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

First thing you need to realize that when people are searching for hospice care, they don’t always use those exact words. In fact, I’ve tracked down the most common search words and phrases – these are the keywords people are searching for thousands of times each month just in Wichita!

Wonder how many of these searches result in a link to Rivercross Hospice?  (keep reading)

The numbers break down like this:

VISIBILITY:                   When these words & phrases are searched, Rivercross Hospice’s site is seen 0.64% of the time, that’s only 1 time in 156 searches.

AVG. POSITION:          You are NOT showing up on the first page of results in most of these searches which is a real problem since hardly anyone searches beyond the first page of results. You are, on average, the 18^th hospice link to show up.

TRAFFIC:                      Your website has received 1300 clicks from these searches. Imagine how many more visits to your site and more leads you will get by improving your visibility and position.

THE GOOD NEWS:

Your competitors are in as bad, or worse, shape regarding visibility. The reason why it is so low is that none of these sites have the online content needed to show up high in these searches. You are getting pushed aside by the likes of Harry Hynes, Amedisys and Encompass.

Your average position on Google amongst your closest competitors is nearly the best, only slightly behind Sunflower. While you are still showing up mostly on the 2^nd page, you are doing light years better than Compassion and Clear Path.

So how do you get Rivercross to show up on the first page of Google searches?

This guide will break down exactly HOW to get you there!

We are going to touch on 10 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. Name, address, phone (NAP)
6. Content
7. Backlinks
8. Citations
9. Call to Action
10. Summary

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 your profile on Google and how it looks.

Is it complete?

Claimed?

Verified?

Good photos added?

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 Rivercross Hospice on Google, the red box below is often the “face” of your business.

While the current photo on your Google profile isn’t “bad,” with your long history in Kansas and Oklahoma, I am sure we could be doing a better job of capturing WHY Google and, most importantly, people should be considering Rivercross Hospice as their number one choice for local hospice care!

Photos 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.

I am sure you would agree these 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

This section will be specific to them and I will do myself.

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

The Rivercross website has a lot going for it but it’s missing ‘heart’ the behind-the-scenes story that makes Rivercross a great place to work and do business with.

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

Personally, I would rather see an unfinished website page than an impersonal, cold, cookie-cutter image like this one below from Community Hospice of Texas – https://www.chot.org/about/hospice-team-members/

Smiling, culturally sensitive, cookie-cutter images are now seen everywhere on the internet. They don’t build trust and they do not 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 people are savvy enough to know aren’t genuine to the business.  http://www.asanahospice.com/

I struck out to find several REALLY good examples of hospice facilities showing their actual team, a positive culture, teamwork, spirit, pride in what they do and I was really surprised 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.

So which hospice which is doing it right?

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 #1 for hospice in KC!

The great impact and success of using actual images and telling your business’s real stories can not be understated. I have seen for myself with the companies I have worked with – HVAC, plumbers, body shops, pest control companies, dentists, etc. – have ALL seen measurable impact by putting a face to their business.

I am proud to have helped create gorgeous websites for such local companies as

Here are just a few of the gorgeous websites we have built for companies right here in Wichita. Hanna, Fenix, Treescapes, Hensley Insurance, Patton Termite & Pest, Autocraft, Alexander video productions

To us, a website is a tool that should be accomplishing several things.

• Help Google 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 to even become “local guides.”

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

Currently, you have 13 reviews on Google:

You also have a total 13 reviews on Google.

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

#5–N.A.P.

N.A.P. stands for “name, address, phone number.”

The more consistent the NAP is for your business, the better you will rank, the more traffic you will get, and the more your phone will ring.

It is an extremely important (fundamental) key to ranking well on Google. Remember, it’s a game of TRUST. Google needs to trust that Rivercross Hospice is VERY good at hospice and related services.

This STARTS with making sure that your name, address and phone number are on EVERY page of your website – especially the contact page.

Currently your addresses are not on your homepage or the contact page of your site.

#6 – 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 all the different ways they are searching for the service you provide. If our 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 it’s a great opportunity for you! The first hospice facility that creates useful content around this subject will start coming up #1 for this type of search!

#7 – 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 Rivercross Hospice 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 rivercrosshospice.com domain is. Your score of 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 rivercrosshospice.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 could be 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 small sample of hospice service providers, Serenity is doing the best with Domain Ratings while you are about neck-and-neck with Progressive for having the best results with Backlinks, albeit still not many.

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

Nobody in Wichita is doing well in this area!

#8 – 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, Rivercross Hospice has a citation score of 36/100. This is how many citations through the top directories are complete and accurate.

#9 – Call to Action

My final point is about something that is missing from so many websites today: a clear, 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? How many are looking at your photos or your resources?

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

Examples from hospice companies:

#10 – Summary

Google profile – Your profile is claimed but there are only two photos.

Website – I was surprised to see how uncommon it is to see real people, culture, 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. This is very often an easy fix.

Reviews – 13 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 other local companies! 😊

NAP – Getting your name, address, and phone listed consistently across the web is important. Of course, this starts with having it featured prominently on your website.

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. Your score of 36/100 is a red flag for sure!

Call to Action – It’s down 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 Rivercross is the best hospice facility in all of the Midwest!

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’s 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 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 in Wichita. I say exclusive because we only work with clients we are a great fit with and we only work with 15 clients at a time. Our clients aren’t just a number to us.

A few of the 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, 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 15 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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“I really enjoy our monthly meetings with Matthew. He brings a fresh perspective and a great deal of value to the table. I was really surprised at how thorough Matthew has been in all his interactions with Auto Craft. He is truly a part of the team.” Jaden Randle Vice President Auto Craft Collision Repair

“With Matthew you don’t just get a website, you get a relationship. Matthew and his team have done a great job driving traffic to our website.” Dave Martine Owner Treescapes

“Matthew’s extensive knowledge of web and S.E.O., along with the fresh perspective he brought to the discussion, proved to be just what our team of creatives needed. Our new website reflects many of his insights and the performance continues to grow. My hats off to Matthew Rupp Consulting!” TJ Smith President US Logo, Inc.