Video: 7 Steps to increase web visitors up to 74%

Your home care agency website can be greatly improved with a website makeover by following these seven steps. This is good for both user experience and search engine optimization. (See the video below, and our company mascot Buddy in the background.)

A Chicago-based home care agency was able to increase the number of website visitors 74% after beginning a sitewide search engine optimization program.

Not to brag, but that’s pretty incredible.

Three months after beginning an SEO program with Safe at Home Healthcare, we at Savvy Senior Marketing saw huge increases in six of seven visitor metrics as measured by Google analytics. We took the four full weeks in February and compared it to the first four weeks in November when we started the program.

Overall users during those time periods were up 74%. New users, up 71%. Sessions were up 90%. The number of sessions per users were up 9%. Pageviews were up 103%. Pages per session were up 7%. The bounce rate, which measures those who leave the website after reading the first page they came to, was down 15% (a decrease is a good thing.) Only the average session duration looked poor, as it dropped 7%. (See graph above.)

A slow and steady increase in website visitors on the Google chart above is evidence that our SEO program is working. We are continuing the program.

Here are the seven steps we took to achieve these numbers.

7 Steps of Home Care Website Upgrade:

1. Update your WordPress platform, theme, and coding software.
2. Improve your download speed.
3. Split long pages of essential topics into multiple pages.
4. Prioritize/improve your call to actions.
5. Re-write your content. A second set of eyes is good.
6. Put helpful links between pages.
7. Put in the proper meta tags such as title and description, as well as headline tags.

These seven steps will boost your home care agency website as a lead-generation tool!

Video transcript

Let’s talk about seven ways to improve a homecare website.

My name is Kevin Banet. My company is Savvy Senior Marketing. We do digital marketing for home care agencies. Recently, we redesigned the website of Safe at Home Healthcare, which is based in Oswego, Illinois.

1. Update WordPress platform, theme, etc.

First of all, we upgraded the website, which was a WordPress website, and this particular website used is called the Genesis theme. The Genesis theme has some real advantages. We upgraded the WordPress version, the PHP, which is the code behind it, and also we chose a theme called eleven40.

But what all that means is that the website is now more secure, and the fonts here are nice and crisp and clean. We spaced out the lettering, made it a little bit bigger, put in more (vertical) line spacing. I’ll show you what it used to look like. This is one of the earlier versions of the former website, which, in this case, we already spaced out the lines vertically.

You notice it has the advantage that the video is bigger? It commands more attention, which is always good. Upgrading a website makes it better for mobile devices as well.

2. Download speed

The second improvement is the download speed. The speed that your website downloads both on desktop and mobile is very important. First of all, people get frustrated if they have to wait and wait and a little circle goes round and round. We tested this after we upgraded the website, and we had six different tests from two different cities in the US, and as you can see the average is 1.8 seconds average download.

This is not only better for the user, but Google likes it too. They know that download speed is important, and so they will tend to give you a higher search engine ranking if you have a good quick download speed. Anything under three seconds is good.

3. Split longer pages

Number three is the multiple pages we split up. We had one page for frequent questions that was in the original website. It was six thousand words. So we split it up to six different pages. This makes it easier for the user to read and find out what they want to find out. It’s all laid out. It’s also good for Google, for search engine optimization, because Google likes to see a nice, very clearly laid out, site architecture.

4. Prioritize call to actions

Another thing that we did was we prioritized the call to actions. Now, what I mean is there’s two boxes here. The first one is a checklist, which you can click and go to an order form. The second one is a book, a free book, that you can order. If you look at the original website, these two call two actions were sort of staggered and I thought that that was a little bit… it made it look like the two items were competing for attention. So by putting one on top of the other, we prioritized them. And so the person only sees one at a time.

5. Rewrite content

We did a lot of rewriting on this website. We took the paragraphs, studied them carefully, and sometimes, even though the original author may have very carefully written it, it’s understandable to that person but you often need a second pair of eyes to look it over and to ask what means what, and makes suggestions. The owner and I went back and forth with different versions, and we finally came upon some good content.

6. Add links

We also put links here in various places throughout the page. Most of the links are to other pages on the website. This passes authority to the other pages that they links to. Well, I’m talking about search engine optimization, but also it does help the reader just to jump around to find out what they want. Some of the links also go to news articles in various places on extermal authoritative websites.

7. Put in meta tags

Finally, number seven on our list has to do with meta tags. These tags are in the source code of the website. You cannot see them. The source code displays the website. So here you have a description, which is a meta tag, and here you have the content. This description tells the search engines what the page is about. It’s very clearly laid out. The content of the page must reflect what’s in the description. It has to have keywords reflected in the description’s keywords. There are lots of different keywords, and there’s a main keyword for every page, but that’s the subject of another video.

I’d like to mention that many of these pages initially did not have description tags, and there are other factors here too that had to be worked on. There are also h1 tags and h2 tags. The h1 tag is the main headline. There’s only one of them per page, and then h2 tags are the secondary level of headline, otherwise called a subhead, and then there’s also h3 and h4 and so forth in decreasing level of importance.

Review of seven steps

So that’s it! These are the seven ways to improve a home care website. First of all, you upgrade the website so that you get crisp fonts and proper letter spacing and size. Secondly you look at your download speed. Make it under three seconds if possible. Third, you look over your content. You read it, make sure you understand it, split your content sometimes into separate pages.

Fourth, you prioritize your call to actions. Make them clear, make them compelling. You want to get people to leave their information, their contact information, and also to make phone calls, because this after all is the whole purpose of a website. Five, you do rewriting of the copy, being careful to follow the structure of a certain keyword for every page, and then you have your subordinate keywords as well on the same page.

Then you have links between the pages. Search engines also like to see the linking between the pages. Finally, you make sure all the meta tags are included that are important. You go in, you check all the pages, and then your website will be easy to use, it will be attractive, and it will be appealing to the search engines. You’ll be more likely to get higher up on the front page for any given search.

Of course, search is an ongoing effort month by month where you’re changing the content, improving things as time goes on.

I hope that helps with these seven ways to improve a home care website. My name is Kevin Banet. My company is Savvy Senior Marketing. Just go to our website, SavvySeniorMarketing.com.

What do you think? Do you think it’s important to look at your website, evaluate it, upgrade it if necessary, do all you can to make it attractive – to make it a lead magnet for your home care clients, to make it acceptable to search engines? Let me know in a comment below.

Read more about good home care website design.

Do you want to bring more prospects to your agency’s website? Ask us how your website can be improved. Call the number at the top of the page, or contact us.