Home Care Marketing & Sales Mastery by Approved Senior Network®

Home Care Marketing with Home Care SEO for Your Website

Valerie VanBooven RN BSN Season 5 Episode 3

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Unlock the secrets to boosting your home care business's online presence with expert insights from Valerie Van Booven. Imagine capturing the attention of potential clients even before they realize they need your services—Valerie guides you through the intricacies of SEO, ensuring you bypass common scams and harness the power of strategic keyword research. Discover how a well-optimized website and an updated Google Business Profile can set you apart in a competitive market, while targeting less competitive long-tail keywords to enhance your visibility.

Ever wondered why some home care brands like Visiting Angels and Home Instead consistently outperform the rest? Learn how to use Google Ads effectively, despite the challenges posed by job seekers, and why brand recognition should take precedence over generic search terms. Valerie shares invaluable tips on leveraging tools like SEMrush and harnessing the potential of AI in search results, ensuring your brand stays ahead in the evolving digital landscape. You'll also explore advanced SEO tactics, including the use of schema coding and links in SERPs, to maximize your online reach.

Finally, Valerie emphasizes the importance of local market optimization, especially in areas like Elizabeth, New Jersey. Get practical advice on producing detailed, long-form content that can rival larger competitors, and understand the significance of maintaining a fast, mobile-friendly website. With insights from Valerie, along with Don and Lisa, you'll be equipped to tackle common pitfalls such as thin content and neglected website maintenance, ensuring your home care business thrives online. Whether you're considering a professional website overhaul or simply need guidance to enhance site performance, this episode is your roadmap to SEO success in the home care industry.

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Speaker 1:

All right, we're going to go for it. Today is February 12th 2025. I'm Valerie Van Boeven. I know you don't see me very much, but they're going to let me talk today. Well, maybe you see me, but I don't ever. I haven't talked in a while. So today is we're going to talk about online marketing a little bit.

Speaker 1:

I think you all got the emails from Annette. She's been doing a wonderful job. So let's talk about SEO and this is a highly complicated conundrum of things. I'm going to try to keep it really simple and you're welcome to ask any questions that you want. You can put them in the chat and Lisa or Dawn or Annette will let me know if there's any questions. I know this is complicated and I know that it's hard to understand everything maybe I'm talking about, but you'll get the basics. So we all should know by now.

Speaker 1:

We've probably heard about SEO over and over again and people are spamming you and calling you and emailing you and filling out forms on your website that say oh, your website doesn't show up on the first page of Google, so we'd like to do some SEO work for you. Don't fall for scams. In your email, they'll always tell you the same exact thing Talk to somebody who actually knows what they're doing. Don't just respond to any weirdo that emails you about your website. So SEO refers to the process of improving your website's visibility on search engines like Google and Bing. Improving your website's visibility on search engines like Google and Bing this means that you want to show up at the top of the search engines when families, adult children, are searching for terms like home care services near me, senior home care providers, things like that. So we're going to talk about these areas, keywords, which I'm going to show you the list. So get your phone ready because you're going to want to take a picture. Content and local SEO, because all of you are local businesses and so you definitely want to be, you know, showing up locally and at the bottom of on every slide. I just put a little picture of a little website we just did recently, so you can just see our little portfolio. Put a little picture of a little website we just did recently, so you can just see our little portfolio. Okay, so the challenges of SEO in home care are how much competition you have, and mainly that's it is a lot of competition. You all, who are in some of the most competitive areas in the nation. Understand that better than even I do that you are competing against 300 other home care agencies on a daily basis just within like a 10 mile radius.

Speaker 1:

And also sensitive topics you're talking. You're not talking about plumbing and roofing. You're talking about sensitive things that you have to be compassionate, respectful. You can't. You know like a plumber and a roofer can say weird things. I don't know how to explain that, but we know we have to be nice about what we say and we have to be warm and caring in the way we talk.

Speaker 1:

Whereas some other professions can get right to the point Trust building, families often research extensively before choosing a home care provider. Now, most of the time, or a lot of the time, people are calling in an emergency right, can you start services this afternoon? However, there are a lot of adult children, daughters, caregiver, family caregivers who start looking into this and they are tire kickers. They're researching. They're not sure. They don't even know how much it's going to cost. They think Medicare is going to pay for it, so they will research this a lot before they, you know. But all of those people, by the way, are worth capturing because someday they're going to need it. Six months from now. You want to be the person that they reach out to, so these challenges emphasize the importance of a well optimized home care website.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so the key elements we're going to talk about keyword research, long tail keywords, local SEO, content and technical SEO. There's all kinds of different things that go into this. I'm going to show you the keywords that we look for and sometimes this changes a little bit, but I'm going to show you some really interesting developments in keyword phrases. Long tail keywords If you ever hear that, you know that that just means it's the longer version of instead of 24 hour home care. It might be how to find 24 hour in-home care for elderly parents. Google understands what that person is looking for. Whether they type in 24-hour in-home care, 24-hour home care or how to find 24-hour, you're going to get different results, but they understand that you're looking for services near you, basically Affordable home care services for seniors in Los Angeles. You're going to get basically the same results as someone who types in home care services. So long tail is really important. They're less competitive. It's great to rank high for a lot of long tail keywords. A lot of these frequently asked questions are really important for you to rank for Local SEO.

Speaker 1:

So your Google business profile. The name of this has changed many times over the years. We used to call it Google my Business. A Google business profile plays a major role in this, so you want to make sure that you have ownership. If you are the owner of your business, you should own or be an owner of your Google business profile. Or sometimes it's your franchisor who owns it and you're a manager of it. Whatever the case, but make sure that you have your most up-to-date information on it. For our clients, we post five days a week on their Google business profile and we make sure the keyword phrases that we're going for are in those posts and we also do a lot of other things. But that is really helpful, getting you to show up and you should be able to look month after month, year after year. I think it goes. Maybe it goes back six months to see your insights or you know how many visitors there oh, we got a dog problem. Sorry, poor Layla.

Speaker 1:

And then content. So if you have a website that doesn't have any blog posting or long form content, that is a huge problem. Blog posts can be short and to the point, because most readers aren't going to read a dissertation every time you post it, but sometimes you need to have that long form content, and I'm talking 1,500, 2,000, 3,000 words, maybe a guide to home care in your local area. You need to keep doing that, not just one time, but many times over the course of a year. Best home care services for stroke recovery those kinds of things are going to really help people come to you. I'll tell you, it's weird Some of the blog posts that we do.

Speaker 1:

I look at a lot of data and a couple of things stand out to me that are really weirdly interesting. A blog post about soft foods that seniors can eat, or puree diet, or soft foods that seniors won't choke on seniors won't choke on that is one of the most searched. I mean, it gets a huge amount of website traffic. If you have a blog post that talks about that, which I get, is not really conducive to getting a new client, but you got to know those caregivers have a problem or their family member does. So it's really interesting how much traffic blog posts get and we're always interested in seeing that, and different topics really garner a lot of and stuff you wouldn't even think of, like soft foods, I mean, I don't think that's strange. Or hair washing how to wash a senior's hair who's bedridden is a big one, because those family caregivers are trying to figure this out without drowning their grandma and it's it's hard to do so anyway. It's weird.

Speaker 1:

But lots of good content. You must continuously have good content on your website. And then technical seo goes into things like making sure your website is mobile friendly, that it quickly we're going to look at some speeds and make sure it's designed for mobile first of all. And also there's something called schema code that we put on all of our websites behind the scenes and we do it manually because we do a lot more of it than most people, and that really helps you. Google doesn't see the pretty pictures on your website. It sees all the code behind the scenes, and so in that code you need to tell them who you are, what you do and where you're located and all the service areas that you cover, and if you neglect to do that, then you might rank for one town but no other towns. So it's one of those things that it takes a long time to learn all of this.

Speaker 1:

But you definitely want to work with someone who understands the home care industry, because if you, I've seen in the past that folks have gone with sort of a generalist and what happens there is, especially if they're not US based they don't understand the healthcare system in the US and they will believe that. I've seen this happen. I've seen websites that are search engine optimized for home care jobs the keyword phrase home care jobs and while that might be one of the most searched phrases in the home care universe, it is not the one that you want your entire website to be search engine optimized for Maybe one page, but not your whole website. So just be careful who you hire. Okay, let's talk about speed. So on my screen here, and if anybody has questions, just put them in the chat and Lisa or somebody stop me if I need to stop. So let's talk about speed.

Speaker 1:

This is a technical issue with SEO. You need to have A ratings for speed. You need to have great ratings for speed. Here is a couple of different examples of websites. On the top left, this is a desktop version of the website and you can see that it has an A grade Perfect. We want the largest contentful paint, meaning the largest amount of content to be served up in one to two seconds. So there you can see, it's 1.2 seconds.

Speaker 1:

But we also want an A grade on mobile, and this is what a lot of web developers neglect to tell you is that if you have too much going on on your mobile version, that the speed will be too slow. So you can see that we have A grades. Those are mobile versions. You see how it looks like a little phone there. So we measure the mobile speed and we always want it to be an A and there's lots of things that go into this. So what our web developer does is we go, he goes through or our team goes through and we look at all the scores and if someone is you know, maybe they were an A last year, but this year they look more like a B he'll go in and update some plugins and do some things and readjust to get a better speed and then he'll bring it up to an A. So we're always working on that and looking at that. Make sure on mobile, you are an A, all right, here's one of the most requested pieces of SEO.

Speaker 1:

What are the top keyword phrases for home care agencies? Take a picture so this is searches per month nationwide. This is not in your local area. This is nationwide. So when we look at the word home care by itself two words, that keyword phrase Across the entire United States of America, there are 27,000 searches, as with home health care. But not everybody can use the keyword phrase home health care, depending on where you are, what to a 20 mile radius of your office or whatever your territory is. Think about how few searches there probably are in your area. So not 27,000 people are searching for home care in your local area, maybe a hundred, maybe 50, um, you know, per month in your area. There might be more than that, depending on if you're Miami versus West Winnemucca, nevada, but 27,000, okay.

Speaker 1:

So if we look at the keyword phrase senior care, it's 18,100. But let me ask you this when? Well, let me tell you this this is my opinion and you may feel the same way or differently. But senior care is awesome, right? But is it really good idea to search engine optimize or worry about the word senior care? I don't think it is. I think that partially. If you have senior home care, senior care at home, in-home senior care, those are all great, but senior care by itself, you're now competing with every nursing home, every assisted living, every independent living, every senior apartment, every adult daycare, everything you can imagine for senior care. So, in order to be more specific, always make sure you have the word home care in there. If you're working on the word senior care, always make sure you have the word home care in there if you're working on the word senior care.

Speaker 1:

Home care services 18,100. Home care agencies near me 14,800. I will also tell you that from doing Google Ads for home care agencies, we have a. If you've ever done Google Ads, you know there's this terrible problem with job seekers and job seekers from other countries hitting on your Google ads and calling and wasting everybody's time and filling out forms are not supposed to be filling out and they type in the exact same thing that a consumer would type in. Home care agencies near me is one of those keyword phrases that they type in in order to find a home care agency to spam. So just know that some of these are still fraught with job seekers.

Speaker 1:

Home care agency, in-home care, home care assistance so anybody here I don't know if we have anybody from the key here, but home care assistance was the name for the key years ago, right, and then they rebranded to the key. I thought that was weird, but so home care assistants used to have a huge amount of searches and now they're down to about 5,400. I'm going to show you brands on the next screen so you can see what brands are knocking it out of the park. Home care assistants used to be one of those, but I'm going to show you what it is today. Senior home care 5,400, 24-hour home care 36, dementia home care, personal care services, live-in home care, companion home care, at-home personal care, and I could go on and on and on with these. But I want you to notice that when you're focusing on things like companion care, that might be a little higher than 390, but this is nationwide. So you have to be real, know these or just understand that realistically.

Speaker 1:

In your local area you're not going to nearly get this kind of traffic or search, but it is highly competitive. So let's look at some brands. Visiting Angels is at the top. It used to be that Home Instead was at the top. Home Instead was the very top brand name for years and years and Visiting Angels was down in here somewhere. Now Visiting Angels has gone to the top with 74,000 searches.

Speaker 1:

So this is more than the word home care. This is brand. So all of you, 100% of you, whether you're a franchise or an independent, your brand name matters and in a 20 mile radius of your office or whatever your territory coverage is, everybody should know that if they're thinking of home care, they're thinking of your brand name Everywhere. It should be everywhere. That's why being out in the community is so important and that's also why having your online marketing correct and being out there is so important, because brand really does matter. You're going to sell more making sure your brand name is well known than you are making sure you should use the word home care. I know that sounds crazy, but it is very true. Pay attention to brand. So, visiting Angels 74 at Home Instead $49,500 right at home. Then Comfort Keepers about the same. Senior Helpers Bright Star Care. And there's the key Senior Helpers Bright Star Care. And there's the key. The key is at 9,900 right now and that's terribly lower than it used to be. Synergy Home Care First. Light Home Care always best.

Speaker 1:

I tried to do as many as I could think of Touching Hearts. Griswold Home Care changed their name recently to Griswold Care Pairing, and Griswold Care Pairing only gets 110 searches, whereas Griswold Home Care gets about 4,400. So when you do rebrand, sometimes that takes a hit. Assisting Hands is at 4,400. Touching Hearts at Home, comfort Care, americare, talum, a Place at Home, homewell, golden Heart and Amada. So I try to put as many as I can on there. But the important thing to know is that brand does matter.

Speaker 1:

Any questions about keyword phrases or brand. We do have a question how can you find the number of searches for each one, like, how did you find this? Somebody's asking oh, I have software that tells me this. I use SEMrush. Semrush is really expensive. I think you might be able to do some things for free SEM, s-e-m, rush, r-u-s-h but what I did was I did searches using their keyword magic and it's an amazing database. There's other ones out there. There's A-Refs, a-h-refs, there's other ones. You can find tons of them and they may give you a little bit different, but this is pretty accurate. Generally speaking, I would say All right.

Speaker 1:

So AI has become very important. Whether you love it or hate it, it's going to be how people find information. So one of the things we're going to talk about we have a webinar coming up February 19th and one of the things I'm going to talk about in that is about AI a little bit and how to make sure you're showing up when AI gets involved. So Google has AI results in their search results now. So there's a couple of things I want you to know about. One is called links in SERPs, and if you're not an SEO person, you're like I have no idea, lady, what you're talking about. That means that you have clickable URLs that appear alongside your listing or when you show up. So if you look at this top picture for A-plus in home care, you can see that below that this is organic results. This is not a paid ad, but you can see that below that they have about us, contact us, personal care at home, veterans, home care. And the reason that stuff shows up is because the way we put together our websites, the way we do each page, the schema code that we use, is very specific, and that helps Google understand that all these pages are relevant and they matter, so they will list them on there, and they also have longevity, so they'll list them underneath the listing, which gives you more visibility. So it's good to have links in your SERPs and then AI summaries in SERPs.

Speaker 1:

So if you've ever now these are mainly with long questions and long tail keyword phrases. So this is a not a keyword phrase that I would think anybody needs to go after specifically, but chronic disease management, elizabeth. Now that sounds kind of ridiculous, but it's chronic disease management in Elizabeth, new Jersey. Now, you and I both know that no consumers are going to type that in, but it's interesting to see how you show up for these long tail keyword phrases. And so I can see that one of our clients, adult Alternative Home Care, shows up in this AI overview in Elizabeth, new Jersey. So I could type in a couple of different things and they would still show up as a recommended resource or as a healthcare service. And you want to be one of those companies that shows up as a recommendation in your local area. So Google does an AI overview and they are listing a couple of the top providers in Elizabeth, new Jersey, and that's great. You totally want to be there.

Speaker 1:

Now, if you just type in home care, Elizabeth, new Jersey, you're not going to get an AI overview. Ai overviews are for long tail or questions. Sometimes you might get it. Or what is home care? You know those kinds of things, but generally speaking, this isn't going to happen every time, but when it does. You want to be listed. So one of the things that in our SEO program that we're working on as we go is making sure that we're answering those frequently asked questions so that our clients are showing up in those AI summaries. You want to be that company.

Speaker 1:

If you look at ChatGPT right now, if you were to use that for some search and some information, chatgpt primarily uses Bing as its information source, as its information source, so it's really important that you have a good presence on Bing as well. These results matter because you have more visibility, credibility and more traffic. People are going to pay attention to that when they type it in. All right, seo does work for home care. It does increase your website traffic. You do get more phone calls and inquiries. It might not be thousands of visits, but it definitely makes a difference. It is always important to show up as high in the search engine rankings as you can. You're not going to get there for every single keyword phrase every single time, but you are going to get there eventually if you have patience.

Speaker 1:

Some of these take six months to achieve, so I put some examples up here for you. For instance, a population of 545,000 with an office in Fresno, california, in that metro area. That's about the population size and you can see some of the things we just talked about. So they have their for in-home care Fresno, their number three on the map. So that little signal there, that little dot or whatever that marker thing, that means that they're number three on the maps for in-home care Fresno, and that's important. You want to be on the maps for some of these. And then site links on SERP. So we talked about that a minute ago. That means if somebody types in personal care at home Fresno, which is this one up here, you're going to see them right away. There they are. Here's personal care at home Fresno. And then boom, there they are and they have those site links in there. So that's great common and I'm going to show you some more examples in just a second.

Speaker 1:

Common mistakes are just ignoring it and not worrying about it and not caring about it and having a jank store website. I don't know, I use the word jank store. If you have a website that hasn't been taken care of, you've not paid attention to it, you think you're never going to get any leads from it, so it doesn't matter anyway. Your competition is taking the opposite attitude. I can tell you that, and they are going for it. On the online marketing. It does not mean that you can stop being visible with community outreach, but what it does mean is that you're getting the benefits of both. So don't ignore it Publishing thin or generic content.

Speaker 1:

Thin content means this your service page says we provide companion care, and there is a little bulleted list of things that go along with companion care that every single home care agency in your area also lists, and there's no depth to your content. There's no explanation. There's no why choose us? There's nothing else. Because you didn't want to take the time to write it and your web developer is not offering to. So we write all the content for our clients and then they get to go through and edit it or whatever. But that long form content is what helps them compete with visiting angels home instead home helpers. So when we write long form content, we do a great job on their website. That is what helps them compete with the big guys Neglecting the technical details.

Speaker 1:

So if your website's loading slow and we see this every single day, not with our websites, but when we're trying to show somebody, hey, you're getting a, c, a, d, an F on speed. If your website is slow, google doesn't want to show it, and they don't want to show it because that's a bad customer experience. You do not want your website to load slow on a desktop or on a mobile device, because if it does, they're out of there, they're moving on to something else. Nobody's going to wait around five seconds for your website to load. It's got to be just like this. Skipping long tail keywords, not focusing on a lot of keyword phrases that are less competitive, can hurt you.

Speaker 1:

You want to make sure you're answering all those long tail questions, those you know. How do I know it's time for home care? How do I know it's time for my loved one to start home care? How much does home care cost? I know nobody wants to answer that online, but you can answer it without giving prices. So you want to make sure that you are answering those questions. All right, how long does it take to work? I always tell everybody it takes six months. We have some really good results in the first 30 days sometimes, but it really depends on everything. It depends on where you are. How much competition is there. You know if you're in West Winnemucca, nevada. I use that example. All the time there's no one there, it'll rank faster than Miami Florida. Miami is going to take six months easily and you'll probably get great ranking for some long tail keyword phrases, but we're talking about one of the most competitive places in the entire home care industry. It's going to take a minute.

Speaker 1:

A valid, optimized, verified Google business profile is a must, and your willingness to participate in assisting your own results is really important. This is a team effort, not just a you hire somebody and they go away and then you go away effort. You got to help. So 24 hour home care Elizabeth. This is a population of 136,000 and it took a while. Elizabeth, new Jersey doesn't sound like a big town. 136,000 is nothing to sneeze at but they are also in the middle of a very congested, very high population area like Clark, new Jersey. Everybody around them has 136,000. So it's still a very robust area with a huge amount of competition and it took a long time for this company to get to where they are. So you can see that they're number one for all these keyword phrases. They're on the map. For most of them, they have links in the SERPs, which we talked about, and they also at the bottom here. I already showed you that they have an AI overview in the SERPs. That's a very long tail keyword phrase, but some of these little short ones, they're doing great. So this is a took a while for them to get to that, but they are there.

Speaker 1:

This is Houston, texas. Population 2.3 million. This person has been a client of ours for a very long time, and this goes from April 2023 to January, january 2024. Now they've been a client longer than that, but we started doing a lot a deep dive into their website and their SEO. They had their website redone by us a while back and so we started doing a deep dive. And Houston is very challenging, very challenging. But here they are with lots of number ones, number twos, number threes, number fours. We consider anything number 10 and above over here on this side to be on the first page of Google. If you've noticed, I think, google has unlimited scroll now, just a perpetual scroll, so you really don't know where one page ends and another begins in some cases, however, the top 10 results are what we're looking for, basically, so we're happy to have them in the top 10 for lots of different keyword phrases for Houston and then San Diego. We're also happy to say that we have this client number two and number three for home care in San Diego and 24-hour home care in San Diego. If you know anything about California, you know that the folks at 24-hour home care have a big presence and not only is it super competitive in that area, but 24-hour home care pretty much dominates for the word. 24 hour home care, because that's their name. Anywhere they are in California is pretty much where they are most of the time. So, but here we are at number three, so I'm pretty proud of that.

Speaker 1:

Doing it yourself, seo versus hiring an expert. Some home care businesses can handle SEO on their own. I, of course, because I'm biased. This is what we do. I think hiring a professional can lead to better results faster.

Speaker 1:

It doesn't mean that it's an easy path. It's sometimes full of. You know, google changes their algorithm pretty much every day. But the big changes we'll have a client that's doing wonderful, everything's great, for a long time. This isn't short-term results. These are long-term results that we're looking at here and they'll be doing great. And then, all of a sudden, google will change something about their algorithm and they'll tank and their numbers will go way down. But what we know, because we've been doing this for a long time. If you just hang on a minute, it'll go right back up, because when Google changes their algorithm, everybody takes a little bit of a hit for one reason or another. It just depends on what that algorithm changes and then the people who are doing the right thing recover. So it's important to work with someone who knows this is a short blip on the radar screen and it'll all come back All right, and then we have what do? We have?

Speaker 1:

Honolulu, hawaii. So this is a 30-day result. These people have been here for a very long time, but they had a really bad website before we redid their website. We did some enhanced SEO and boom. That's all it took to just catapult them to the top. One of the challenges with Honolulu and Hawaii is that they're very it's a close-knit community and they use certain words that might be a little different than what some of us would use, but you can see here these are pretty much normal keyword phrases and they're coming up really nicely. We have some that you use, but you can see here these are pretty much normal keyword phrases and they're coming up really nicely. We have some that you know home care Honolulu. We want them to be higher than a nine and they'll get there eventually, but this is really good for a population of 341,000, just 30 days out.

Speaker 1:

And then we have Aurora Colorado, where you can see they were nowhere for a while and then boom, now they are doing really well and it's August 2023, no presence, versus October of 2024. They have no office location in this area. That's another thing that I should mention. If you have an office location, it's much easier to get you to rank than if you have no office location. You want to rank for Aurora Colorado, but you have no presence there. It takes longer in a competitive market to get you where you want to be because you have literally no presence. You have no physical presence there, so it does take longer.

Speaker 1:

All right, any other questions? No, everybody's good, everybody understands. I know it's a lot. All right, getting started with home care SEO to improve your website's SEO, start with these. First of all, look at your Google business profile. Get it, make it accurate. Add pictures, details, photos, frequently asked questions. Do all the things. Add location-specific keywords to service pages and blog posts. Create helpful content that answers common caregiving questions Uh-oh, uh-oh. Incorporate long-tail keywords to attract highly targeted traffic and ensure your website is fast, mobile friendly and easy to navigate.

Speaker 1:

If you need one of us to run a speed test on your website for you, we will happily do that.

Speaker 1:

Just reach out to don or lisa or me, but don and lisa can handle it. They will give you a whole little rundown on what's going on with your website for you. Where you show up, where you don't show up, they'll run those like these pictures that I just showed you. They will run those for you and show you where you're doing great and where you have no presence at all. It's worth knowing, because if your web developer can change something for you quickly, then they should change something for you. If your speed is terrible, ask your web developer to make that to fix it. Our web developer fixes it, so your web developer should be able to fix it. And if they can't or they won't, or it's a Google or a GoDaddy website tonight, do-it-yourselfer, or Squarespace or something like that, and you don't have a web developer it's kind of a do-it-yourself then think about the investment of having a website that does everything you need it to do and works for you when you're asleep.

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