all aspects of digital marketing when we write for you, so you can be sure you’re getting the best possible content to use on your website.

FAQ:

  • What is a blog?
  • Why do I need a website?
  • What are the benefits of an assisted living facility blog?
  • How do I know what to write about on my blog?
  • What are good keywords to use on an assisted living facility blog?

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