Remember back in the olden days when we were in college and used highlighter on every single page in our books? There was a fine line between highlighting too much and not highlighting enough of the important stuff. The same holds true when it comes to using bold on blog posts and web copy.
We’ve long been proponents of finding ways to make it easier for older adults and family members who visit your senior living website to be able to quickly scan a page.
Once they confirm that yep, it’s a page or post with the answers they are looking for, most will read through the page or post again in greater detail.
The interesting news is that Google recently confirmed bolding a blog post’s key points or the most important information on a web page does help your SEO.
Here’s what they had to say..
Google Confirms Using Bold on Blog Posts and Web Pages Helps SEO
In a couple of tweets back on November 12th, here’s what Google’s John Mueller (@JohnMu) had to say about using bold as a way to pump up your SEO:
- It’s essentially semantic HTML – make it easy to recognize (for bots & users) what you think should stand out on a page. Titles help, headings help, highlighting within text helps (like bold, or strong, etc), tables for tabular data, lists as lists, etc.
- These things don’t make your site rocket up in rankings, but especially with regards to understanding pages better, small things can help. Think of it more as giving relative guidance within the page; if you have 5 “SEO-points”, what should they be used for on this page?
That said, you want to make sure to use bold judiciously. Not like some folks who carry things too far and literally bold huge blocks of copy.
Or that you don’t hit bold every time you use keywords or phrases in a sentence. Aint’ nobody gonna stick around for that mess.
You’ll defeat the purpose of bold when you use it on way.too.many.words.
Think of bold as a highlighter. Zero in on the points you want visitors to quickly notice and limit bold to just those words or phrases.
What else can you do to connect with online visitors who read copy differently than they do offline?
We have a few quick ideas you’ll find useful for posting senior living content.
Tips for Making Your Senior Living Content Stand Out
Let’s face it, there is a lot of senior living content floating around out there now.
Some of it is great, educational information. But most of it just isn’t.
So, the first way to make your content stand out is to make sure it’s relevant and useful. That it’s written in a voice that connects with seniors and families.
Then there are other tips we often suggest that make your senior living copy an easier read:
- Keep sentences simple, short and sweet is best
- Break the rules and keep paragraphs short
- Insert headers and subheads to break up copy
- Use photos to add interest every few paragraphs
- Break copy up in to lists and bullet points
- Be generous with white space between paragraphs
If you keep these tips in mind when you are creating and posting your senior care content, you’ll be miles ahead of almost every other provider.
Shoot us a note if you have any questions!