The Challenge
When this national multi-location home care provider approached Census Partners, they faced a familiar problem in the industry: despite delivering exceptional care across dozens of service areas, they were virtually invisible online. Operating at $2M in annual revenue, they knew organic search represented a massive untapped opportunity—but they had no idea how to capture it.
A Fragmented Digital Foundation
The company had grown through acquisitions and organic expansion, leaving their digital presence scattered and inconsistent. Each location operated semi-independently, resulting in duplicate Google Business Profiles, inconsistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone) data, and a website that treated multi-location operations as an afterthought rather than a strength.
Their competitors—many of whom provided inferior care—dominated local search results simply because they had invested in their digital infrastructure years earlier. Families searching for “home care near me” or “senior care services in [city]” were finding everyone except our client.
The YMYL Challenge
Healthcare falls under Google’s YMYL (Your Money Your Life) classification, meaning search engines apply exceptional scrutiny to any content that could impact someone’s health, safety, or financial wellbeing. For home care providers, this creates a significant barrier to entry.
You can’t simply publish content and expect to rank. Every piece must demonstrate genuine Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). Without established credibility signals—expert authors, medical review processes, citations from authoritative sources, and backlinks from trusted healthcare publications—even the best content will struggle to gain traction.
Our client had none of these elements in place. Their existing content, while accurate, lacked the credibility markers that signal trustworthiness to both search engines and potential patients’ families.
Competing Against Established Players
The home care industry is dominated by national franchises with deep pockets and decades-old domain authority. Competing for high-intent keywords like “home health aide services,” “senior care options,” or “in-home nursing care” meant going head-to-head with organizations that had been building their online presence since the early days of search.
Traditional approaches wouldn’t work. We needed a strategy that could establish authority rapidly while building sustainable, compounding organic traffic across every service area.
The Core Challenges We Identified
- Zero local search visibility in any of their primary service areas
- Fragmented Google Business Profiles with inconsistent or duplicate information
- No authoritative backlinks from healthcare or medical publications
- Content lacking medical credibility—no expert review process or author credentials
- Missing technical SEO foundations—no structured data, poor site architecture, slow load times
- No E-E-A-T signals—nothing to demonstrate expertise or trustworthiness to Google
- Massive content bloat—100+ pages of thin, duplicate, and cannibalized content
- Poor site performance—6+ second load times on mobile due to WordPress technical debt
Our Strategy
We developed a comprehensive organic growth strategy built on four pillars:
1. Multi-Location SEO Infrastructure
We built dedicated location pages for each of their service areas, optimized to support their Google Business Profile listings. Each page was crafted with:
- Location-specific content addressing local home care needs
- Consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone) data
- Local schema markup for enhanced search visibility
- Integration with Google Business Profiles for review management
2. E-E-A-T & Medical Content Excellence
In healthcare SEO, credibility isn’t optional—it’s everything. We implemented a rigorous content process:
- Medical review process: Every piece of content reviewed by qualified healthcare professionals
- Expert author bios: Established clear authorship with credentials
- Citation of medical sources: Referenced peer-reviewed studies and medical guidelines
- Regular content audits: Ensured all information remained current and accurate
3. World-Class Content Strategy
We developed comprehensive content covering every aspect of home care their target audience searched for:
- Condition-specific care guides
- Caregiver resources and support content
- Insurance and Medicare/Medicaid navigation
- Family decision-making guides
- Local community resources
4. Authority Building & Link Acquisition
We executed a strategic PR and link building campaign targeting the most authoritative healthcare publications:
- Healthline - Health information and wellness
- Harvard Health Publishing - Academic medical authority
- Cleveland Clinic - Renowned healthcare institution
- Mayo Clinic - Global leader in medical care
- The Lancet - Premier medical journal
- WebMD - Consumer health information leader
These weren’t paid placements—they were earned through genuine expert contributions, original research, and newsworthy insights about the home care industry.
5. Content Audit & Consolidation
Before creating new content, we conducted a comprehensive audit of the existing website. What we found was a common problem: years of uncoordinated content creation had resulted in significant bloat and keyword cannibalization.
We identified and removed over 100 pages that were actively harming the site’s performance:
- Duplicate location pages targeting the same keywords with thin, nearly identical content
- Outdated blog posts with inaccurate medical information that posed E-E-A-T risks
- Cannibalized content where multiple pages competed for the same search queries, diluting ranking potential
- Low-value service pages that added no unique information beyond what was already covered
- Orphaned pages with no internal links, never indexed or ranking for anything
This consolidation effort immediately improved crawl efficiency and allowed Google to better understand the site’s topical authority. The remaining pages saw ranking improvements within weeks as the diluted link equity and topical signals were concentrated on fewer, higher-quality pages.
6. Technical Performance Optimization
The client’s WordPress site was suffering from years of accumulated technical debt. Page load times exceeded 6 seconds on mobile—an eternity in an industry where families often search for care solutions during stressful, time-sensitive situations.
We implemented comprehensive WordPress performance optimizations:
- Image optimization: Compressed and converted images to WebP format, reducing total image weight by 73%
- Caching implementation: Configured browser caching, page caching, and object caching for dramatically faster repeat visits
- Database optimization: Cleaned up post revisions, spam comments, and transient data bloating the database
- Plugin audit: Removed 12 redundant or poorly-coded plugins causing render-blocking issues
- Core Web Vitals fixes: Addressed LCP, FID, and CLS issues to meet Google’s page experience requirements
- CDN integration: Deployed content delivery network to serve assets from edge locations nearest to users
The results were dramatic: mobile page load times dropped from 6+ seconds to under 2 seconds. This improvement contributed directly to better search rankings—Google’s page experience signals became a ranking factor, and our client was now ahead of competitors still running bloated, slow websites.
The Results
Within 15 months, the transformation was remarkable:
Traffic & Visibility
The Google Search Console data tells the story. We achieved:
- 249,000+ annual clicks from organic search
- 17.9 million impressions establishing brand visibility
- 95% of all website traffic now comes from organic search
- Dominant rankings for high-intent home care keywords across all service areas
Business Impact
The traffic translated directly to business growth:
- Revenue scaled from $2M to $50M in just 15 months
- 25x growth in overall business size
- Sustainable, compounding organic traffic that continues to grow
- Reduced dependency on paid advertising
Authority Established
The E-E-A-T work paid dividends:
- Featured in major healthcare publications
- Recognized as a thought leader in home care
- Strong review profiles across all locations
- First-page rankings for competitive industry terms
Why This Worked
Three factors made this transformation possible:
-
Industry Expertise: We understood home care. Census, compliance, referral relationships, admissions processes—we spoke the language from day one. No learning curve meant no wasted time or budget.
-
E-E-A-T First Approach: In healthcare, you can’t shortcut credibility. Our medical review process and authority building created a foundation that Google rewards.
-
Integrated Strategy: Local SEO, content, technical optimization, and link building all worked together. Each element reinforced the others, creating compounding growth.
The Takeaway
Organic search isn’t just a marketing channel for home care providers—it’s the growth engine. When 95% of your traffic and conversions come from organic search, you’ve built something sustainable.
This case study proves that with the right strategy, even highly competitive healthcare niches can be dominated through organic search. The key is understanding both SEO and the industry you’re serving.
Ready to achieve similar results for your home care agency? Schedule a strategy call to discuss your growth potential.