Aged care providers
Local SEO for aged care providers.
Your real competitor is not the home down the road. It is the referral site that ranks above both of you, collects the family first, and charges you for an introduction to somebody who was already looking for you.
- $6,313
- median monthly assisted living cost, June 2026
- $5,300 to $7,200
- typical monthly range, early 2026
- $4,000 to $11,000
- state to state variation, per month
- nearly 10%
- cost rise in some regions on occupancy and labour
Search this yourself and see who is above you
Search assisted living followed by your city. The first several results will not be providers. They will be referral aggregators: large, well-funded directories that rank for every location, collect the family's details, and then sell or pass that family to providers for a fee, often a substantial share of the first months of care.
This is a rational business and it exists because providers collectively left the space empty. The family searching is doing so for the first time, has no vocabulary, and needs guidance more than they need a facility. The aggregators provide guidance. Most provider websites provide a virtual tour and a list of amenities.
Getting in front of the aggregator on their own terms is difficult and mostly not worth attempting. What works is being the answer to the questions they cannot answer specifically: what care actually costs in your town, what the local waiting lists are, how the local funding process works, and what happens when a family's circumstances change. Local specificity is the one thing a national directory structurally cannot match.
The searches worth competing for are the local and specific ones
The generic ones belong to the aggregators and will for the foreseeable future.
| Search type | What they type | Where their head is at | Priority |
|---|---|---|---|
| Local cost and process | aged care cost [city], how long is the waiting list [region], funding assessment near me | Specific to your area. The aggregator answers this generically and you can answer it exactly. | Highest |
| Condition and level of care | dementia specific unit [city], secure memory care near me, respite care [suburb] | A defined need. Far fewer providers can genuinely answer, and families search it directly. | Highest |
| Decision support | when is it time for a nursing home, how to choose an aged care home, questions to ask on a tour | Months before a decision. Where trust is built and where the aggregators are strongest. | High |
| Generic | assisted living near me, aged care homes [city], nursing homes [city] | Dominated by directories with national budgets. Contest selectively. | Medium |
Five routes, and the aggregator sits across three of them
- Hospital discharge and social work referral
- Urgent, and someone else decides
- Referral aggregators
- Ranked above you, and charging you
- Word of mouth and existing families
- Slow, durable, and undervalued
- Direct search for your name
- Verification after a recommendation
- Local content and community presence
- The gap nobody is filling
What one resident is worth, and what an introduction costs
Costs are published 2026 figures. The comparison with referral fees is the argument for owning your own search presence.
| Median monthly cost, assisted living | $6,313 | June 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Typical monthly range | $5,300 to $7,200 | |
| State to state variation | $4,000 to $11,000 a month | |
| A resident staying two years | roughly $150,000 of revenue |
A referral fee is a percentage of something that was already yours to win.
Aggregator fees are typically a share of the first period of care, which on these numbers is a significant sum for an introduction to a family searching in your own town. Every family who finds you directly is that fee retained. It does not require beating the aggregator on their terms, only being findable on the local and specific searches where they are weakest.
Cost figures are published 2026 medians. Referral fee structures vary by market and are not published consistently, so no figure is stated for them.
Four things a national directory cannot do
Your actual prices, for your actual rooms
Not a range and not on request. Families compare on cost first and the aggregators publish generic state averages. A provider publishing real current pricing is answering a question nobody else can answer accurately.
Local availability, kept current
What is available now, what the wait is, when the next review is. This is the single most useful page you can maintain and the one directories cannot replicate, because the information changes weekly and only you have it.
The local funding and assessment process
Which local office, what the current timeframes are, what documents are needed, who to ring. Written for a family navigating it for the first time. This is genuinely useful and genuinely local.
Your own staff, named, with tenure
Families are choosing who will look after their parent. Staff continuity is what they most want and least often see stated. A page naming the care manager and how long the team has been there does more than any facility photograph.
What aged care providers ask us
Can we outrank the referral directories?
On generic searches, rarely and not economically. On local and specific searches you can win comfortably, because a national directory cannot state your current availability, your actual prices or how the assessment process works in your region.
Should we publish our fees?
Yes, and it is the biggest differentiator available. Families compare on cost, directories publish generic averages, and a provider with real current pricing is the only accurate answer on the page.
What content actually helps?
Decision support written locally. When it is time, how the local assessment works, what the waiting lists are, what questions to ask on a tour. Families spend months on these questions and currently get generic national answers.
How much do reviews matter here?
A great deal, and families read them for specific things: staff turnover, how a complaint was handled, whether calls get returned. Responses to critical reviews are read closely, because the reader is imagining their own parent in that situation.
Should we still work with the aggregators?
That is a commercial decision and many providers reasonably do both. The point of the search work is that it changes the ratio, so that the referral channel is filling gaps rather than supplying the base.
Local SEO for nearby trades
What a customer is worth, and which searches actually convert, change by trade. These are the closest neighbours to this one.
See who is ranking above you in your own town.
The free audit shows which aged care searches you appear for, how much of the first page belongs to directories, and which local and specific searches are open.