What Families Search for When Finding Support
- Maria
How Families Search for Support Services, and What That Means for Your Website
The search begins before they pick up the phone
Getting a diagnosis of neurodiversity for your child is often overwhelming. It’s great to get a name and start understanding how their brain works differently from others’ and how your family’s day-to-day will change. For autism support providers, that moment right after a diagnosis is when being easy to find matters most. Here’s how I help autism support providers get found by those families.
But then, very soon after, most parents race to their nearest device and start searching for information in greater detail, absorbing only a percentage of what they read and being ready with a couple of “must try” changes to their lives that they say will have a huge impact on their child. It takes mere moments before you’re down a rabbit hole and off into some obscure corner of the internet wondering how you got there.
I know this because I did this. I was this parent.
What I noticed during these search marathons was how differently I searched compared to how I would expect a professional to describe what they do. And how families search for support services is the gap that matters immensely to your website.
They’re not searching the way you think
To show up at or near the top of a search results page, one change to your approach will make the most difference to where your website ends up. Think of how your potential clients search.
Families who are trying to learn and help their child are likely going to be looking for “OT for autistic children near me” instead of “occupational therapy services for autistic children”. And it could also look like “Why does my kid have meltdowns?”
Two changes that will help the right families find you
If your website speaks of these things but not in the way they’re being searched for, your site will not be shown in the top results. Your potential clients are going to search using a different language than a fellow professional would use. There are a few things you can alter on your website to improve its SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
Set up and Optimize your Google Business Profile
Ensure your profile is as completed as possible and updated on a somewhat regular basis. Your Google Business Profile is included in search results and on Google Maps. On your profile you can include helpful basic information like opening hours and a link to your website and read/write reviews for your local business. You can set yourself apart from others by including photos and videos to highlight your services and enabling appointment booking to encourage sign-ups straight away.
Update the language used within your site
Your site needs to be in line with how people are searching. Between clinicians you would expect more technical medical terminology and conversation, but when speaking to a client you would likely use more common phrases, and that’s exactly how your website needs to be. For a speech practice, that might mean answering ‘my 2-year-old isn’t talking yet’ instead of a page titled ‘expressive language delay.’ Here’s how this works for speech therapists. With every search, Google will look for a match or the ones closest to their search query. A website filled with accurate but more technical wording will be superseded by one that fits the initial request.
A first step in improving your site’s search engine results page (SERP) positioning is to review the copy on your site. Look at it from a user’s perspective. If it’s too ‘technical’ or overly complex, it could affect your ranking and, even once someone is on your site, confuse them and have them move on to another site that is easier for them to understand. It’s critical to still provide useful and helpful information (Google values these highly), but the difference is in the way you present it.
Once you’ve reviewed the language on your site, then take the next step and establish or update your Google Business Profile. The amount of potential clients gained from this is immeasurable. Customers are 70% more likely to visit and 50% more likely to consider purchasing from businesses with a complete business profile (Source: Google). A completed profile that is actively updated, has photos/videos and gains reviews from its clients can lead to landing a spot in the coveted top-3 “Map Pack” spot. These are 3 results in Google Maps that highlight three businesses within the results. Businesses in the map pack receive 93% more actions like calls, clicks and visits.
Neither of these two pieces requires a complete overhaul of your website nor a big chunk of your marketing budget. Completing them both from a client’s perspective will make a huge difference in how visitors interact with your site. Longer visits and more actions taken (forms filled in, appointments booked, resources downloaded, etc.) mean everything is pushing towards the goal of a higher-ranking site instead of trying to pull people in with paid ads and social media posts.
If you’re not sure quite where to start or want to get moving on it right away, this is exactly what I help with. Book a free 30-minute chat right here.