The Senior Living Search Audit: Why Some Communities Get Found and Others Don’t

Key Takeaways

• Multi-location senior living communities need organization schema on the homepage to help search engines understand each location as a distinct entity with its own address, phone number, and geocoordinates.
• Title tags should lead with the service category and location, not the brand name, to match how families actually search for senior care.
• Individual community pages need local business schema, not organization schema, and should live at clean URLs rather than parameter-based ones.
• Duplicate “About Us” content across location pages is a common issue that signals low content effort to Google and should be made unique to each community.
• Alt text, meta descriptions, and H1 tags are quick wins most senior living sites are leaving on the table.

Quick note: Dane lost his internet connection midway through this session, so we wrapped up earlier than planned.

What a Live Senior Living SEO Audit Actually Looks Like

In October’s webinar, Dane Saville walked through live audits of real senior living communities, looking at exactly what Google and other search algorithms see when someone searches for senior care in their area.

The results were a good reminder that small technical details add up quickly, and that multi-location communities face a specific set of challenges that single-location businesses don’t.

Here’s what came up most consistently.

Organization Schema: The Foundation Multi-Location Communities Miss

If you operate more than one community, your homepage needs organization schema. This is a piece of structured data that tells search engines you are a multi-location business with individual locations, each with their own geocoordinates, address, and phone number.

Without it, Google has to guess how your locations relate to each other and to your main brand. It often guesses wrong.

For individual community pages, the schema type shifts. A single community page should have local business schema, not organization schema. Using the wrong type at the location level is a common mistake, and it means search engines are missing a clear signal about what kind of business each location actually is.

Title Tags: Put the Topic First, Not the Brand

This one showed up across multiple communities. Title tags were front-loaded with the brand name, like “Givens Communities, Senior Living in North Carolina,” when they should lead with the topic and location the page is trying to rank for.

Google uses title tags to understand what a page is about. A title that opens with the brand name tells Google this page is about the brand.

A title that opens with “Senior Living” or “Senior Care” tells Google this page is about senior living in that location, which is what your prospective residents and their families are actually searching for.

The fix is straightforward: flip the order. Lead with the category and location, follow with the brand name if you want to include it at all. Something like “Senior Living in North Carolina | Givens Communities” gives Google and searchers a clearer picture.

One related concept worth knowing: cosine similarity.

It’s an algorithmic measure of how closely related two words or phrases are in meaning. Google uses it to evaluate whether your page language matches how people actually search for your services. “Senior Living,” “Senior Communities,” and “Senior Care” all carry high cosine similarity to each other. Using the language your searchers use, not just your internal terminology, signals relevance.

H1 Tags: Support the Title, Don’t Duplicate It

The H1 doesn’t have to be word-for-word the same as the title tag, but it should reinforce the same topic. Think of it the way Dane described it: if a chemistry textbook says “Chemistry” on the cover, chapter one had better be about chemistry, not Shakespeare.

Several communities reviewed had H1 tags that led with the community name or a brand tagline rather than the service type and location. The H1 should be doing SEO work, not just repeating the logo.

Individual Location Pages: Clean Up the URL Structure

For multi-location organizations, individual community pages should live at clean URLs, something like /communities/vista-ridge-south-nc/, rather than using parameter-based URLs like ?location=vista-ridge-south.

Both can rank, but clean URL structures are easier for search engines to parse and easier for users to share and remember. The extra effort to set them up correctly is worth it.

Alt Text: Descriptive, Not Generic

Image alt text came up in the audit as a tactical miss most communities could fix quickly. Sliders and gallery images were tagged with generic descriptions like “grocery shopping” rather than context-specific descriptions like “care provider assisting resident with grocery shopping at [community name].”

Alt text does two things: it helps visually impaired users understand what’s on the page, and it gives search engines additional context about the page’s topic. Both are worth the extra thirty seconds it takes to write a real description.

One note on homepage sliders: research Dane referenced found that only 6% of homepage clicks go to a slider at all, and by the third slide, that number drops to under 1%. If you have a slider, make sure the images are doing real work, tied to services, availability, or community life, rather than generic photography, and make sure they’re embedded properly rather than coded as background elements (which search engines often can’t read).

Duplicate Content Across Location Pages

For communities that share ownership or history, it’s tempting to use the same “About Us” content across multiple location pages. The audit caught this on two communities sharing the same About Us text.

Google’s content effort algorithm evaluates how much work it would take to reproduce a piece of content. Content that’s easy to duplicate signals low value. Even for locations with shared history, About Us pages should be unique enough to describe the individual location, its specific amenities, its team, and what makes it different from the other communities in the organization.

A quick way to check: copy a sentence from your About Us page, paste it into Google with quotes around it, and see how many results come up. More than a handful of identical matches means you have a duplicate content issue worth addressing.

Meta Descriptions: Write Them, Even If Google Rewrites Them

Several location pages had no meta descriptions at all. Meta descriptions don’t directly affect rankings, but Google uses them when rewriting title tags, and a missing meta description gives Google more room to substitute something less useful.

Write them. Keep them clear and specific about the community and services. Even when Google rewrites them, the original signals your intent.

The Bottom Line for Senior Living Search Visibility

Search visibility for senior living communities comes down to the same things it always has: clear signals for search engines, accurate and complete information at each location, and content that reflects how families actually search for care.

Multi-location organizations have an additional layer of complexity: making sure each community can be found on its own terms while still benefiting from the brand’s overall authority.

That means the right schema at each level, unique content for each location, and consistent information across every listing and directory where the community appears.

Most of what came up in these audits was fixable. None of it required rebuilding a website from scratch. It required attention to the technical details that search engines use to understand who you are and where you are.

Want to See What Google Sees When Someone Searches for Your Community?

We’ll walk through your senior living website and Google Business Profile and show you exactly where you stand: what’s working, what’s holding you back, and what to fix first.

Request a Free Local SEO Audit