Care Home 360 https://carehome360.co.uk 360 Virtual Tours for Care Homes, Nursing Homes & Residential Living Thu, 03 Aug 2023 15:17:28 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://carehome360.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/cropped-Favicon-32x32.png Care Home 360 https://carehome360.co.uk 32 32 Are Digital Marketing Assets Worth The Investment? https://carehome360.co.uk/blogs/digital-marketing-assets-investment/ Tue, 15 Aug 2023 12:20:24 +0000 https://carehome360.co.uk/?p=1568

Are Digital Marketing Assets Worth The Investment?

The care home sector is now worth around £15.9 billion a year in the UK, according to the Competition and Markets Authority. And as our population continues to age, it’s a sector that will keep growing too. There are just under 410,000 people living in 17,079 care homes across the UK, with the average cost of a bed in a nursing home being £888 a week, according to the latest figures from carehome.co.uk and the ONS.

While the sector is buoyant, care home owners are experiencing the challenges that increased competition brings. 

How do you make sure your care home stands out in a crowded marketplace? 

Spending money on digital marketing assets should be seen as an investment in the future growth of your care home business.

For example, our most comprehensive single package – which includes a virtual tour, professional photos & a video – is priced at only £3975.

It won’t be long before it pays for itself and it’ll help you keep occupancy rates high for many years to come.

Here are just some of the benefits of investing in digital market assets for your brand and your business.

 

Photography

Adding professional photography to your portfolio of digital marketing assets is an investment that will bring many benefits to all areas of your business. They’ll help you make an impression, improve conversion rates and boost bed occupancy. An experienced professional photographer knows how to take photos that will accentuate the key features and benefits of your care home and won’t look out of date in six months time.

Photos that can be used over and over again across all digital touchpoints, including your website, social media channels, Google Business Profile, email CRM and care home directory website profiles.

They’re also very useful for print too, such as brochures, magazine advertorials or articles and for adding to display panels for conferences and exhibitions. Using professional photos across all channels will help you achieve brand consistency and differentiate yourself from the competition. They can also be used to help recruit and retain staff and in internal communications.

Video

According to Hubspot, video is still the primary type of digital marketing content being created by businesses. It’s not surprising: 96% of us have watched a video while researching products and services online. That’s why videos are such a powerful way to showcase the key features of your care home.

There are many different types of marketing videos too, including welcome videos, video tours, testimonial videos, social media videos – to name but a few. They’re not just great at helping you market your business, they’re also a valuable organisational resource and can be used in recruitment, training new staff and internal communications.

And once you’ve added them to key landing pages on your website they’ll help increase dwell time, improve keyword rankings and bring more traffic to your website.

 

360 Virtual Tours

Virtual tours are one of the fastest growing sales and marketing tools in the care home sector in the UK. A necessity during the COVID-19 pandemic and its lockdowns, they’ve quickly proved their worth and are now an essential addition to any care home website.  A good virtual tour will help you to display and amplify the key features, rooms and amenities of your care home.

They’re a huge help to care seekers searching for the perfect care home for themselves, or their loved ones. They’re also very practical and flexible digital marketing assets, and once live they have low maintenance costs – essentially the cost of hosting. Much like a website, good quality virtual tours can have long shelf-lives and are also incredibly flexible too. You can add whole new sections to your existing tours, amend copy, change logos and embed videos, for example.

And we can also use our Virtual Staging skills to help you showcase the more subtle features of your care home and make certain elements more prominent. A high quality 360 virtual tour provides care seekers with an immersive, engaging experience of your care home at its very best. They’ll also improve dwell time on your website, boost keyword rankings and bring more targeted traffic in from search engines.

 

We’ve put together a number of different packages designed to help care home owners improve the quality and increase the effectiveness of their digital marketing assets.

If you just want a single virtual tour, or a suite of professional photos or videos then that’s fine too.

Talk to us to discuss your needs. 

]]> How to Optimise Your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) https://carehome360.co.uk/blogs/how-to-optimise-your-google-profile/ Thu, 06 Jul 2023 12:42:46 +0000 https://carehome360.co.uk/?p=1588

How to Optimise Your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business)

A Google Business Profile (GBP) is a business listing platform provided by Google. It gives small businesses the opportunity to communicate key business information to searchers, receive, and respond to, reviews and get a presence on Google Maps and in local search listings.  Getting a GBP can really help to improve the visibility of your business on Google, especially for local keyword searches such as “care home near me”.


How to Start a Google Business Profile

If you haven’t got one already, head on over to https://www.google.com/business/ and click “Manage Now”. Add some basic information to start with and go through the verification process, whether it’s by post or a phone call.

How to get the most out of your Google Business Profile for your care home business

Whether you’ve just gone through the verification process or have had one for a while, here are a few tips to help you improve your GBP.

Add your physical address and service areas

Be sure to add your real, physical address of your care home as this will show up on Google Maps and its local listings for geographically related searches. Also, don’t forget to add all the surrounding cities, towns and villages that are close to you in the “Service area” section. 

 

Check name, address and phone number (NAP) 

It’s very important to have accurate and consistent NAP information across all your platforms, whether it’s Yell, carehome.co.uk or your Google Business Profile. Is your care home name consistent, are you always using the same, correct address and phone number?

 

Your business description and category

In your business description, it’s really important to add a clear and concise description about your business, the services you provide (a focus keyword, if you have one) and a mention of the areas you serve. A bit further down the line it’s worth considering adding a little extra something that will help you to differentiate yourself from your competition, like mentioning an “Outstanding” CQC rating. Add the correct business category too, usually either Nursing home or Assisted living facility.

 

Use the correct url of your website

Please do check that you’re using the correct version of your url, and not an old non-https version.

 

Getting and responding to reviews

Getting reviews on your GBP for your care home can help its visibility in Google, just as reviews can help secure higher positions on the leading care home review and directory websites, such as carehome.co.uk. Having a process to collect and review stakeholder feedback is a really important part of any business. Leveraging this process and making sure you consistently achieve positive reviews should become a business priority. Don’t forget to reply to any review you get on your GBP too. 

 

Publishing updates on your Google Business Profile

It’s a very good idea to keep your profile fresh and interesting to care seekers by regularly adding posts or updates.

Here are the options you can choose from:

  1. Add an update. This can be any general communication, like a change to visiting hours or a news item about your care home.
  2. Add an offer. This where you can showcase any marketing offer you might have on, be sure to link directly to any campaign landing page you have created. 
  3. Add an event. This is very useful for communicating specific upcoming events, like open days. 

Be sure to add a relevant, good quality image or photo alongside them too.

 

Adding professional photos

We’ve talked about the information you can add and how important it is to make sure it’s consistent and accurate but now it’s time to focus on what will really distinguish your profile from the competition. It might be very tempting just to add any old photo you might have, just to have something up on your GBP. Please don’t. The photos on your profile are often the first time a care seeker actually sees your care home, even before they visit your website. It will really help your profile stand out from the crowd if you add some really strong professional photographs of your care home and its amenities.

Try to add a good range of photos too, for example:

  • The front facing outlook of your care home and the reception area
  • Communal areas and garden
  • Bedrooms and other facilities
  • Residents, social nights and what it’s like to live there.

Commissioning a suite of professional photographs can help you showcase the key features of your care home, improve brand consistency across all channels and, ultimately, boost bed occupancy rates.  

We always spend time helping our clients plan for a photography shoot, in order for them to maximise the business value from each one. It’s what we do.

Get in touch and we’ll talk you through the whole process.

]]> Virtual Tours: Are They Here To Stay Beyond Covid? https://carehome360.co.uk/360-virtual-tour/virtual-tours-beyond-covid/ Thu, 22 Jun 2023 12:36:24 +0000 https://carehome360.co.uk/?p=1583

Virtual Tours: Are They Here To Stay Beyond Covid?

During the Covid-19 pandemic – and especially during its lockdowns – care home owners needed to find a way to keep bed occupancy rates high while balancing the health needs of residents and staff. Making any decision about long term care is a tough one at the best of times and usually involves the care seeker making at least one visit to any, or all, of the care homes on their shortlist. How do you show potential clients around a care home during a lockdown? This is where 360 virtual tours proved an invaluable tool. They gave care home owners the opportunity to showcase their care home while keeping residents safe. But will virtual tours become a standard in the care home industry, are they here to stay?

Are virtual tours still popular after the pandemic?

The short answer is, yes. Virtual tours continue to be one of the fast growing sales and marketing tools in the care sector. Although the reasons why they continue to be popular are not quite the same as they were during the height of the pandemic. During lockdown virtual tours were a necessity, a solution to a real problem. Now they’ve become an essential part of marketing for many care homes, like having a website. There are a couple of reasons why this is. Virtual tours are incredibly useful for care seekers because they help to make a difficult decision a bit easier. They have value, they have worth. So much so that care seekers have quickly got used to them and are increasingly expecting to see them when they visit a care home website.  As for care home owners, they’ve been able to measure their business value, not only in terms of better conversion and bed occupancy rates, but also in increased keyword rankings and web traffic, too. Virtual tours are here to stay because they’re a hit with care seekers and care home owners.

 

Why are virtual tours popular care home businesses?

There are a number of marketing reasons and practical ones, too.

Showcase your care home at its very best

Consumers are all pretty internet savvy nowadays, they’re used to making major purchasing decisions online and are always looking for better, more engaging online experiences from brands. A really good quality 360 virtual tour provides care seekers with a unique, online experience of your care home at its very best. They give you an element of control too, giving you the ability to ‘guide’ them toward key features such as communal areas, gardens and your best bedrooms.

 

Give some users guided virtual tours

While some care seekers will be happy to show themselves around any virtual tour, there are others who might need a helping hand. It might be a relatively unknown feature, but it’s really easy to take a care seeker on a guided virtual tour while talking to them in a video call. Indeed, it’s worth making sure that visitors to your virtual tour page are aware of this, as it’s a great opportunity to talk to potential clients and amplify the key features and benefits of your care home.

 

Short capture time means minimum disruption to your care home

You’ll be pleasantly surprised when you find out that actually, the shoot for a virtual tour can be done in just two hours. Once the raw footage has been captured, all the magic happens in post-production, so the process is a really simple one for care home owners.

 

Really easy to add to your website

Virtual tours will usually be hosted for you on specialist servers that can deal with their complexity and traffic demands. It’s usually just as simple as embedding a line or two of code into a page on your website.

 

Easy to add new sections and update

It’s a bit of a misconception that you’ll have to commission a new virtual tour if you make significant changes to your care home. Virtual tours can be expanded, edited with whole new sections added, if you wish. You can also embed videos, photos and other content within them too.

 

Help improve your keyword and rankings and increase traffic

Imagine being faced with a number of similar care homes displayed on a Google search results page, the reality is that you’re more likely to want to click-through to the one that says ‘take our virtual tour’ than the one that doesn’t. That’s how they can help increase traffic to your website. And virtual tours will help you to improve dwell time on your website, too.  Which is another positive metric that will help improve keyword rankings. Are you ready to book your virtual tour for your care home?

 

We’re highly experienced at producing 360 virtual tours within the care sector and deliver a comprehensive offering.

We take time to ensure that all our virtual tours are accessible and can be used by real people with little, or even no, digital experience.  

Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions or want to book a shoot for your virtual tour.

]]> Is Professional Photography A Good Investment For Care Homes? https://carehome360.co.uk/photo/is-professional-photography-a-good-investment-for-care-homes/ Tue, 16 May 2023 16:38:59 +0000 https://carehome360.co.uk/?p=1530

Is Professional Photography A Good Investment For Care Homes?

Professional photography is such a powerful resource for any business and one that will keep delivering business value over a long period of time.
While its use in marketing is well known, you shouldn’t ignore the difference it can make when it comes to recruitment, too.
In this article we outline the many uses of professional photography in print and digital, and why it’s such a good business investment.

BRAND-BUILDING

First impressions last in business. Whether it’s through social media, a brochure, or your website, a photograph is often the first experience a care seeker will have of your care home. The media you produce represents your brand. Even if your care home has been given an outstanding rating, poor quality photos produced in-house can suggest a poor quality care home.
Perception is, more often than not, reality nowadays. It really makes sense to commission a suite of professional photographs and build a centralised resource for your business to be used by marketing, HR, PR & communications and beyond.
It will help you deliver brand consistency across all channels for years to come.

 

WEBSITE

Although it might not be a consideration when you build your first website, using professional photography is a huge statement of intent and will set your website apart from its competitors. Professionally produced photos will highlight the unique features and benefits of your care home offering. And authentic photos of real residents are more likely to connect with care seekers, helping to create trust and a favourable impression.

 

SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media is one of the primary reasons to invest in a suite of professional photographs. With attention spans on social being so short, it’s important to make a good first impression in any social media post. Professional photography will help you do that. Social media has become part of business as usual (BAU) for many businesses who typically post at least once a day, sometimes more.
That’s a lot of pressure to find new interesting photos to accompany your posts. If you create a centralised resource of quality photos you’ll be able to use them again and again for BAU social media posts. This will help you achieve brand consistency and give you more time for planning and delivery of more strategic, targeted and engaging social media campaigns. Who doesn’t want to run more impactful social media campaigns?

 

EMAIL MARKETING & CRM

If you’re like most businesses nowadays you’ll have an established process for marketing to prospects and managing the relationships you have with your existing customers. Again, emails are another channel that needs thoughtful photography. The photos you send to prospects will more likely need to highlight the key features and benefits of your care home. Your unique selling points. While the ones you use to send to existing customers will more than likely be focused on residents, company values and culture. Having a wide range of subjects is something to make sure you build into any professional photography brief.

 

CARE HOME DIRECTORIES & REVIEW SITES

One of the first things new care home businesses do is to sign-up to the many care home directory and review sites there in the UK market.

Here are three of the best care home directory sites in the UK:

However, not all care home businesses optimise their listings to make sure they grab people’s attention. Adding accurate, helpful information, photos, videos and even virtual tours to profiles will all help to increase your visibility on the site and ensure you’re more likely to feature higher up in any search results.

 

GOOGLE BUSINESS PROFILE (FORMERLY KNOWN AS GOOGLE MY BUSINESS)

Another of the first steps any new care home business should do is a Google Business Profile.

If you haven’t already visit: https://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/business/ and add yours.

It’ll give you a bit of Google real estate long before your keyword rankings get to page one.

Your Business Profile will also appear in the lists for local searches like ‘care homes near me’.

It’ll also help you share key information about your care home business with friends and family of residents – and the general public.

Here’s a checklist to make sure your have an optimised Google Business Profile:

  • Make sure you add your current location and your service areas.
  • Add accurate and consistent contact information including your name, address and phone number. Try to keep these consistent across all your profiles and listings online.
  • Add the correct URL of your website to strengthen the link between this profile, your brand name and your website
  • Add an optimised business description and include unique selling points, a focus keyword and a mention of the local area you are targeting, or operating in.
  • Add professional photos of your care home and its residents.
  • Encourage your existing residents to give you a review and respond if necessary.
  • Regularly publish posts showcasing offers or events.
  • Keep all of your information up-to-date. 
  • Embed your Google Map on your contact page on your website – it’ll help Google associate your brand name with your website.
  •  

BROCHURES, FLYERS & LEAFLETS

Printed sales literature is still must-have marketing collateral. Whether it’s a brochure, flyer or leaflet, professional photography will help you to distinguish your brand from the competition. They’re also the dominant marketing currency at trade shows, as they provide prospects with something tangible to take home with them.

 

RESIDENT MAGAZINES & NEWSLETTERS

Providing newsletters and even in-house magazines for residents is becoming increasingly popular, especially among large care home groups.Good quality, genuine photographs that help to tell your brand story are essential for these types of publications.

 

ADVERTS/ADVERTORIALS IN MAGAZINES

It’s becoming increasingly common for care homes to advertise in magazines that are read by their key target demographics. The production values in magazines are extremely high, so whether it’s an advert or advertorial, you’ll need professional photography if you’re going to make a favourable impression.

We always spend time helping our clients plan for a photography shoot, in order for them to maximise the business value from each one.

It’s what we do. Get in touch and we’ll talk you through the whole process.

]]> 5 Reasons Why Your Care Home Needs a Virtual Tour https://carehome360.co.uk/360-virtual-tour/care-home-needs-a-virtual-tour/ Tue, 18 Apr 2023 08:36:35 +0000 https://carehome360.co.uk/?p=1599

5 Reasons Why Your Care Home Needs a Virtual Tour

It’s hard to forget just how challenging it was to keep care home residents safe during the peaks of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Care home owners had to find innovative ways to balance the welfare of residents while keeping occupancy rates stable and their businesses going.

How do you show a potential new resident around your care home without them actually being there? 

360 virtual tours helped to solve this problem, but why do they continue to be the fastest-growing sales and marketing tool in the sector?

Here we take a look at why it’s a good idea to invest in virtual tours for all your nursing homes.

Reason 1

Care seekers now expect a virtual tour when they visit your website

Virtual tours have made such an impact over the last few years that care seekers have become accustomed to being able to view a care home when they visit a website.

It can be a very time-consuming process to arrange time slots and visit all the care homes that might be suitable.

And a frustrating one, if, after a long journey, the care home doesn’t make a positive impression.

Giving people the opportunity to take a tour of your care home on your website means you will be more likely to make it onto their final shortlist.

Reason 2

Don’t lose out to your competitors

Whether it’s a car, house or a care home, UK consumers are more confident making major purchasing decisions online than ever before. 

While this was born out of necessity during COVID-19 lockdowns, the trend continues. 

But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy to sell online. 

As online consumer confidence has grown so too have expectations for better, more helpful digital experiences.

And the competition for clicks and people’s time online is such that if you don’t meet or exceed these expectations it’s really easy to lose out to a competitor who does.

Simply put, 360 virtual tours have become the norm in the care home sector, because now care seekers want to be able to take a good look at a care home before they commit to a visit.

Can you afford to ignore virtual tours any longer?

Reason 3

Showcase your care home at its very best

To website users, a virtual tour is the most realistic representation of a place or building that can be achieved online.

A really effective, impactful 360 virtual tour goes a step further than this, it’s a unique experience of your care home at its very best. 

Imagine being able to control what you want your care home to look like, ideally, for every prospect that you encounter?

That’s a powerful thought as most marketing experts would agree, first impressions are lasting impressions.

Reason 4

Virtual tours have long shelf-lives and can be added to or amended

If you’re only looking to invest in marketing assets that’ll provide long-term business value and ROI then 360 virtual tours are worth considering.

Much like your actual website they can be continuously optimised, amended, and added to.

Maybe you want to embed the new welcome video you’ve just created or add a whole new outdoors section for people to explore. 

As your care home business grows, so too can your virtual tour.

Reason 5

They help make a difficult decision just a little easier

Whether you’re seeking care for yourself or you’re looking for a much-loved parent, making decisions about long-term care can be really tough. 

And even when you’ve made the decision to go ahead, finding the perfect care home can be overwhelming.

As we’ve already touched upon, on a practical level, taking time out from busy schedules to visit all possible care homes might not be feasible.

The tendency is toward greater prioritisation, with care seekers frequently drawing up short lists of potential care homes based on the information they’ve been able to gather about them online – whether it’s a care home directory site or the actual website.

Virtual tours provide an immersive digital experience for visitors to your website, are incredibly helpful in an often difficult decision-making process, and also provide exceptional ROI.

]]> How to Optimise Your Carehome.co.uk Profile https://carehome360.co.uk/blogs/how-to-optimise-carehome-co-uk-profile/ Tue, 14 Mar 2023 09:34:02 +0000 https://carehome360.co.uk/?p=1523

How to Optimise Your Carehome.co.uk Profile

There are a number of care home directory and review sites in the UK, it’s worth signing-up and getting a presence on all of them, especially if you’ve just started your care home business.

With just under 1.4 million organic visits a month (data: Ubersuggest), one of the most popular care home review sites in the UK is carehome.co.uk.

This guide looks at the most important aspects of your carehome.co.uk profile and what you should do to optimise yours.

Creating helpful content that engages users

Before we look at ways to optimise your listing, here’s a quick overview of how the search function works on the site.

The top-level search, search categories and filters are:

  • Type of Care
  • Location
  • Care Home Group or Manager Name
  • Care Home Name

Additional search filters and categories include;

  • A predefined CQC Rating category such as CQC Rating Outstanding
  • Type of owner whether it’s Private, NHS, Not for Profit or Local Authority
  • Care home facilities such as Gardens, Pet friendly etc
  • Distance to Care Home from Postcode
  • Postcode Area

The first thing to note here is that the more complete your information is about your care home the more likely you’re going to match one of the criterias in the filters and appear in the search results.

optimiseyourcarehomecouk

The most frequent kind of prescribed filtered search is Search All Care Types by Location.

Here is a breakdown of the search results page:

  1. Featured care home profiles: Up first are the paid-for featured profiles.
  2. Upgraded profiles: Next up are all those profiles on an Enhanced, Premium or Platinum subscription and, it’s important to note, the order of these is based on both your subscription and your review score.
  3. Basic profiles: And lastly are the free, basic profiles which are listed in a random order.

 

This guide is relevant whether you have a basic profile or have chosen an Enhanced, Premium or Platinum subscription.

Description

It’s wise to spend some time on your description, as it’ll be many people’s first experience of your brand on the carehome.co.uk website.

Make sure to include the services you provide, who your care home is for (older people, dementia sufferers etc) and any key features and amenities –.such as garden areas, activities, awards and CQC ratings.

Do make sure your description is 100% unique and is written in the third person, which means not using ‘us’, ‘we’ or ‘our care home’.

Don’t just copy and paste the text from your website or other directory listings.

Check for spelling and grammar, the easiest way to do this is to write your description in MS Word or Google Docs first.

While carehome.co.uk checks all descriptions and will advise you if there are any problems with yours, this will add a delay to you getting your care home listed.

Generating Reviews

It’s wise to spend some time on your description, as it’ll be many people’s first experience of your brand on the carehome.co.uk website.

Make sure to include the services you provide, who your care home is for (older people, dementia sufferers etc) and any key features and amenities –.such as garden areas, activities, awards and CQC ratings.

Do make sure your description is 100% unique and is written in the third person, which means not using ‘us’, ‘we’ or ‘our care home’.

Don’t just copy and paste the text from your website or other directory listings.

Check for spelling and grammar, the easiest way to do this is to write your description in MS Word or Google Docs first.

While carehome.co.uk checks all descriptions and will advise you if there are any problems with yours, this will add a delay to you getting your care home listed.

“The maximum review score is 10, which is made up of average rating of reviews (5 points) and number of positive reviews in the last 24 months in relation to the registered maximum number of service users at the care home (5 points).”

Essentially, there are 12 individual ratings in each review, and each one can be rated  ‘Excellent’ worth 5 points, ‘Good’ – 4 points, ‘Satisfactory’ – 3 points, ‘Poor’ – 2 points or ‘Very Poor’ – 1 point. 

  • Overall Experience
  • Care/Support
  • Treated with Dignity
  • Staff
  • Management
  • Rooms
  • Facilities
  • Cleanliness
  • Food & Drink
  • Activities
  • Safety/Security
  • Value For Money

What also matters is the timing of the reviews, as any care home that hasn’t had a review in the last 24 months doesn’t get awarded a review score.

It’s worth taking a look at the page on their website dedicated to answering this question as it’s quite an in-depth process.

For the purposes of this article, we’re going to take a more general look at how to generate more regular, positive reviews on carehome.co.uk.

It’s important for any business to build consistent feedback loops with customers.

Indeed, we’re finding that more and more care home businesses are taking time to build resident, friend and family feedback loops.

In these, all directly involved stakeholders are regularly asked for their opinions and suggestions of how to improve the care home.

This helps to empower all parties, giving them a deeper sense of involvement and belonging to the care home.

If a resident or a family member is happy and feels like their opinion matters within your care home, they are more likely to provide a positive review.

It’s worth noting that while review scores are important it’s sometimes the quality of your content on your profile that will make all the difference.

Adding Professional Photos

It really does help if you have professional photography and real genuine photographs of your care home and its residents. 

You should aim to add at least 12 photos – do add more if you have them.

The subject matter of your photos makes a difference too. 

Try to add a good range of photos that cover all the aspects of your care home and amplify its key features and benefits.

These might be photos of the front entrance, the garden, the bedrooms, the communal areas and any social activities.

That last one is really important, try to add photos that show the culture –.what it’s like to live there –.of your care home and not just the bricks and mortar.

Adding Videos

It’s much the same principle as your website.

Once you have captured the attention of a prospect, you need to keep them engaged so that they spend more time on your profile interacting with your content.

Adding videos is such a powerful way to showcase your care home brand and its offering.

Adding videos is such a powerful way to showcase your care home brand and its offering.

  • Welcome video – A good welcome video should provide a clear and comprehensive overview of what your care home has to offer.
  • Testimonial videos – A video of a resident giving your care home a positive review can help you build brand credibility and be highly influential in the decision making process of a care seeker.

Adding A Virtual Tour

Virtual tours are one of the fastest growing sales and marketing tools in the care sector for a good reason.

They give care seekers the opportunity to take a look at your care home without having to arrange, and then drive over, for a visit.

A really effective, impactful 360 virtual tour provides care seekers with a unique and engaging experience of your care home at its very best. 

An experience that can make all the difference in the decision-making process.

]]> Care Home 360 Welcome nonadult How to Improve Care Home SEO & Keyword Rankings in 2023 https://carehome360.co.uk/blogs/how-to-improve-care-home-seo-2023/ Tue, 21 Feb 2023 12:30:58 +0000 https://carehome360.co.uk/?p=1513

CARE HOME SEO & KEYWORD RANKINGS IN 2023​​

In this article, we’ll be taking a deeper look at some of the fundamentals of Care Home SEO and what you can do in 2023 to improve your keyword rankings and increase the amount of relevant traffic coming to your care home website from search engines.

While this article is mainly about website content, we’ll also be touching on specific technical aspects of SEO, too. 

There’s no point adding loads of fresh new interactive content if suddenly you make your website slow to download and unusable. 

Creating helpful content that engages users

In 2022 Google introduced the helpful content update “that’s part of a broader effort to ensure people see more original, helpful content written by people, for people, in search results.”

The helpful content update isn’t just a clever campaign by Google to get businesses and organisations to think about content more.

It’s now one of the systems Google runs in the background and uses daily to deliver more query intent-accurate, people-focused search results – and as such, is very much here to stay.

One of the easiest ways to create helpful content and also to improve dwell time across your site and on individual pages is to add interactive content to them.

For example, adding videos to web pages has long been a tried and tested way to not only get your message across but also increase dwell time and improve keyword rankings and your care home SEO. 

For the care home sector specifically, another way to add helpful content is by adding a 360 virtual tour.

Giving care seekers the ability to take a tour of your care home from the comfort of their own home is not only a great interactive experience, but it’s also extremely helpful too.

A good 360 virtual tour will visually answer many of the questions care seekers need answers to, before deciding which care home is right for them.

How to improve the quality of your existing content

Here are just four really practical things you can do to improve the quality of your existing content.

1. Identifying and fixing broken links.
Broken links aren’t a great impression to leave prospective clients and they result in 404s which can eat up your crawl budget. There are some free tools that’ll do this for you such as: https://www.deadlinkchecker.com/website-dead-link-checker.asp 

2. Checking for and fixing spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.
While there are powerful tools out there which will help you do this, thankfully, there is an easy hack to at least help you identify these errors. Simply copy and paste all the text from a web page, add it into notepad to stripout the formatting and then pop it into MS Word or Google Docs and use their spelling and grammar checks. Repeat the process for all your key content pages and make the changes directly in your CMS.

3. Repurposing content.
Whether it’s an old blog post or a guide you had written a few years ago, first, check your analytics package to see whether the page is yielding organic traffic. If it hasn’t done so for a year or so it’s worth taking a look and seeing if you can refocus and refresh the content into something that’s more relevant. Just delete the old page and 301 redirect that url to the new web page you create.

4. Update existing content frequently.
Much will depend on the amount of resource you have internally for this, but it’s worth doing quarterly reviews and checking for accuracy, relevancy and readability.

How to structure a web page and its content for better care home SEO

Here are a few rules of thumb of how to structure your web page and its content for the benefit of Googlebot (Google’s web crawler) and real human beings – whether they are care seekers at home on their laptops or out and about on their mobile.

The URL

Once you’ve decided on the topic for your web page and identified your focus keyword, always write a keyword-rich URL for it. 

One that makes sense when you read it back and is consistent with what the page is about. Try not to use dynamically-generated or numerical URLs as this can have a negative impact on you Care Home SEO. 

If in doubt, make the URL the same as the title (h1) tag of your page.

The title tag and meta description

Add your topic or focus keyword to the title tag along with your brand name, such as:

Keyword focus | Brand name

or in this blog’s case

HOW TO IMPROVE CARE HOME SEO

And then add a really strong meta description that contains your focus keyword and entices care seekers to click through to your page.

Make sure you don’t over stuff your title tags or meta descriptions with target keywords as Google ignores poor quality ones – and will choose one for you.

The HTML heading tags 

Use one h1 tag, adding your focus keyword, for the title of the page. 

Then use h2 and h3 tags for all your subheadings, adding semantic variants of your focus keyword only when it seems natural to do so.

The table of contents links

Create tables of content for information-heavy pages and use bookmark HTML links, also known as jump links, to take users to each section. 

They’ll make it easier for users to find the information they want on your page and can help your web page stand out in the search results.

The schema (or structured data)

Schema, or structured data, is simply an extra bit of code you can inject into your web page that helps Googlebot better understand what the content on your page is about for care home SEO purposes.

They can be used by Google to create rich results in its result pages, which are usually at the top of the search results and can result in higher click-through rates.

There are quite a few types of schema available, it’s worth taking a look at and deploying the structured data Google supports to start with.

If you have an FAQ section then the schema is a must-have really. So too with video.

The featured snippet-bait paragraphs, lists, tables and videos

Featured snippets are those paragraphs of text, lists, tables or videos you’ll see at the top of Google’s search results, usually answering a question, how, what, why, where etc.

Google pulls this information from one of the web pages that is in the top 10 for the given search term. If your web page achieves a featured snippet it usually results in an increase in click-throughs – as users tend to trust these answers over the rest.

To achieve a featured snippet make sure you always write clear and concise copy, use short paragraphs with headings as appropriate (see above!) and break up the text on the page with lists and tables.

Oh and adding FAQs with their respective schema really helps too.

How to improve your website download speed

While this is not new advice, it’s still relevant in 2023 for your care home SEO.

Making sure your care home website is quick to download is still a powerful improvement you can make – especially if you’re adding new types of interactive content.

Does download speed really make a difference and how do you start to improve it? 

The simple answer is: yes it does.

In a recent study on the download speeds of 143,827 website URLS, Neil Patel commented, “As expected, we confirmed that faster site speed did correlate with higher Google search rankings.”

The best place to start checking whether your site is quick to download is to take a look at the Server Response Times for your homepage.

There are a number of key metrics around this subject, in the above report, Neil Patel identifies one of the most important ones being Time To First Byte (TTFB).

Essentially, when you visit a website or page (URL), your browser sends a request to a server asking for the HTML document at that URL address. TTFB is simply the time it takes the first tiny bit of website data (a byte) to get to your browser from the server.

It’s worth talking with your devs or domain administrator to get them to check the TTFB performance of your homepage against industry benchmarks, which can massively improve your speed and thus Care Home SEO.

Here are a few things you can try to speed things up and which tend to make the most impact in this area.

Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A CDN is a collection of localised servers that work together to deliver content resources, such as images, more quickly and efficiently to users based on their geographic location. Most hosting providers will have deals in place so it’s worth asking the question.

Reducing overall amount of HTTP requests

Another one your developer can help you with, start by by asking them to delete any unnecessary scripts. And, if you’re using WordPress, be sure to delete any unused plugins or find better, less resource heavy, alternatives to the ones you are using.

Upgrade your hosting plan or move to a better host

You might just need more server capacity now than when you first started your business website. Talk to your current host and see what new plans are available. If you can get better elsewhere, make the jump now rather than later.

Summary for Care Home SEO

  • Concentrate on quality, interactive content that’s going to help users and is optimised for the web. 
  • Make sure you structure your web pages and make them easy for users to read and understand.
  • Remove the irrelevant stuff that doesn’t add value and instead concentrate on giving users a rich brand and content experience.
]]> Care Home Videos: One Day of Filming – 11 Different Uses https://carehome360.co.uk/video/care-home-videos-11-different-uses/ Tue, 24 Jan 2023 10:17:25 +0000 https://carehome360.co.uk/?p=1416

Care Home Videos

Creating professional videos are such a powerful way to showcase your care home brand and its offering.

They will increase engagement metrics on your website and improve keyword rankings.

And they are just so flexible, too.

Whenever we talk new clients through the process, they are always amazed at just how many videos, and business value, can be created from the footage captured in just one day of filming.

Brand, sales and marketing videos

Here are a few options to think about how to use care home videos to help you boost brand awareness and bed occupancy rates.

1. Welcome video

One of the cornerstone videos you should consider creating should be one that provides a clear and comprehensive overview of what you offer.

An impactful welcome video that communicates your brand values, unique care expertise and the features and benefits of your care home is a really powerful sales and marketing tool.

They’re very useful for care seekers who are in the awareness stage and are experiencing your brand for the first time.

They are also helpful for care seekers who might have encountered your website before and are in the consideration phase of their decision making journey.

And they can be used on multiple platforms, including on your homepage, care home directory sites, embedded in 360 virtual tours and edited down for inclusion on landing pages and social media posts.

2. Video tours

While not as interactive as 360 virtual tours, care home videos as a tour can be the next best thing.

It’ll enable you to showcase the key features and benefits of your care home at its very best.

3. Landing page videos - specific features & benefits

Adding videos to key landing pages on your website are a proven way of increasing keyword rankings.

The main thing to remember is not to add exactly the same video to every landing page as that will not have a positive influence on keyword rankings.

4. Care Home Videos for directory and review sites

Optimising your presence on care home review and directory sites, such as https://www.carehome.co.uk/, can help you increase the amount of referral traffic and sales leads you receive from them.

And, as long as you add them to the brief, they’re well within the scope of any video project – we’d suggest using a shortened version of your welcome video, for example.

5. Care Home Videos for Social Media

Video engages human beings better than any other type of content.

But, you won’t need reminding that any video you share via social media should be kept short and sweet, which means definitely under two minutes but usually, around the 30 second mark is optimal.

Although relatively easy for a video professional to create in post-production, you should always remember to add social media video requirements into any video production brief.

6. FAQ videos

Interesting one. FAQs have long been a favourite of SEO professionals.

Not only are they incredibly helpful for care seekers but also provide opportunities for optimisation using schema, which can improve your website’s visibility on Google’s result pages. So much so that there is a separate schema type for FAQ pages.

Why not take this a stage further and create a whole page with a unique URL for the FAQ and add a video augmenting the copy. 

It’s a really powerful combination.

(BONUS TIP. CLICK HERE TO READ ABOUT HOW A 360 VIRTUAL TOUR CAN BOOST YOUR CARE HOME SEO)

7. Testimonial videos

Real, human testimonials are relatable, reassuring, provide social proof and help to build trust.

A positive, honest review from a current resident can help you build brand credibility and be highly influential in the decision making process of a care seeker.

And a video testimonial is more engaging, authentic and memorable than just reading copy on a webpage.

Staff recruitment, onboarding & training videos

Videos can also be very useful tools to help you recruit, retain and engage staff.

8. Recruitment videos

As we’ve seen, producing a video showcasing all the key features of your care home can be an extremely powerful sales and marketing tool.

Why not change the angle and produce a video for job seekers?

It’s an opportunity to highlight what conditions are like for employees, what the staff canteen is like and other more intangible benefits like team birthday celebrations and social events.

Care Home Videos for recruitment - David Brent

9. Employee onboarding videos

Starting a new job is always challenging and research suggests that new recruits can often feel overwhelmed by too much information, especially if it’s inconsistent and coming from a number of different sources.

Why not distil all the really important information into one video, for example all your health and safety procedures.

It’ll save you time and help your new recruit to integrate quicker.

10. Employee training videos

Why not augment on the job training with a suite of training videos that focus on the most important aspects of providing care in your care home.

New employees can then watch them, and rewind key parts, in their spare time to refresh their memory.

It’s a proven technique within the care industry to help give staff the techniques they’ll need to provide the level of care you want them to.

11. Company culture videos

While quite common in the US, company culture videos are becoming increasingly popular in the UK. If you’ve got an event coming up, why not plan the shoot to coincide with a staff social? It’ll be great fun to share with employees post-event and be useful for giving potential recruits a more informal look at what it’s like to work for you.

It really does pay to spend time planning the subject areas you want to cover in your shoot.
It’s also essential to make full use of the skills of an experienced post-production professional, who can edit the raw footage and create unique, stunning videos for each area of your business.

]]> Care Home SEO: Can Virtual Tours Make a Difference? https://carehome360.co.uk/blogs/care-home-seo-can-virtual-tours-help/ Wed, 14 Dec 2022 15:47:35 +0000 https://carehome360.co.uk/?p=1228

Care Home SEO

There are a number of key metrics and tactics that will influence organic search performance sometimes directly, other times indirectly.

Some of them you’ll have heard of, others might be new, what I’ve tried to do is balance a number of practical ideas with others that are a bit more strategic.

Usability & Dwell Time

Improving usability and dwell time across your site will have an impact on your organic search performance and care home SEO.
There are a number of practical things to look at on your website, in terms of user experience.

  • Do your webpages load quickly on mobile and are they easy to read?
  • Can customers consistently find what they are looking for across your website?
  • On your main landing pages, is the key content easily accessible and not buried at the bottom?

If you find yourself answering ‘no’ to all, or any of these questions, the likelihood is that a customer won’t stay for long on your website.

Beyond these considerations you should also be looking at user, or customer, journeys.

To start off, take a look at all your key landing pages that are ranking well and bringing in direct organic traffic, what do you want the customer to do next? Where do you want them to go?

And there’s one more secret to improving dwell time on any website.

Deliver quality content that not only satisfies the curiosity of your customers, but is easily accessible and interactive.

We used to call it ‘sticky content’ in the business.

Seems like a bit of a weird phrase nowadays, but it’s still relevant. 

Click-Through-Rate (CTR)

Finding ways to improve your CTR from search engine results pages (SERP) can give you an advantage over a competitor, even one who is ranking higher than you.

How? Here’s an example of a simple search journey to illustrate.

After searching for a care home near them, our customer is confronted with a number of very similar descriptions in the SERP.

Take a look at these search results, which one do you think the customer is more likely to click first?

Care Home SEO

Having really impactful descriptions for all your key landing pages, ones that instantly make a connection can really improve your CTR – and bring more customers to your site.

You can alter how your care home business is displayed in the SERP by editing your title tags and meta descriptions.

A good title tag should contain a target keyword or two and your brand name.

Title tags can have a direct influence on ranking and your care home SEO; be careful though, write a poor one and Google will choose one for you.

And while meta descriptions are not a direct influence on rankings, a really well-written one can improve your CTR and increase traffic to your site, which, over time will have an influence on keyword rankings.

More importantly, if you add quality, interactive content to your website a really good title tag and meta description almost writes itself.

Backlinks and Social Shares

Gaining high-quality backlinks from other websites is still one of the most powerful things you can do to improve your online visibility and keyword rankings on Google.

While social shares aren’t officially part of Google’s algorithm they can be hugely influential too.

Gaining links and shares is not easy though.

This might seem obvious, but it’s often overlooked: human beings only share really good quality, interesting experiences and content.

Content that they’re confident will make them look good if they share it.

Imagine two friends who have just bought cars.

  • Friend A, has just bought a 998 cc, 1992 Rover Metro.
  • Friend B, has just bought a 6.5 litre, Lamborghini Veneno Roadster.

I know it’s extreme, but, which one is more likely to share this information among their friends?

Dull, badly written sales content is unlikely to be shared. High-quality, interactive experiences that make a difference to people’s lives are more likely to be shared or linked to.

Ok, so far we’ve touched on a few key metrics and some practicals There are still millions of websites out there, and hundreds all jostling for position in the care home industry.

How can you make your site a bit different from the competition and improve your care home SEO? How do you make your site’s content a bit less static and dull?

How do you make the content on your site more helpful to users? And a bit more sticky?

How can 360 Virtual Tours Make a Difference?

So how exactly will getting a 360 Virtual Tour help your care home SEO? Recently, Google released a new directive called the “helpful content update” which puts the emphasis on creating content for people first.

“The helpful content update aims to better reward content where visitors feel they’ve had a satisfying experience, while content that doesn’t meet a visitor’s expectations won’t perform as well.”

Google Search Central Blog

Let’s just note down a few considerations for care seekers, whether they’re the actual person seeking care or someone looking on their behalf.

Age UK has an excellent page of advice on how to find a good care home. Here is a small sample of some of the questions it recommends care seekers ask before choosing a care home.

  • Are the buildings and grounds well maintained?
  • Is there an accessible garden or courtyard?
  • Do the home and garden feel inviting?
  • Are there pleasant views surrounding the home?
  • Is the home clean?
  • Are the rooms well decorated?
  • Are there enough parking spaces at the home?
  • Is there good wheelchair access into and within the building, including wide doorways?
  • Does the home use signs or pictures to show where things are?
  • Would you have to share a bathroom or bedroom?
  • Do residents usually eat together, or can they choose to eat in their rooms?
  • Are there lounges or social areas with furniture arranged to allow small groups to socialise?
  • Are there facilities such as: a radio, reading room, TV room, newspapers, books or a mobile library, public phone, shared computers, internet reception and hairdressing services?

 

Allowing care seekers, at various levels of digital expertise, the ability to give themselves a guided tour of your care home is an incredibly powerful way to visually answer all these questions.

That’s almost the definition of helpful content.

And when you provide people with positive experiences online, they will more likely remember your brand name.

So, great content not only improves SEO but also increases brand awareness and can boost sales and bed occupancy rates. 

What’s not to like?

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