Have you ever wondered how Serenity Hospice compares to Clear Path, Rivercross, Progressive, Compassion, and Sunflower hospice when it comes to Google?

First thing you need to realize is that when people are searching for hospice care, they don’t always search simply for “hospice.” In fact, I’ve tracked down the most common search words and phrases for people looking for what you do. These are the keywords people are searching for thousands of times each month just in Wichita!

When tracking the results for you and other competitors, the numbers break down like this:

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VISIBILITY:                   When these words and phrases are searched, even the highest result of Rivercross Hospice is merely being seen 0.64% of the time, that’s only 1 in 156 searches. Overall visibility is not great for any of these hospice sites largely because they are pretty thin (not much content) and are getting pushed aside by the likes of Harry Hynes, Amedisys and Encompass.

AVG. POSITION:          Your average position isn’t at the top but it’s light years better than Compassion and Clear Path. But with an average position of 27.25, Serenity’s listing is primarily showing up at the bottom of the 3^rd page of Google results. This is a real problem since hardly anyone searches beyond the first page.

The challenge is, as I am sure you know, that when it comes to Google, the spoils largely go to the handful of sites at the very top of the first page. This guide will break down exactly HOW to get you there!

We are going to touch on 8 areas that are CRITICAL to ranking well on Google and how your presence stacks up in each of them.

1. Your profile on Google
2. Your website
3. Site speed
4. Reviews
5. Content
6. Backlinks
7. Citations
8. Call to Action

Let’s jump in!

#1 – Your Profile on Google

Of course, when it comes to having a clear, strong presence on the web, the first place to start is how your profile looks on Google. Is it complete? Claimed? Verified? Good photos added? Recent posts? Video? Are your hours listed? These all make it easy for Google to “see” who you are, what you do, and why you deserve to be #1.

When somebody finds Serenity Hospice Care on Google, the red box below is often the “face” of your business.

In absence of any photos, an image of the building’s exterior is the only photo that appears on your Google profile. With your long history in Wichita, I am sure we could provide more impactful photos that would do a much better job of capturing WHY people should be giving Serenity Hospice Care their business!

Images currently on your Google profile:

So what does a good Google profile look like? Here is an excellent example of the Google profile for Patton Termite and Pest right here in Wichita, a company that we have worked with:

I am sure you would agree these 105 photos really help to show off their history, their connection to Wichita and their BIG team of people who all have a great deal of experience at killing pests!

#2 – Website feedback

Your website is the foundation of making your phone ring and putting your online presence to work. It’s home base.

The Serenity Hospice website has a lot going for it. The biggest piece I see that is missing is ‘heart’. You show that with people, community, and the behind-the-scenes story that makes Serenity a great place to work and do business with.

Almost without fail, the highest viewed page of our clients’ websites is the ABOUT page. People want to do business with people they can relate to, who are good at what they do, people who care and have real experience.

Your bios are great and are a lot better than many sites I looked at, but they are still not quite showing the care, the compassion, and the trust behind what you do that will lead website visitors to reach out!

Personally, I would rather see an unfinished website page then an impersonal, cold, cookie-cutter image like this one – https://www.chot.org/about/hospice-team-members/

Smiling, culturally-sensitive, cookie-cutter images don’t build trust and they don’t encourage website visitors to stick around.  https://www.crossroadshospice.com/locations/kansas/kansas-city-ks/

Here is another example of a stock photo, an image that people are savvy enough to know isn’t genuine to the business. – http://www.asanahospice.com/

I was not able to find several REALLY good examples of hospice facilities showing their team, a positive culture, spirit, and pride in what they do. I was really surprised at how hard I had to look. I came across dozens of Hospice websites that pretty much all felt cold and impersonal and full of stock photos.

http://www.hospiceplus.net/

https://www.vitas.com/tx/dallas-fort-worth-hospice

https://www.comforthospice.com/

http://onecommunityhospice.com/about-one-community/

At least in these examples they have photos of real people (although no bios)

https://www.amityhospice.com/amity-staff

Not great, but way better than most!

http://cchnet.net/why-compassionate-care/

So which hospice website is doing it well?

I found this suburb example from Kansas City, with images of real staff and patients and some amazing videos of their location and service!

https://www.kchospice.org/about/

This site is full of great, local content: Community events, genuine testimonials, FAQ, grief programs.

This website is WORKING for them. The proof is that it’s ranking pretty consistently at #1 for hospice in KC!

The great impact and success of using actual images and telling your business’s real story cannot be overstated. I have seen for myself with the companies I have worked with – HVAC, plumbers, body shops, pest control companies, dentists, etc. – that they have ALL seen measurable impact by putting a face to their business. If showing this level of personality and heart can be so effective for an HVAC company, just imagine how important it would be for someone who’s trying to determine which hospice organization to work with during a loved one’s last days.

I am proud to have helped create gorgeous websites for such local companies as Hanna, Fenix, Treescapes, Hensley Insurance, Patton Termite & Pest, Autocraft, and Alexander video productions

I would never say building websites is our passion, but we do it to help save our clients a TON of money. To us, a website is a tool that should be doing several things

• Help Google to understand who you are, where you are, and why you deserve to be at the top.
• Draw potential customers to your site, provide them VALUE, and lead them to take action (pick up the phone and schedule a free estimate, ask a question, etc.).

#3 – Site speed

Why is it important?

This one is a no brainer. We have all visited a website and had it load sooooo slowly. You know how quickly you move on when you run into a website like this.

This is definitely one of the EASIEST wins for our clients. It’s amazing what having a snappy website can do for rankings, the amount of traffic, how long visitors stay, and what pages they view.

Does Google provide a free tool that you can use to check the speed of your website?

They sure do! You can visit – https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

Here’s another free tool that you can use to check your website speed – https://gtmetrix.com/

Currently, your site speed is a SERIOUS issue that could be having a significant impact on the traffic you are currently receiving.

#4 – Reviews

Reviews are invaluable to today’s service-oriented businesses, so it’s hard to overstate just how important this section is!

Customers are becoming increasingly reliant on reviews before making a buying decision. Facebook and Google are constantly encouraging its users to review businesses they visit and even to become “local guides.”

Reviews are a ranking factor to Google, which means it can impact the amount of traffic a website receives and, ultimately, how many phone calls you receive.

Currently, you have 3 reviews on Google:

You also have a total of 9 reviews on sites Yahoo! Local and Yellow Bot.

We have had tremendous success helping clients collect reviews and would love to share some success stories in this area!

#5 – Content

If you were to search Google for the phrase, “content is king,” this is what you would find:

Good content is the answer to people finding you among the many different ways they are searching for the services you provide. If your mission is to be #1 on Google, then it’s vital that the content on your website (text, images, videos) references who you serve, what you do, and why you are great.

In your case, if you look at the sample list of keywords at the top of this guide there is a LOT of searches for ‘the difference between hospice and palliative care.’ There is clearly a lot of confusion around this and that means opportunity for you! The first hospice facility that creates useful content around this subject will start coming up #1 for this type of search!

#6 – Backlinks

BACKLINKS are a VERY important factor in showing up at the top of the first page of Google. A backlink is anything you click on another website that takes you to YOUR website. In other words, that site is “linking” to you.

I will explain it this way:

Let’s say Serenity Hospice Care sponsored an event for Riverfest this coming year. You also donated some money to Thunder Hockey in exchange for a banner and your name being announced between innings, and you also said something great about Matthew (the guy who created this case study).

In exchange for you doing those three actions, this is what happened:

The folks at Riverfest added you to the bottom of their website as a sponsor.

Thunder Hockey did the same thing.

I love adding new testimonials to my site and always link back to the person who said something nice. This provides “proof” the testimonial is real and helps whoever gave it to me.

To Google, links are basically votes of confidence. The more relevant, authoritative, and local links you have, the “stronger” your website will be. Links are all about QUALITY – NOT QUANTITY.

Using a powerful tool called Ahrefs, we can see you how “strong” your domain is, how many links you have, and a number of other important stats about your online presence.

• DR is your “domain rating,” or how strong and authoritative the serenitycares.com domain is. Your score of 16 lets us know that something’s preventing your website from having any trust. This could be toxic links from other websites pointing to your site, or technical issues preventing Google from crawling your site.
• Backlinks refers to how many times other websites point to the serenitycares.com domain.
• Referring domain refers to how many individual domains or websites are linking to you. For example, you could have dozens of links pointing to your website all from the same domain, such as an industry association.
• Organic keywords refer to how many keywords you are currently ranking for. Keywords are simply what word or words people are typing into Google that lead them to your website.

Figuring out WHY your DR (domain rating) is so low would be my top priority. That alone is costing you hundreds of visits every month.

To put it in perspective, here are the results for several other hospice companies:

To summarize, from this sample of hospice service websites, yours is doing the best with Domain Ratings while Rivercross and Progressive are neck-and-neck for having the best results with Backlinks, albeit still not many.

Nobody in Wichita is doing well in this area!

This is a MASSIVE opportunity for one hospice company, and I guarantee it would pay off BIG TIME. Backlinks are the single MOST powerful ranking factor there is!

#7 – Citations

A citation is simply any mention of your business name, address and phone number anywhere across the web (with or without a link back to your site). The most common sources of citations are the thousands of directories that all claim to have thousands of leads just dying to do business with you (complete BS).

Citations are important to your rankings, traffic and ultimately phone calls because Google is looking for CONSISTENCY among the hundreds (sometimes thousands) of references to your business.

If business A tells Google that they are located at 123 N. Main in Wichita, KS., and there are 80 references of them being on Washington, and 30 on Crestway, and 40 more on Main but with a different phone number – this doesn’t inspire much confidence that this is a reputable business doing what they say.

Currently, Serenity Hospice Care has a citation score of 26/100. This is how many citations through the top directories are complete and accurate.

Only 7 of the top citations are correct and 4 have errors (both of these numbers are very low, and the amount of errors is a concern).

#8 – Call to Action

My final point is something that is missing from so many websites today: a clear and friendly invitation to REACH OUT! We need a strong “What’s next?”

A powerful Call to Action is important because it allows us to measure what percentage of your visitors are going to the contact page, how many are going past the first page, and how many are looking at your photos or recent jobs.

We can’t determine success if we don’t have a way to measure it!

Here are some good Call to Action examples from hospice companies:

Summary

Google profile – Your profile is claimed but there are no photos.

Website – I was surprised to see how DIFFICULT it was to find real people, company culture and history across dozens of hospice websites. This is a huge opportunity!

Site speed – This is definitely impacting your rankings and traffic. Google penalizes websites that load very slowly. Very often this is an easy fix.

Reviews – 3.7 stars and 3 reviews on Google is enough to turn some folks away (if they were to find you online). We would love to show you a few ways to raise these numbers.

Content – The content on your website is very thin (as you know). Creating content around the keywords that your potential families are searching for is a huge opportunity for you!

Backlinks – Your backlinks are low, but nobody is standing out in this area! Being #1 on Google isn’t about being a rock star in 100 different areas, we just have to be better than the other guy!

Citations – These build trust and make it easy for Google to see who you are, where you are, what you do and that you are good at it. When your citations show different names, addresses, phone numbers this hurts that trust. With a score of 26/100 this is a red flag for sure!

Call to Action – It’s low on the list of priorities but yes, an enticing call to action on your website would be a great idea!

The potential to increase your online visibility, rankings, website traffic and make your phone ring is tremendous.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all about TRUST. We need to make it easy for Google to see why Serenity is the best hospice facility in all of Kansas!

So, who am I and how do I know we can help you?

Back in 2010, I owned a local service business right here in Wichita. I hired several companies to help us come up high on Google, but I might as well have been throwing my money out the window. I got fed up and spent months figuring out how to do it myself. I applied what I learned to my business website and managed to increase our sales by almost 40% a year for the next 3 years in a row – while spending less and less on “traditional” advertising. That led to helping a couple of friends with their business websites and eventually getting out of the party rental business and into helping local service businesses, like yours, make the phone ring.

Today, I run an exclusive agency right here in Wichita. I say exclusive because we only work with clients we are a great fit with and we only work with ten clients at a time. Our clients aren’t just a number to us.

The Wichita companies we’ve worked with include Autocraft, Fenix Heating & Air, Patton Termite & Pest, Cambridge Family Dentistry, Treescapes, Hanna Heating and Cooling, US Logo, Overhead Garage Door, Decker Electric, and Trinity Rental.

I have also presented to hundreds of business owners at Million Cups, WSU, Center for Entrepreneurship, Chamber of Commerce, and Kansas Family Business Forum.

Read more about us here.

LET’S CHAT

I get it. You could care less about links, citations, useful content and any of this (none of our clients do). You want the phone to RING. You know the web is important and you need somebody smart, that you trust, to help carry the ball and make things happen.

That’s what we do.

We only work with ten clients at a time and are very selective. We don’t do cookie cutter solutions or surface work. We dig deep and make things happen for our clients.

If you would like to have a chat and see if we are a good fit, you can reach me at 316-312-8181 or localseo@matthewrupp.com

Have a fantastic day!

Matthew

A few of the kind words said about us:

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