By Welton Hong, founder and CEO, Senior Care Marketing Max
For years, the playbook for getting a home care agency found online was fairly straightforward: Show up in Google, build a strong Google Business Profile, collect reviews, optimize the website and try to rank as highly as possible for the searches families are making.
That playbook still works.
But something important has changed.
Increasingly, families are asking artificial intelligence platforms the questions they once typed directly into Google.
Instead of searching for “home care agencies near me” and scrolling through a page of results, someone might ask ChatGPT, Gemini or another AI platform questions such as:
- What are the best home care agencies in Phoenix?
- Who provides affordable in-home care for seniors in Springfield?
- What does 24-hour home care typically cost?
- Which home care agencies specialize in dementia care?
- How do I find a reliable caregiver for my elderly mother?
The answers may include several agencies. If yours isn’t among them, a prospective client may never know you exist.
That doesn’t mean Google is going away. Far from it. Google remains enormously important, and people who use AI to narrow their choices may still turn to Google to examine maps, ratings, reviews and websites before deciding which agency to contact.
What’s changing is the role of AI, which I recently addressed in detail on this webinar.
AI increasingly acts as a filter between consumers and the businesses they ultimately consider. That means home care agencies need to think not only about how they rank in search engines, but also about whether they provide the information and credibility signals that AI systems can understand and trust.
The good news is that much of what works for traditional search engine optimization — SEO — also works for what is sometimes called generative engine optimization, or GEO.
You don’t necessarily need an entirely new marketing strategy.
You need to execute the fundamentals better.
AI Is Asking the Same Questions Families Ask
When someone asks a friend or family member for a home care recommendation, the conversation usually boils down to three basic questions:
Is this agency real?
Is it good?
Do other people vouch for it?
AI systems are increasingly trying to answer those same questions.
Consider the first one.
If an AI platform is going to recommend a home care agency to someone looking for help with an aging parent, it needs some confidence that the agency is legitimate, operates in the market it claims to serve and actually provides the services being discussed.
That means consistency matters.
Your agency’s name, address and phone number should match across major online directories. Your Google Business Profile should be complete and accurate. Your website should clearly identify who you are, where you provide care and what types of services you offer.
Other established platforms and directories can reinforce that identity, including Bing, Apple Maps, Yelp, the Better Business Bureau and other reputable business directories.
Why does this matter?
Because search engines and AI systems need to distinguish legitimate businesses from companies attempting to manipulate search results.
A legitimate home care agency should have a clear, consistent digital identity.
That consistency also helps human beings.
Imagine an adult daughter searching for care for her father. She finds one address on your website, another on a directory and a different phone number on an old social media page.
That creates doubt at precisely the moment you’re asking her to trust your agency with someone she loves.
Reviews Are More Than a Five-Star Number
The second question — “Are you good?” — brings us to reviews.
Home care agency owners already know that Google reviews matter. But simply having a large number of five-star reviews isn’t the whole story.
Recency matters.
Consistency matters.
And responding to reviews matters.
An agency with hundreds of reviews but little recent activity can look very different from an agency that steadily receives feedback from clients and families and responds thoughtfully to it.
That’s particularly important in home care because families are making a deeply personal decision.
They’re not simply choosing a plumber or a restaurant.
They’re deciding who will enter their parent’s home, help with personal care, prepare meals, provide companionship, assist with mobility or dementia care, and potentially spend many hours each week with someone they love.
Reviews can help answer the trust question.
AI systems also don’t necessarily rely exclusively on Google. They can look across multiple online sources when assessing a business’s reputation, including review sites and other directories.
The broader lesson is to build a genuine reputation across the web rather than trying to engineer a particular score on a single platform.
And whether a review is positive or negative, it deserves a thoughtful response.
Social Media Is Becoming More Important to AI
For traditional Google rankings, an active social media presence hasn’t necessarily been a major direct ranking factor.
AI changes the equation.
When AI systems are trying to determine whether a business is legitimate and actively serving customers, social media activity can provide another piece of evidence.
Are you posting?
Are people engaging with your posts?
Are caregivers being recognized?
Are you sharing community involvement, educational information and agency news?
Does your Facebook or Instagram account look like an active home care business — or like a page that hasn’t been touched in three years?
This is another example of AI behaving much like a human.
If a friend recommended a home care agency to you, you’d probably look it up. You’d visit the website. You’d check the reviews. You might look at Facebook to see whether the agency appears active, professional and involved in the community.
AI can perform a similar investigation — only much faster and across many more sources.
Your Website Is No Longer Just a Brochure
Perhaps the biggest change home care agencies should make is to rethink what their website is supposed to accomplish.
Historically, many agency websites functioned primarily as digital brochures. They listed the agency’s history, location, services, staff and contact information.
That information remains important.
But today’s website also needs to answer questions.
Think about the questions a prospective client or family member might ask:
- How much does home care cost in Springfield?
- How many hours of home care do I need?
- Do you provide 24-hour home care?
- Do you offer dementia or Alzheimer’s care?
- Can your caregivers help with bathing and personal care?
- Do you provide transportation?
- Can you provide overnight care?
- Do you accept long-term care insurance?
- Do you provide care for people with Parkinson’s disease?
- What happens if my regular caregiver calls out?
- How quickly can you start care?
- Do you serve families outside the city where your office is located?
- How do you screen and train your caregivers?
The answers should be readily available on your website, written in clear, natural language.
This is increasingly important because searches themselves are becoming more conversational.
People aren’t always entering two or three keywords into Google anymore. They’re asking complete questions — and Google’s AI-generated answers and other AI platforms are designed to understand those questions.
A page that clearly answers the question gives both the search engine and the AI something useful to work with.
There’s a simple question every home care agency owner should ask: Can a stranger understand what my agency does, where we provide care and what makes us different within five seconds of landing on our homepage?
If the answer is no, you’ve got a problem.
Your homepage should clearly communicate your identity, service area and core services. Your service pages should explain those services in meaningful detail. And your website should include answers to the questions families are actually asking.
Think About the Communities You Serve
Location-specific content is another important piece of the puzzle.
If your agency serves five major communities, it can make sense to have dedicated pages for those communities rather than simply listing five city names somewhere on your homepage.
Suppose someone searches: “Who provides dementia home care in Phoenix?”
A generic home care services page isn’t necessarily going to provide the strongest answer.
A well-developed Phoenix dementia-care page, on the other hand, could explain your services, the communities you serve, what families can expect, questions they should ask when choosing an agency, and what makes your agency different.
The same principle applies to other services and communities.
You might have pages addressing:
- Home care in Phoenix
- Dementia care in Phoenix
- 24-hour home care in Phoenix
- Respite care in Phoenix
- Home care for veterans in Phoenix
- Home care in Scottsdale
- Alzheimer’s care in Scottsdale
The goal isn’t to stuff these pages with keywords.
In fact, that approach is increasingly counterproductive.
The goal is to create genuinely useful resources for people who need your services.
Write naturally. Use conversational language. Answer questions directly.
Those aren’t radically different from traditional SEO best practices. They’re simply becoming more important as search evolves.
Your Google Business Profile Remains Critical
With all the attention being paid to ChatGPT and other AI platforms, it’s easy to overlook one of the most important digital assets many home care agencies have: their Google Business Profile.
Don’t.
Make sure the listing is completely filled out.
Your business name, address, phone number and hours should be accurate. Your primary and secondary categories should make sense. Your services should be listed. Your photos should be current.
And keep the profile active.
Adding photos and posts isn’t something you should do once when the profile is created and then forget about.
Your online presence should demonstrate that you’re actively operating your business.
For a home care agency, that could mean posting about caregiver recognition, community events, educational programs, new services, agency milestones and other legitimate activity.
You want someone who discovers your agency online to see signs of a living, active organization.
Don’t Confuse SEO and GEO
There’s been a rush in the marketing industry to create new terminology around AI search.
One of the most common terms is GEO — generative engine optimization.
The concept is real. But home care agency owners should be cautious about marketing companies that want to charge a completely separate monthly fee for “AI optimization” without being able to explain what they’re actually doing.
Much of the work that makes a website understandable and authoritative to Google also makes it useful to AI systems.
If you’re already paying for SEO and your strategy includes accurate business information, high-quality content, service pages, location pages, frequently asked questions, strong reviews, reputable citations and an active Google Business Profile, you’re already doing much of the work.
If an agency says it offers a separate AI-search service, ask a simple question: What are you doing for AI search that isn’t already included in our SEO work?
There may be legitimate additional services.
But there should be a clear answer.
Don’t Forget the Ads
Organic visibility is only part of the picture.
Google is increasingly incorporating advertising into AI-generated search experiences, while ChatGPT has also begun introducing advertising to some users and queries.
The mechanics and availability of these programs continue to evolve, so home care agencies shouldn’t build their entire strategy around them.
But they are worth understanding.
The important distinction is that advertising and organic visibility serve different purposes.
An advertisement can buy visibility.
It cannot buy an organic recommendation from an AI system.
If someone asks an AI platform to recommend home care agencies in your community and your agency is organically identified as a legitimate, reputable option, that’s valuable.
If that same person also sees your advertisement, even better.
But the advertisement doesn’t replace the underlying work.
The organic foundation still matters.
How Do You Know Whether You’re Being Found?
One of the biggest challenges with AI search is measurement.
Traditional digital marketing gives us relatively clear data. Someone searches Google, clicks a result and arrives at your website. Analytics can track much of that journey.
AI makes the journey less visible.
Someone might ask ChatGPT for home care recommendations, see your agency mentioned and then call you directly.
There may be no website visit to attribute to AI at all.
Or they might see your name in an AI response, search for your agency separately on Google, look at your reviews and then contact you.
The original AI interaction can disappear from the measurable portion of the funnel.
That’s why agencies shouldn’t judge AI visibility exclusively by website referral traffic.
The consumer journey is changing, but the fundamental funnel hasn’t disappeared.
AI may simply be moving the consumer further down the funnel before your agency’s website ever gets involved.
Your Homework: Ask AI About Your Own Market
There’s an easy way to begin understanding where you stand.
Open ChatGPT and ask: “What are the best home care agencies in [your city]?”
Then look carefully at the answer.
Are you mentioned?
Who else is mentioned?
What information does AI provide about the agencies it recommends?
What websites, directories or review sources appear to be influencing the answer?
Then try more specific questions:
- Who provides home care in [city]?
- What are the best home care agencies for dementia care in [city]?
- Which agencies provide 24-hour home care in [city]?
- What home care agencies serve [city or county]?
- What are the most highly rated home care agencies in [city]?
- Which home care agencies accept long-term care insurance in [city]?
If you’re not being mentioned, don’t immediately assume you need a new AI marketing program.
First look at the fundamentals:
- Is your business information consistent across the web?
- Is your Google Business Profile complete?
- Are you regularly receiving reviews?
- Are you responding to them?
- Does your website clearly explain what you do?
- Does your website answer the questions families are asking?
- Do you have useful pages for the communities you serve?
- Do you have dedicated pages for important services such as dementia care, respite care or 24-hour care?
- Are people engaging with your social media?
- When you search your own agency name, do you like what you see?
Those questions get to the heart of what AI systems are trying to determine.
Ten Questions Every Home Care Agency Should Ask
Here’s a simple self-assessment. Give yourself one point for every “yes.”
- Does my website clearly say what my agency does and where we provide care within the first few lines?
- Do I have useful pages for the major communities I serve?
- Does every important service page answer a real question near the top?
- Is my Google Business Profile complete and using appropriate categories?
- Have I added a photo or post to my Google Business Profile recently?
- Do I have at least as many Google reviews as my closest competitors?
- Have I received a new review within the past 30 days?
- Do I respond to every review?
- Is my agency name, address and phone number consistent across major online directories?
- When I search for my own agency, do I like what I see?
Eight or more “yes” answers mean you’re in reasonably good shape.
The Future Is Less About Rankings and More About Being the Answer
Search is changing quickly, but the fundamental objective hasn’t changed.
You want to be the home care agency a family can find, understand and trust.
Google isn’t dead. In fact, it remains enormously important.
But consumers now have another layer between themselves and traditional search: artificial intelligence.
AI can filter the market before a family ever sees a Google results page.
That makes your digital reputation and online presence more important, not less.
The home care agencies that benefit from this shift won’t necessarily be the ones that chase every new AI marketing buzzword.
They’ll be the agencies that build a strong digital foundation: accurate business information, useful content, strong reviews, an active Google Business Profile, clear service and location pages, an active social presence and a website that genuinely helps families make decisions.
In other words, the goal isn’t simply to rank.
It’s to become the answer.
Welton Hong is the founder and CEO of Senior Care Marketing Max, a division of Ring Ring Marketing, which has helped hundreds of home care agencies grow their revenue through proven online marketing strategies. Visit SeniorCareMarketingMax.com and follow the company on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and X.
