Have you ever wondered how Progressive’s Google rankings compare to Clear Path, Serenity, Rivercross,  Compassion, and Sunflower hospice?

Let’s break it down. The following keywords altogether get thousands of searches each month from users right here in Wichita.

The ‘Avg. position’ column in the below chart shows where Progressive and other popular hospice facilities rank on Google on average. For example, Progressive ranks much better for some keywords and worse for others, but if you average out how well the below hospice facilities rank for all these keywords, you see how you compare.

The local hospices all have low visibility largely because their websites are thin (not much content) and don’t have a great deal of online authority built up which is allowing the bigger facilities to push the local companies down the page of search results.

As I’m sure you know, Google’s spoils largely go to the sites at the very top of the first page. They’re the ones getting all the traffic. This guide will break down exactly HOW to get you there!

We are going to touch on 9 CRITICAL areas and how you stack up in each of them.

1. Your profile on Google
2. Your website
3. Site speed
4. Reviews
5. About us
6. Multiple locations
7. Content
8. Backlinks
9. Citations

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?

Recent posts?

Videos?

Hours of operation 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 Progressive Home Health & Hospice 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 be doing a better job of capturing WHY people should be giving Progressive Home Health & Hospice their business!

Images currently on your Google profile:

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

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 killing pests!

#2 – Website feedback

I must admit that after spending hours on hospice websites, the Progressive one has a LOT going for it!

• Smiling photos of real people!
• Videos of employees (fantastic)
• Design is good.
• Easy to navigate and understand what you do
• There is not a lot of history about who started the business or when or how it has grown over the years, but your site has 10x more personality than any other hospice website in Wichita!

The only real drawback I see is very common with many websites today. The content is really thin. This is an issue because of how Google determines which links show up high in searches.

Google is VERY good at returning the BEST possible results based on the keywords that a person types in.

Your website’s ‘job’ is to help Google see that Progressive is the BEST possible result and deserves to be #1. A lot goes into that, and most of the factors are touched on in this guide, but at the end of the day the CONTENT, the text, the words on the different pages need to carry most of that weight.

Your website is great, but when your hospice care (and same with your other services) consists of ONE page of content, Google isn’t getting enough information to send searchers to your site.  –

And on that one page, this is how much of its about Hospice.

The rest of the page includes related content, but not specifically supporting the same subject.

Grief support, pain and system management, equipment, supplies & oxygen, medications. While these topics are related, they could be considered separate services you offer.

We have had massive success helping Cambridge Family Dentistry with their content. Granted this isn’t realistic for every industry but in the instance of Dental Implants, you have a costly purchase that has a lot of emotion (and worry) attached to it, so people very often do a good bit of research before deciding.

We worked with them to answer these and a LOT of other questions!

This was also part of how we were able to take them from 2,000 to over 7,000 visitors a month!

I am proud to have created gorgeous websites for such local companies right here in Wichita as Hanna, Fenix, Treescapes, Hensley Insurance, Patton Termite & Pest, Autocraft, and Alexander video productions

To us, a website is a tool, just like a screwdriver or hammer, that should be doing two 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 needs a little work but isn’t a serious issue.

#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 8 reviews on Google:

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

#5 – About Page

Without a doubt, the area that Progressive is head and shoulders above EVERY other hospice facility in Wichita is your photos (of real people) 😊 and the video on your About page!

Your “About” page is INCREDIBLY important, not only to Google but also to your potential customers.

It’s arguably the most important page of your site. This is where you get to show off “the good stuff.”

What goes on behind the scenes, and what makes your team or company great. Your personality. Your commitment to excellence or your community involvement—the “heart” of what makes your business great.

Almost without fail, the ABOUT page is the HIGHEST viewed page on almost all our clients’ sites.

I struck out to find several REALLY good examples of hospice facilities showing their team, a positive culture, teamwork, spirit, and pride. I was really surprised at how hard I had to look. I came across dozens of hospice websites that were pretty much all cold, impersonal and full of stock photos.

I did find one

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 and ranking #1 pretty consistently for hospice in KC!

#6 – Multiple Locations

Having your website come up strong in multiple locations can be a tricky process, but it’s very achievable.

The key is making it crystal clear that you have a presence in Wichita, Omaha and Newton.

We have a couple of clients who we are in the process of helping in this area and so far, the results have been fantastic!

If you would like to learn some specific strategies for Progressive to rank well on Google, for ALL your locations, give us a shout today. We would be happy to help!

#7 – Content

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

There are OVER 2 BILLION pages dedicated to that subject.

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 are a LOT of searches for “the difference between hospice and palliative care.” This is clearly an area of confusion, and that means it’s an opportunity for you! The first hospice facility that creates useful content around this subject will start coming up #1 for this type of search!

#8 – 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 website B that takes you to YOUR website. In other words, that site is “linking” to you.

I will explain it this way:

Let’s say Progressive 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 many other important stats about your online presence.

• DR is your “domain rating,” or how strong and authoritative the progressivecare.com domain is. A score of 2.5 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 progressivecare.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.

To summarize, this shows you which company is doing the best in each area. While Serenity is doing the best for Domain Ratings, you have the largest number of websites linking to your site.

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 and Nobody in Wichita is doing well in this area!

#9 – 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, Progressive has a citation score of 34/100. This is how many citations through the top directories are complete and accurate.

Only 10 of the top citations are correct and 5 have errors.

Summary

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

Website – Your website has a LOT going for it! 😊

Site speed – This is an issue but not a major one.

Reviews – Having 8 reviews on Google isn’t bad, but we would love to show you a few ways to multiply this number.

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 aren’t high, but you have more than most companies!

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, and/or phone numbers, this hurts that trust. With a score of 34/100 this is a red flag for sure!

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 Progressive 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 a dozen clients at a time. Our clients aren’t just a number to us.

A few of 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, someone who you can trust, to help carry the ball and make things happen.

That’s what we do.

We only work with a dozen 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:

“I want to express how pleased I am with Matthew Rupp of Matthew Rupp Consulting. He and his company recently redid our old web site (Cambridge Family Dentistry located in Wichita, KS). Wow, were we ever pleased. Matthew is smart, easy to get along with, a hard worker, and knows his stuff. I would highly recommend him to any person who wants to see their Internet business take off and bring in more customers.” Dr. M Dean Wright President and Founder Cambridge Family Dentistry

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