Home Care Websites

Oct 16

Home Care Websites That Generate Home Care Leads

Valerie VanBooven (00:00:00):

All right. So it is the top of the hour and we’re going to go ahead and get started. Thank you for attending. Like I said, I will send out the replay. No. Sorry. Yeah, all kinds of problems here. All right.

Valerie VanBooven (00:00:23):

For agenda today, we are going to talk about websites and how to make them lead generating websites, and how a lot of times your web developers are telling you everything, sometimes because they don’t know and sometimes because they’re not in your industry. We’re going to discuss all of that.

Valerie VanBooven (00:00:41):

So in my invitation to you, I have this agenda, which we are going to follow. If I could get a raise of hands in your little control panel, there’s a spot where you can raise your hand, if you could raise your hand, just let me know that I can hear you. That’s what I’m really looking for. Yay. Also, can you see my screen? If you can see my screen, that would be great. All right. We’re all hands. All right. It looks like you can see my screen and hear me, which is I have to bet on here, right? All right.

Valerie VanBooven (00:01:21):

Why your web design matters on mobile and on desktop? How to identify and track every lead that comes in from your website? How to follow up with leads automatically, taking the stress off of you and avoiding followup failure? How to reengage with old leads automatically? What it takes to get to page one on Google in your local area? Why your Google My Business listing and your website should be best friends? We’re going to talk about all those things and how we make that happen for our clients.

Valerie VanBooven (00:01:51):

Our focus and commitment at Approved Senior Network, formerly LTC Expert Publications … I don’t know how long I need to say that but some people have noticed for a very long time. My name is Valerie VanBooven. My business partner is George Novoson. He’s also on the call today. We’ve been doing this for a really long time. I think we’re really old now, 14 years. It’s 13 plus years now, I guess.

Valerie VanBooven (00:02:17):

So our focus and commitment is comprehensive online marketing. That’s what we’ve been doing all this time, all inclusive suite of inbound marketing strategies for senior care businesses. We do not deal with roofers, lawyers, plumbers, painters, lawnmowers, just you, just you guys. Organize, lead, and recruit acquisition. We have an easy-to-use ASNSPARK! CRM. So it’s a CRM that is for … We don’t want to call it a CRM anymore, but, yes, it’s a CRM. Long story, it’s a sales and marketing automation platform. That’s what the real definition is. It’s designed for senior care businesses. In whatever capacity you want to use it, you can use it.

Valerie VanBooven (00:03:04):

It’s for organizing and communicating with leads, referral sources, and potential employees. We have lots of folks. Next week, we’re having a big four-hour, it’s four nights. You can register for it if you want, learn something new. Recruiting caregivers is what it’s all about. So four nights. It’s just an hour each night, but we divided it up because it’s a lot of content. Senior care market for 13 plus years. Our only market has been home care, home healthcare, senior living, and other senior service businesses. All right. So that’s a little bit about us.

Valerie VanBooven (00:03:43):

Senior market challenges. We recognize your challenges in the senior market. We hear them every day. We work with you, people like you every single day. So we know you want more clients, but we also know you want more staff. What we’re going to talk about today is really about lead acquisition, more clients, but it will also help you be able to recruit better. Better website is better recruiting. I’ve seen it firsthand. So more clients is what we’re going to focus on, but it will also help you with recruiting.

Valerie VanBooven (00:04:13):

We also know your target market extremely well. Seniors and adult children of aging parents, you want to fill your pipeline with new prospective clients in your local area and, of course, you want to also reach out to qualified caregivers with the right credentials in your area and retain them, not just find them, but also keep them around.

Valerie VanBooven (00:04:34):

What are successful senior care businesses doing right? This, for anybody who’s been in the business for a long time already know this. Building referral partners is really important. That has been hard in the last 18 months if you’re new to all this because you haven’t seen anybody. It depends on where you are. In Florida, wide open. California, not so much, but building referral partners is really important. It will always be important. That’s never going to go away.

Valerie VanBooven (00:05:01):

This is a very human, high touch business and it is very much a trusting business or it requires a lot of trust. So we know that building referral partners is really important and that is always going to be the case. What I’m about to show you today will help you with those referral partners, maybe not directly all the time, but it will help.

Valerie VanBooven (00:05:21):

Your online presence needs to be superior to your competition. You can outrank the Comfort Keepers of the world. If you’re with Comfort Keepers, we love you, too, but we all know that Comfort Keepers and Visiting Angels, and all the big franchises are really good at dominating the first page of Google, but what we have fond is that with a little work and a little knowledge, you can outrank them if you want to. It depends on your location. It depends on a lot of things, and we’re going to talk about that today.

Valerie VanBooven (00:05:54):

Community outreach. Yes, you need to always be doing community outreach just like building referral partners, having your name brand out there in your community is imperative.

Valerie VanBooven (00:06:05):

Then recruiting and retaining caregivers. This is what successful home care agencies are doing constantly. Whether they’ve been in business for six months or 16 years, they are always working on these items 24/7. Right now, I would say that your online presence, although it has always been important, it’s more important than it’s ever been.

Valerie VanBooven (00:06:28):

We are in 2021. Sorry, my mouse is touchy. Having an online presence that is mobile-friendly is the most important thing you can do for your business. It is no longer doing mailers. It is no longer hanging stuff on people’s doorknobs. It is no longer the Yellow Pages. It is no longer having thousands and thousands and thousands of print, printed brochures. I’m not saying that doesn’t help in some regards, but stopping spending that kind of money and focusing on where people are, which is, by the way, right here on their screens. This is where folks are.

Valerie VanBooven (00:07:20):

Some of your seniors are not here, but most of them are here. So if you’re 95, you might not quite be here, but my 71-year-old mother is here. My 81-year-old stepfather is here not as much as me, but certainly, they’re on their computers, they’re on their Macs, they’re on their iPhones. They get it. They get it. They’re not technology phobic. They definitely understand.

Valerie VanBooven (00:07:51):

All right. So the role of online marketing. Your professional image is number one. Your website and social media should represent you in a professional way, not cousin Eddie’s 1999 build of your website. That is no longer okay. Even your 2016 website is outdated in 2021. I promise you that’s true. If you were to look at the history of websites for your big franchises, you will see that about three to four years they redo their websites not because they want to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars doing their websites and for a big organization like that it is pretty costly, but because technology changes so fast, and having up-to-date look and feel of your website has really worked.

Valerie VanBooven (00:08:41):

Number two, top level visibility. You need to be found everywhere. Wow! My mouse is crazy. Top level visibility. So you need to be on the first page of Google for some keyword phrases. You need to be on Facebook and have regular content. Your demographic is not looking at Snapchat and they’re not looking necessarily at Instagram, maybe a little bit, but they’re going there to escape, not find information. Instagram is about pictures and images.

Valerie VanBooven (00:09:13):

Your demographic is not on Twitter. Maybe you feel on Twitter like my mom is on Twitter. That’s kind of weird, but I do not even like Twitter. So Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google are where you need to focus. These are your focus places. Even YouTube videos are good because we go on YouTube and YouTube is a great search engine. So those places are good. Otherwise, you’re wasting your time, unless you just enjoy it. I mean, obviously, you may enjoy Instagram a lot personally or Snapchat or one of those other things, but professional, LinkedIn, Facebook, not in this order, and Google. Google is number one.

Valerie VanBooven (00:09:58):

Collaborate with referral partners is number three. Stay top of mind with professionals and families in your local area. You can do that online by using newsletters, email drip campaigns. We’re going to talk about that. You are the expert. Build awareness and trust online. You, your business are the expert and authority on senior care issues. Whether you’ve been in business six months or 16 years, you are the authority now. If you hang out your shingle, you better know your stuff because people are going to ask you a lot of senior care questions.

Valerie VanBooven (00:10:27):

You should have organized and efficient followup. Follow up with leads, referral partners, and recruits in a fast and efficient way. No lead left behind. No followup failure allowed. That’s what we’re going to talk about today.

Valerie VanBooven (00:10:42):

So here is a little illustration, a very simplified illustration of new client acquisition, okay? So mom falls, she has a hip replacement. She goes to rehab. She discharges from rehab. She needs home care. The social work or district’s planner gives her a list of home care agencies in their area. They do set up home healthcare to come in and do physical therapy, maybe take a blood pressure. Maybe they discover something about diabetes, whatever. Those kind of things are taken care of. 45-minute visits and done. She needs nonmedical home care to come in and help her with getting a meal, help her with transportation, help her get laundry done, make the bed, do stuff like that, get maybe a bath or a shower.

Valerie VanBooven (00:11:26):

That’s where you come in. So the daughter is searching on her mobile device, and I’m totally making this up, for home care in Portland, Oregon. She is looking for someone to come in and provide home care services while she’s at work. You guys know the story. Of course, mom is discharging from the hospital right now because there’s never any notice. So she finds your website. It loads fast. It looks great on mobile. It’s easy to find the contact information. She calls you or if it’s after hours, she’s going to fill out a form on your website. It’s so easy to navigate. Bam! She becomes a new client within 24 hours.

Valerie VanBooven (00:12:06):

That is the easy version of how client acquisition should happen. We all know that there are ebbs and flows in between all these little dots of things that happen and don’t happen, can happen and don’t happen, whatever.

Valerie VanBooven (00:12:21):

The most important piece of this whole thing as what we’re going to talk about today is the daughter finds your website. She actually finds it. It loads fast. She can see it with her 40-year-old eyes or 50-year-old eyes like I have. It looks current. It’s easy to contact you. The phone number is right at the top. It’s clickable. She calls you or if she wants to fill out a form, that’s easy, too. She can see all your services. She doesn’t want to navigate probably 40,000 pages of your website. I guarantee you if you ever have used a heat map on your website, the homepage is where it’s at.

Valerie VanBooven (00:13:00):

Now, I’m not saying that you don’t need more than a homepage. You need a lot of content. However, most of the clients aren’t going to spend hours reviewing this because they don’t have that kind of time. Mom is discharging in the next 15 hours and she needs a place, she needs somebody to come in and help her out. So if these things don’t happen, if she can’t find your website, if it doesn’t loads fast, let me tell you. If your website loads in 11 seconds on her phone, she’s moving on. It needs to load in one second or less.

Valerie VanBooven (00:13:31):

If it doesn’t look current, if it looks old, it’s not responsive, if she can’t find your contact information, if it looks like nobody really cares about it, she’s going to assume nobody really cares about it. That’s not the image you want to. That’s not the first impression you want her to have, right? So she’s going to move on if all these things aren’t there. So let’s talk about how to get it.

Valerie VanBooven (00:13:54):

Websites that generate leads and increase revenue. It is a formula. That’s why I have my little beakers there. This is a formula and a dance that we do with Google to help you get to page one, to help you look beautiful, and to help people know that you can solve their problems.

Valerie VanBooven (00:14:11):

So on this slide, what you’re going to see is a lot of stuff. We’re just going to talk basically about your website today, but I want you to know that there are a lot of different things that we do and take care of, and there are a lot of things that go into a very robust marketing program online. It’s not just your website, but today, that is our focus is your website.

Valerie VanBooven (00:14:37):

Content is very important. Sometimes paid advertising is important. Recruiting is very important for everybody right now. Your Google My Business listing is important, and staying organized is important, and we do all of these things. Today, we’re going to talk about where it all begins. This is the hub. This is everything, where everything should begin. All of your marketing should start and be acknowledged by your website. If you’re not hosting on your website, you’re missing the boat. We’re going to talk about it.

Valerie VanBooven (00:15:10):

Also, I want to tell you that if you have questions, you are more than welcome to. What I’d like you to do, because I’m going to take questions at the end, there’s a little Q&A panel in your, I don’t know, little control panel thing that you have for this webinar. If you could just go ahead and type your questions and answers in. If you feel like you have a question, type it in. I’m not going to answer them till the end, but I’m going to go in the order received. So go ahead and type in your questions if you have any, and I will answer all the questions I can possibly answer.

Valerie VanBooven (00:15:44):

All right. So we’re going to talk about websites that close the client, clear calls to action, say that five times fast, clear call to action, professional image, lead capture, and mobile responsive.

Valerie VanBooven (00:15:57):

You can see on this big image, hopefully, that every single place that this shows up. So this is a big desktop. This is typical, more common laptop. This is your iPad, and this is your cellphone. The thing that you should notice on every single one of these, I’m just going to quit touching my mouse, is that a phone number is that little purple square. If it’s little for you, you probably can’t see it very well, but that little purple rectangle is the phone number, and it’s clickable. It’s on every device, and it’s right at the top. There’s no way to miss it. It’s right there. That is the most important thing you could possibly do.

Valerie VanBooven (00:16:46):

Number one, your phone number top of the website on every device, clickable right now. Nobody wants to search for your contact desk information. Nobody wants to guess at how to call you. Just put it at the top because that will definitely get you more leads and phone calls. So that’s number one. All right.

Valerie VanBooven (00:17:11):

Your website is your number one representation. Here are the things that in 2021 your website is. It is your first impression. It’s the first impression that a new prospective client is going to have of you. If your website looks outdated, it’s slow to load, its functionality isn’t great, it’s missing images … We’ve had some who come to us lately that have flash from a long time ago. Flash doesn’t even work anymore. The first impression is so important.

Valerie VanBooven (00:17:44):

It’s their first introduction to you. Before they even pick up the phone, chances are they looked at your website, at least the homepage. The first decision that they make about home care is going to be related to what they’re looking at on your website. The first phone call they make is going to be related to what they find in your website, and you, your website is their first hope for solution. So if you look at the websites on the right-hand side, you’ll see a statement. You’ll see a phone number at the top of every single one of these versions of these websites and you’ll see a little paragraph of introduction that talks about what they do.

Valerie VanBooven (00:18:27):

We find that these items, these things on websites are what make the biggest difference in whether someone goes ahead and calls you or doesn’t call you. So this is the model that I would follow. It doesn’t have to look exactly like this, but this is your first impression. Okay.

Valerie VanBooven (00:18:50):

In 2021, your website must be fast loading on mobile. Google said back in 2018 mobile-only folks, meaning they do care about desktop, but not really. I mean, the focus is mobile. Everything mobile, mobile, mobile. Websites need to load really fast, one second, less than a second, 1.4 seconds on mobile. If they don’t, Google has said that if they don’t meet certain criteria, it’s not just how fast they load, it’s a lot of other things that go into it, but loading fast is important.

Valerie VanBooven (00:19:27):

What Google has told us all for years now is that, “If your website is slow, if it doesn’t load right, if it’s missing stuff, we’re just not going to show your website on the first page of Google.” It’s just not going to be there because Google wants their users to have a good user experience. So if your website isn’t a good user experience, they’re just not going to be willing to show it. I mean, it’s just part of the algorithm, “Show us your best stuff. Give us something good. Show that searcher what they want.”

Valerie VanBooven (00:20:00):

It needs to be easy on older eyes. So anytime you look at one of our mobile versions of our websites, you’ll see the phone numbers are big, the words are big, and it’s not because we think everybody can’t read. It’s because folks like me need readers, I don’t want to have to challenge myself to read the words on my mobile phone. I want it to be in my face and big so I can make a decision fast.

Valerie VanBooven (00:20:25):

Other thing that you’ll see on the right-hand side of this websites, all of them, there’s a little blue wheelchair guy in the middle of the picture, the main hero image there. It’s always a blue wheelchair or it might be a different color on your website. That is ADA compliance. What that means is if you click on that little wheelchair, you can make the content bigger, you can skip the images, you can make the contrast different. People who have vision issues or low vision or are colorblind might want to see a different contrast. So that is built in to all of our websites, and it should be on yours.

Valerie VanBooven (00:21:04):

In 2021, your website needs to be on the first page of Google in your local area for some keyword phrases. You don’t have to hit every single keyword phrase known to man on the first page of Google, but you need to be there for some of the ones that really matter. Your website should be comforting and hopeful, and it should provide solutions instantly. So you’ll notice that the top sentence, the top paragraph on our websites is about providing solutions for families on every website.

Valerie VanBooven (00:21:39):

What your web developer isn’t telling? Now, the two websites on the right are bad websites. They’re bad. The reason they’re bad is, for instance, okay. Let me just say it this way. You can be really smart and have a really bad website. So if you look at the one at the top, that’s Yale School of Art. These are not dumb people. These are not lazy people, but their website is terrible. I don’t know why they let that happen, but it is bad. Then the one down below it, I didn’t write these myself, someone else did, is Turner Construction. It’s just too much. No one knows exactly what they do. They deliver their work safely, but we don’t know what work that is. So there’s a whole lot of challenges with that website, and it’s just strange.

Valerie VanBooven (00:22:35):

I know it doesn’t look that bad, but if you are looking for a construction company, you would be like, “What? Where do I go here? Contact information, please.”

Valerie VanBooven (00:22:48):

All right. What your web developer isn’t telling you? These bloated themes and plugins that make your site slow. I know this for a fact. We’ve been developing websites for 13 years-ish and I know how easy it is to use a really pretty theme because you’re not really good at coding, and because you’re not really good at coding, someone else codes a theme for you, you use that same theme over and over again, and use plugins to help you with coding because you’re not a coder. So that makes your website slow. I know this happens every single day and people don’t realize it. Their websites are beautiful, but they’re so bloated on the backend that there’s no fixing them without redoing the entire website.

Valerie VanBooven (00:23:28):

Most web developers are not good at SEO. On our team, we have a great web developer, too, who are 30-year veterans of web development. These are smart cookies. They know exactly what they’re doing, but if you ask them to write a search engine optimized webpage, they will just look at you with a blank stare like, “I can try.” They’re not going to say no.

Valerie VanBooven (00:23:55):

So we have other folks on our team that are excellent at SEO and write all the content because most web developers are taught coding, they’re taught beautiful, they’re taught pretty, they’re taught functionality. They are not taught search engine optimization, and that’s what Google needs to see.

Valerie VanBooven (00:24:16):

They do not know the senior care market. If you go with a web developer that also does websites for lawyers, and roofers, and painters, and landscapers, they don’t know your market. They’re never going to know how to search engine optimize your website correctly even if they tell you they can because they’ve done one home care website in the past. That is not worthy of being a professional at SEO for the senior care market.

Valerie VanBooven (00:24:48):

So there’s just a lot of caveats in this market. There’s a lot of nuances and things that are important. If you ask a web develop who doesn’t know your market, if you ask them to search engine optimize your website, they’re going to go do a keyword research or keyword search, keyword research, and they’re going to tell you that the most searched keyword phrase is either home care jobs or home health aids. That is not an untrue statement. That is a true statement. I know that everybody is looking for employees right now, but that is not what you want to search engine optimize your entire website for. That’s not it. That’s not it, but that’s what a keyword search will tell them. So if they don’t know your market, they’re going to lead you down the wrong path.

Valerie VanBooven (00:25:36):

They will never get you to page one of the Google search. Never is a strong word. They might, but you would have to be in … So if you’re in Los Angeles, California, I can frankly say never, but if you’re in West Winnemucca, Nevada, middle of nowhere, basically, yeah, absolutely. They’ll get you the first page if there’s no competition there.

Valerie VanBooven (00:25:58):

Terrible about ongoing maintenance. Oh, my! So we often get asked to log in to the backend to people’s websites and see what’s wrong or just give them an assessment of what’s going on. In WordPress, which is what we use, there are lots of plugins. Plugins help up with things. We try to use very few plugins in our world here at Approved Senior Network. However, those need to be updated on a regular basis. I see 12, 14, 16 plugins are outdated.

Valerie VanBooven (00:26:32):

What happens is your website will get hacked and things will stop working eventually. So you have to have really good ongoing maintenance. Malware checks are important. If you’ve ever opened up your website and seen a big skull in crossbones like this on your website, it’s been hacked. None of our clients have seen that. So we put in lots of security so that websites don’t get hacked. You’re not getting thousands and thousands of hits from other countries that don’t make sense. People aren’t putting stuff on the back of your website. I mean, it’s all very well taken care of.

Valerie VanBooven (00:27:10):

Plugins are updated every single week. So folks that also do this sometimes it’s like their side gig. They’re trying to build a business, but right now it’s a side gig. They get bored with maintenance. It’s painful when you have 200 websites to maintain. We know, but we do it, and we have everything. We have a workflow that makes sure this is done. Oh, my goodness! All right.

Valerie VanBooven (00:27:40):

They’ll sell you fancy moving graphics that do not make more sales and do not help with site speed. You don’t need anything fancy on your website. You just need it to be up-to-date in 2021. You don’t need fine things and things going like this. No. No automatic videos playing. People wear earbuds a lot and do you know that … Oh, my goodness! When you have earphones on or earbuds, have you ever clicked on a website and a video starts playing and it’s so loud and it scares you to death? So never, never, never have a video auto play on your homepage of your website or in any page for that matter. Let them choose if they wanted to auto play. No fancy graphics. It’s not easy on old eyes.

Valerie VanBooven (00:28:32):

They might try to sell you Squarespace, Wix, Weebly or other do-it-yourself sites. If you just started your home care business yesterday, I get it. Startups, I get it. If you have been in business for more than a year, you should not be using a Squarespace, Wix, Weebly or other do-it-yourself website. You might be renting your site instead of owning your site. Have you ever had anybody do that?

Valerie VanBooven (00:28:54):

“Well, you can pay us over time,” and after you paid for a year, I’m not saying that’s horrible, but you got to know that you don’t own that website. You cannot walk away from that website and take it with you until your time is up for that year. If you get that and you understand that you’re leasing that website until you’ve paid off the development, then that’s okay, but just know, are you renting or owning your website? You should be owning it if you can do that.

Valerie VanBooven (00:29:22):

You can’t take your website with you when you leave. Sometimes including Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, and other do-it-yourself sites, Marketing 360, which is also called Livewire or something like that, you can’t take those files with you, and that bothers me. When someone leaves our services and we hope they never do, but if they leave our services, guess what we do? We bundle everything up for you and we send it on to you, and you can put it on any server you want anywhere. It’s your website, you keep it. We do not hold your website hostage.

Valerie VanBooven (00:29:59):

You do not have to copy and paste every page to put it up on another server. We hand you your bundle, your pretty baby website, and we tell you, “Good luck.” We give it to you and your new web developer can … It takes maybe an hour or so if they know what they’re doing to set it back up on another server somewhere. That’s how that should work. Some of these sites absolutely not. You cannot take the content with you unless you copy and paste every single page.

Valerie VanBooven (00:30:29):

So these are the things your web developer isn’t telling you. What I will tell you, what we will tell you is that all the opposite. Professionally designed websites for senior care businesses only, we do all the local advanced search engine optimization. They are mobile-ready. They are a responsive design. I’ve showed you pictures on the right-hand side all the way down the road here.

Valerie VanBooven (00:30:52):

They’re monitored 24/7 365 with better than 99% up time. They’re all ADA accessible. They rank high on major website performance reports, full-time technical support team, and if you’re in one of our programs, you get access to our proprietary ASNSPARK! CRM for mobile and desktop. You can have it on your phone. You can have it on your desktop. You get your blog, your newsletters, client referral forms, lead followup drip campaigns, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google My Business, reputation management and senior care chat integrated. You can see it on this slide bottom right-hand corner of the laptop. I did a little chat there. It’s actually on all of them. You can see the little icon, but I made it disappear for the mobile so you could see the mobile version better.

Valerie VanBooven (00:31:38):

Then below that, you’ll see this is one of our websites. It’s not the one in the picture, but it’s one of our websites where I ran a GT metrics report just to show you. This is a mobile report when you run. If you go to gtmetrics.com, you can run your own website, but it’s going to default to a desktop version, which is usually going to be faster than mobile, not always, but usually. This is a mobile version, and I just wanted you to see this is what you should be looking for. As and Bs on mobile speed are super important.

Valerie VanBooven (00:32:13):

So that’s what you should be looking for when it comes to performance. That’s what Google wants to see. That’s what you want to see. That’s what your prospective clients want to see. All right.

Valerie VanBooven (00:32:24):

These elements will get you a first page rank for some keyword phrases. A well-designed website, which we already discussed, advanced schema. This is a geek, nerd word. Schema is code. Schema is like labeling your business and labeling your website on the backend. It’s not what you see. It’s what Google sees. Google doesn’t see all the pretty. It just sees the backend code. So schema is what tells Google about you, about your business, about where you’re located, about services you provide.

Valerie VanBooven (00:33:05):

Oftentimes, what a web developer will do is they’ll use a plugin, we’ve talked a little bit about plugins, that will put some schema on the backend of your website, but that is not enough schema. It’s just a basic, “Here’s who we are and here’s where we’re located,” but we want to tell we’ll go more than that. We want to tell them about your reviews. We want to tell them about the frequently asked questions that you get. We want to tell them about a paragraph about you. We want to tell them about the owner. We want to tell them about any awards you’ve received, the locations that you service with proof of those locations in that code, and it goes on and on.

Valerie VanBooven (00:33:42):

There are lots of things we tell. We write a lot of code. That helps Google say, “Oh, okay. I get it. You serve San Jose, California, but you also serve these three other cities and these 10 counties.” So we are helping Google understand.

Valerie VanBooven (00:34:03):

You need to have an excellent keyword strategy. So what we do is we go through and we do a keyword research. Now, for home care and for assisted living and for care homes, that keyword strategy is pretty consistent for everybody. There might be a few caveats locally, but for most folks, it’s the same. It has changed over the years, to be honest with you. It used to be certain keywords would rank, were really important, but now, we see other keyword phrases as brands have taken over.

Valerie VanBooven (00:34:35):

So if you want to look up how many times the words home instead are searched, you would find that there’s probably a nationwide 40,000 visits a month in the United States for the word home instead senior care or home instead or home instead care, any version of those. Well, that’s interesting because Home Instead is a brand. You’ve done a really good job. So now people type in home instead all the time.

Valerie VanBooven (00:35:03):

You know what else they type in? Home care assistance. Now, home instead is hard to incorporate. You don’t want to use their brand in your website, obviously. Those words are a little bit harder to come across, to write it if you can, but it’s not really worth worrying about too much, but home care assistance is a great one. Anybody can use the words “I need home care assistance for my mom.” There’s no trademark on that. So anyway, we know what people are searching for, and over time, brands have changed that. So we incorporate keyword phrases that make the most sense into your website.

Valerie VanBooven (00:35:51):

A long content page is designed to rank. Okay. If I were to look at your services page today, you either have one services page that has everything listed that you do on one page or you have lots of little pages that have a one paragraph about personal care, companion care, memory care, transportation, I don’t know. You have one little paragraph.

Valerie VanBooven (00:36:19):

So instead of asking you write a 1,500-word page on memory care, personal care, companion care, we’ll write it for you because you need a page specific to that service that is well-written. We’re talking like 1,000 words minimum, plus images, plus H1 and H2, plus headlines that make sense to Google. You need to have, if you’re going to play with the big boys like the Comfort Keepers and the Visiting Angels and the Home Insteads of the world, you have to write like the big boys.

Valerie VanBooven (00:37:01):

So having a little paragraph of content about companion care, but you know what? You and I both know that we can bullet list what companion care is in about two seconds. We all know what companion care is, but in order to write 1,000 words about companion care, what it is, how it’s paid for or who provides it, what does it mean, to elaborate on that is painful for someone who’s not a writer. So we write it for you and we write six pages on your website of six services or six elements that are search engine optimized and that people actually search for.

Valerie VanBooven (00:37:40):

We give you the list. We say, “Pick from these because these are the top searched service titles, companion care, personal care, hospice support, hospice care, palliative care, memory care, dementia and Alzheimer’s home care, cancer care home.” Those are the kinds of things that people are looking for and you want to have an entire page devoted to that. So we do that for you. You do not have to write that content.

Valerie VanBooven (00:38:09):

Let’s talk about town pages. Sometimes you want to show up in a town that’s four hours away. I don’t know why, but we have folks that want to show up in towns all around. We can also write town pages that will help you rank. My best example of this is a client that we brought onboard who is located in Danbury, Connecticut, Danbury, Connecticut. They wanted to rank for living care in Brookline, Massachusetts, which is a good three hours away from them. They don’t have an office there, but they had a lot of clients there that wanted to live in for some reason or some kind of thing was interesting to them about Brookline.

Valerie VanBooven (00:38:50):

So we put up a town page that was well-written, not a junk store looking goof thing. It’s a very nice, all about their services in Brookline for living care, and then at the bottom talked all about Brookline and all the things in Brookline. It’s a very nicely done page. They still today, that was almost six months ago, rank number one in Brookline, Massachusetts for living care.

Valerie VanBooven (00:39:18):

Now, I can’t tell you that we can do that for every single person in every single town and every single home care agency, but in that case, that works really well. So they want to get clients for living care in Brookline, Massachusetts. They are number one in that little town for living care. They’ll be the ones that get those.

Valerie VanBooven (00:39:39):

Ongoing and consistent blog posting. If you have a blog posted in a while, it’s a problem. You need to have ongoing content all the time. Some people don’t blog post at all. I would suggest to you that that is something that every website should have is new content. You want to give Google a reason to come back and reindex your website and the only way to do that is to make a change to your website and content to your website, and your blog post don’t have to be 1,000, 1,500, 2,500 words. They can be shorter blog posts, but to complement that, you need to have those big long service pages, and you have to understand internal linking that blog posts should link to one of those internal pages so that Google understands the hierarchy or the connection there.

Valerie VanBooven (00:40:33):

Offsite link building and citations, that’s a big one that people are like, “Ugh! It sounds yucky.” Citations just means adding your name, address, and phone number, your business name, address, and phone number to lots of directories all across the website. It’s really important to do that. It’s really important that they’re all the same. Sometimes we’ll run a report for somebody and show them all the different citations they have, which is great, but they all say something different because they’ve moved three times in the last 10 years, they’ve changed their name or sometimes it says LLC and sometimes it doesn’t or sometimes it says street spelled out, sometimes it doesn’t. Google wants to see the same thing that’s on your website across all website. So it’s important to get those cleaned up.

Valerie VanBooven (00:41:19):

Offsite link building can be press releases, which don’t hold as much weight as they used to, but they do work well if you know what you’re doing. Of course, blogging to other websites and things like that, those are really challenging for any one in SEO. We do some of that for you if you’re in certain programs. You don’t have to have that, but it definitely helps.

Valerie VanBooven (00:41:42):

An enhanced Google My Business listing, and Valerie’s SEO sauce, it’s just a little sauce that I put in there that we don’t talk about. Actually, what we do for the secret sauce is we just make sure that your internal linking is turned on and that it’s doing a really good job. So we want every time your website sees the word recruiting or every time your website sees the word home care, we want to make sure that word is connected to the right page in your website so that Google sees that connection.

Valerie VanBooven (00:42:20):

Our other secret sauce is all about that schema. We’ve done some videos on that. It’s really important that Google sees it. it’s like if you look at a cell or a nucleus of a cell under a microscope, here’s your website, on your website pages, and all across those pages, it’s linking out via schema code to all the right places on your website. So that’s our secret sauce, too.

Valerie VanBooven (00:42:47):

Enhanced Google My Business listing means to have a Google My Business listing that matches what your website says. If you haven’t visited your Google My Business listing in a while, it’s important that you do that. They need to match up.

Valerie VanBooven (00:43:03):

So enhanced SEO, this is what we do for folks. We do six long form fully written search engine optimized service pages, two long blog posts that are 1,500 words each. Usually, they’re guides, guides to family home care or family guide to home care in San Jose, California or whatever, advanced schema.

Valerie VanBooven (00:43:24):

We can also do patient pages every month, full advanced backend schema for those location pages, press release distribution, and long form blog posts and video creation. We can do that as well. Just having those fully written search engine optimized service pages is really a good idea.

Valerie VanBooven (00:43:45):

So let’s talk about why your Google Business listing in your website should be best friends. This is one of our agenda items. By the way, if you have a question, you need to type the question in in the Q&A and I will answer all the questions at the end. So if you’ve come across a question, please go type it in to the Q&A and I’ll go through the questions when we get done. Okay.

Valerie VanBooven (00:44:07):

This is the key to local SEO. Google is like a monster, and it wants you to play games with it, not games. It wants you to play and use all of its stuff. So it has all of these … It’s like dog with toys. My dog has lots of knot, lots of toys, balls, and tugs, and all kinds of stuff, and dog wants me to play with all of its toys with him and do a good job with it, and it wants me to play and be nice to it, of course.

Valerie VanBooven (00:44:35):

So Google is the same way. Google wants you to play with all their toys and be nice and play with their toys right and follow the rules. So that’s what we do. We’re nice to Google, Google is nice to us.

Valerie VanBooven (00:44:50):

The key to local SEO is making sure you’re using Google’s product to your advantage. Your Google My Business page is top number one. You’d say, “Well, I’ve logged into it and there really isn’t much you can do. I mean, it’s just your business name.” There’s a lot you can do. You have to use the stuff. Even the stuff you don’t see, use it to your advantage.

Valerie VanBooven (00:45:13):

If it will ask, for instance, if you’re a woman-led, Black-owned, if those are the cases for you or veteran-owned or veteran-led or something like that, if those are the cases for you, please mark those boxes. There’s also a little Google My Business website that comes with your Google My Business listing. You think no one is ever going to see that in a million years and maybe they won’t, but you should max that out. Max it out. We max it out for our clients, and it matches exactly their website.

Valerie VanBooven (00:45:48):

When we do that, Google says, “Oh, I get it,” and you link to their website with certain keyword phrases, super awesome, works really well. Google wants you to use their stuff. It want you to use Google Maps. It wants you to post to Google My Business every day, and we do that for our clients at least twice a week. So for some people, it’s every day. So maximize the utilization of your Google My Business features and you will find that your rank goes up.

Valerie VanBooven (00:46:18):

This is a listing optimization checklist. If anybody wants it after the webinar, you can email me directly and I will send you the checklist or you can just take a picture of this right now with your phone or take a screenshot and send this on to somebody else in your life who can take care of this for you, but this tells you everything that you … Sorry. There you go. This tells you everything that you should be doing with your Google My Business. We do more than this, but this is at least the basis.

Valerie VanBooven (00:46:49):

Be careful about changing your name. If you change your name on Google My Business, you may trigger a reverification, which means you’re going to need to get a postcard in the mail to reverify. So if your name is good on there, don’t change it. Just leave it. Adding too many keyword phrases in your name like ABC Home Care of Tampa instead of just ABC Home Care LLC, that can trigger a suspension. So you need to be really careful what you’re doing with Google My Business, but you can make a lot of great changes to it that Google loves. All right.

Valerie VanBooven (00:47:25):

Let’s talk about how to identify and track every single lead that comes in from your website. You can do this. It doesn’t matter what website you have. Number one, tracked and recorded phone line. We’ve done this for years for our clients. Some of you are married to your phone number and you should not be. So if you have a 1-800-ICARE phone number, something like that, that’s awesome, but you don’t need to worry about that as much as you need to know your numbers. You need to know your numbers.

Valerie VanBooven (00:47:59):

So I recommend you put a tracked and recorded phone line at the very top of your website and on your contact page so that when someone dials it, it dials straight through to your office, but that phone number tracks and records what happens on that phone line. Not only is it a very good learning experience for you as an owner, but it also helps you know how many leads are coming in from your website. You don’t put it on your business card. You don’t put it anywhere else. You just put it in your website. You want to know how many leads you’re getting from your website? Tracked and recorded phone line, number one.

Valerie VanBooven (00:48:39):

Then when you’re on the phone with the person, you need to ask the right questions. There should be a checklist sitting next to that person who answers the phone and they should have it memorized, and they should know it, and it shouldn’t be too hard. One of the questions is, “How did you hear about us?” I don’t care what the person says, web savvy or not, put it down, name, website, searched you on Google, found you on Facebook, whatever. Phone number and email address, those are the three things that you need to get beyond what’s going on, how old is the person who needs care, and all those other questions that you ask. You got to get their contact information, and then you got to do something with that contact information.

Valerie VanBooven (00:49:27):

The forms that are on your website should provide you with reporting. When someone fills out a form on your website, I get it that, yes, you should be instantly notified and everybody should be notified when a form comes in, and that’s great, but not only should that form be notifying you, there should be some reporting involved, which means how many forms did you get in, what happened to those people, where did it go.

Valerie VanBooven (00:49:54):

If you have a system set up correctly, there should be an automatic followup from that form. They should be emailed. They should be added to a drip campaign. They should be getting followup phone calls from you. They should receive a text one time that says, “We got your information and we’re on our way to contact you.”

Valerie VanBooven (00:50:13):

If you use a senior care sales and marketing software, it will track every form automatically. This is our ASNSPARK! System. It will notify you and your staff instantly and automatically. It will record every incoming call from your website. It will alert you and your staff of missed calls if that ever happens. It will text back missed calls and say, “We’re so sorry we missed your call. We’ll be in touch right away.”

Valerie VanBooven (00:50:40):

It puts the caller or form lead into a 30-day drip campaign of emails automatically. Those emails are written by us, edited by you, and then put into a drip campaign. A drip campaign, by the way, means that that person is receiving email from you every three or four days just checking in, seeing how you’re doing, “By the way, did you know we provide these services?”

Valerie VanBooven (00:51:04):

Every three or four days of email checking in with that person in case they don’t pull the trigger right away, you also want them added to your monthly newsletter. If you don’t have a monthly newsletter, you’ll increase your revenue by 10% right now if you incorporate that and you stick to it and consistent and every month for the next 12 months. You send out one monthly newsletter, you’ll get at least two extra clients. I promise.

Valerie VanBooven (00:51:31):

Let’s see. It allows you to text, email, and call from one platform. So if you’re all over the place and you’ve got all of these different services, you’ve got MailChimp and Campaign Monitor or you’ve got Constant Contact and Ring Central, and maybe you’ve got call tracking over here, surveys and forms over here, bookings and appointments over here, recruiting platforms, tracking analytics, courses and products, reputation management somewhere else, which is reviews, all that is done through our CRM. If you take advantage of that, you’ll never miss a phone call or a form lead and followup failure will go away.

Valerie VanBooven (00:52:11):

How to reengage with old leads automatically? Okay. So we have a lot of you out there who are buying leads from A Place For Mom, from Caring Homes, Aging in Place, whatever they are, and they don’t close or you can’t get a hold of them or whatever. So here’s what we tell our clients to do. Gather up all your leads from all your locations. Your website leads are already in the system, in the CRM. Your phone call leads are already in there unless they called your office directly. We can put them in the CRM, but you want to gather up all your business products, forms, phone calls, anything you purchase from other lead platforms, anything you’ve received from other platforms, maybe Google Ads, whatever. Wherever you’ve gotten leads from, gather them all and put them in a big basket and then let’s add them to your ASNSPARK! account and send out an email and a text.

Valerie VanBooven (00:53:03):

Watch for replies, close more business. We can help you do that. So all these places, Facebook, everywhere, if they all come in to one funnel and one place, and then boom. You’re automatically following up. You’re automatically returning phone calls. You’re automatically texting people back and telling them it’s okay, but you’re not irritating them with a million text. Just text and some emails letting them know, “We’re here. How can we help you today? What can we do for you? Sorry we missed your call,” or whatever. Everything.

Valerie VanBooven (00:53:38):

You have a goldmine of humans that have inquired about services that didn’t pull the trigger. If you put them into an automation, you can get those people to reengage with you. All right.

Valerie VanBooven (00:53:53):

So here is the solution for local engagement visibility in SEO. I started with your website. Your website is super important. Content is always going to be important. Your Google My Business is important and automation, the CRM stuff I just showed you, that is super important. That will increase your revenue if you get that set up and done and you can delete all those other accounts that are disjointed communications. Just the texting piece alone for your staff, texting them all at one time to let them know that you have an open shift this weekend or texting them to let you know that you have a new client, would they be interested or whatever, just to get information out to your staff alone is taken care of inside of our CRM.

Valerie VanBooven (00:54:44):

You don’t have to have Ring Central. You don’t have to text people from your on-call phone anymore or your personal phone. You can text them from one platform and you can see their responses come in instantly, and you can do it all from your mobile device or from your desktop.

Valerie VanBooven (00:55:03):

So your website is the number one most important place where all of this starts, phone numbers, forms. Everything starts there and if you add that automation on and you add that content on, then you will see more leads coming in that you ever imagine, and you’ll know exactly where they came from. There’ll be no more guessing. It’s what referral source does the best or whether Facebook ever send you any leads. You’ll know where they came from. I guarantee you most of them besides referral sources will come from your website. All right.

Valerie VanBooven (00:55:41):

Any questions for me? If you have questions, please type them in to the questions area. If you want to talk to me, then you’re going to want to go to our website, ASN, which stands for Approved Senior Network, marketing plan, asnmarketingplan.com/contactus or you can just go to asnmarketingplan.com. You can call our cellphone, our cellphone, our toll-free number, 888-404-1513. You can email Bob who is my colleague. He is our business development person, Bob Costello, [email protected].

Valerie VanBooven (00:56:19):

Anything you would like, use our contact information. If you’re a current client, you’re going to want to go to support, and I know you know where that is. So I won’t go through all that. All right.

Valerie VanBooven (00:56:33):

First question up. Hi, Britney. “How do you account for SEO conflicts when serving more than one home care company in the same geographic area?”

Valerie VanBooven (00:56:41):

That’s a great question. We have never offered exclusivity in 13 years and never had a problem with it. If I can give both of you to the first page of Google or the first one in two spots, you probably can just alternate and it’s not a big deal. We’ve had lots of clients like Houston is a good example. If we were to go to Houston today or go to a search on Houston, you would see a lot of our old and current clients are at the top of the first page. They just share those spots. One day one person might be ahead of the other, but it’s okay. They’re always there. They’ve been there for years.

Valerie VanBooven (00:57:20):

I would say this. We have 200 clients across the country. We don’t have one marketplace that is so saturated with our clients that we can’t handle another one. It’s just too big of a world. So if we have more than one person in San Diego, it’s not that big of a deal. Both of you get same attention. Plus, sometimes our clients are in completely different programs or we might not have anybody in your area right now, which is very possible because I think somebody recently that we have retired. So I mean, I have anybody in your area currently.

Valerie VanBooven (00:58:00):

“Can you share the previous page or show it again?”

Valerie VanBooven (00:58:03):

I don’t know which previous page that was, but I’m happy to show whatever page you want if you want to type that again.

Valerie VanBooven (00:58:10):

Christina says, “Hi. Super new at this. Do we have phone tracking and receive lead info from our website. We currently have this built program.”

Valerie VanBooven (00:58:17):

So Christina, on your website, you are a franchise. So we do not control the forms on your website, but you should be able to log in to your website and see all of your forms. So you can log in to the backend of your website and see how your forms. If you want phone tracking, you can talk to us about that privately in support and we can see what we can do with that. Currently, there is not tracking set up. That’s between you and your franchise, and if they will change the phone number, we certainly will do that for you.

Valerie VanBooven (00:58:55):

So let’s see. Let’s go back to … I’m going to put up in a minute. Let’s go back here. Somebody wanted that Google My Business page. Hold on. There you go. Get a screenshot of that or picture. All right.

Valerie VanBooven (00:59:16):

Anybody else have any questions? Your website should be your number one priority right now in 2021. Get it fixed. get it unbloated, and it will serve you well for the next several years, but you have to take action and get your website cleaned up. Once you do that piece, everything else is easy, but getting that website cleaned up is your number one priority.

Valerie VanBooven (00:59:44):

That’s what we find is that people have been hanging on just making changes to websites they’ve been hanging on to for years. It’s not that they’re not pretty. It’s just that after time, the backend becomes outdated even if it’s WordPress. The theme is outdated. It’s just becoming bloated with all kinds of stuff. So cleaning that up and making it fresh and new is super important for everybody, and getting your website out there that will last you several years.

Valerie VanBooven (01:00:16):

Shantelle, I see you raising your hand a lot, but I’m not sure what you need. You can type in a question. You can type in a question in the Q&A panel if you’d like, but otherwise, I’m not sure what I can do. I can see you raising your hand, and I’m happy to answer questions if you want to contact us offline. I’m going to put that back up here. For anybody who wants to contact us directly, asnmarketingplan.com, 888-404-1513 or [email protected].

Valerie VanBooven (01:00:59):

All right, guys. I don’t see any more questions. So thank you very much for attending. I hope this helps with your websites. I hope this helped you learn more about what to do and how to really increase that revenue by tracking and by making sure that your website is the fastest and the best search engine optimized in your local area. Thank you so much, guys. Bye.

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Home Care Websites Generate Home Care Leads in 2021

00:00 Introduction to Home Care Websites

00:12 Home Care Websites in 2021

00:24 Home Care Leads

00:36 CRM Strategies for Home Care Leads