Increase Your Online Visibility at No Cost
News people will tell you that all news is local. Before a story makes it to CNN, Fox News or into the New York Times, it was somebody’s local story first. People care most about what’s happening around them. Organic search results on search engines (Google, Yahoo! and Bing) aren’t conducive to local searches. Looking for a florist? Organic search results are limited to the national chains ─ FTD, 1-800-Flowers, etc. ─ because they carry the most “authority” and have a lot of other websites linking to them. Sure ─ a local business can buy paid search links, but not everyone looks there.
Enter local business listings. (Actually, they entered about two years ago, but there are now a lot more people paying attention to these links.)
At least 40% of online searches have local intent. Just like the news, people are most interested in what’s around them. The big three search engines now present links for local businesses on the results page for searches they believe have local intent. Try it ─ search ‘retirement communities’ and then ‘retirement communities in Kansas City’ (or, wherever you’re located). In both cases, you should see a map like the one above.
Senior living communities with a presence in these local listings are getting 20-25% of their website traffic from these links. Frequently, more than 60% of those visits are derived from non-branded searches (meaning: a community’s name is not part of the search query). AND ─ of the visits from non-branded searches, more than 80% are by first-time visitors to the website. The local business results can play a big role in your community’s ability to reach new prospective residents. Oh, and they’re free.
I have a question: In the most recent issue of Deliver Magazine, there is a piece called “The Last Word”. This month they featured a graph indicating growth in the use of social media which indicated current usage at about 46% of population, followed by the question: “Why are we paying so much attention to this if 1/2 the population isn’t” Good question. Comments?
Diane – thanks for your question, and for reading! Social media can impact where websites appear in the organic search and local business results, so it reaches beyond the people that use Facebook, Twitter, etc.. I’ll explain how in an upcoming post, while my colleague Randy Eilts will talk about how senior living communities use social media to connect with the people that do use it.
I would like to know specifically what to do for the free increase you suggest. Do you mean to add our website to some local list of some sort?
I echo Ellen’s question above about how to maximize our search results in this local listing way?
Ellen & Jenny – your communities probably already have listings on Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Just search for your listing, claim it, and the search engines will give instructions on how to verify it.