One of things that I have learned about how Google works is that it loves new content on websites. Many companies struggle to come up with new content – but not us – not funeral homes!

Why? Because we have online obituaries (in Google’s eyes that’s new content).

Great – we don’t have to worry about adding new content as Google will find the online obits – right?

Nope!  As I study funeral home websites, many of them – actually most of them don’t get their obits “indexed” by Google.

Why? Some sites have the obits hosted on another domain (the sites from the casket companies do this), and others are buried deep within a database and can’t be found by Google (usually template-based sites). And for the funeral home web sites that have obits that do get indexed – it takes days or weeks – a long time after the funeral.

Why is this important? Well, if they are not getting being found by Google then people who use Google can’t find them.  Furthermore, the more pages in your website – the more “Authority” Google thinks you have! So if your website was created with Google in mind (61% of Internet users use Google for searching for information) then you should be adding one new page to Google for every obit (call).  150 calls should equal 100 – 150 new pages per year!  But when I check funeral home websites, most of them have 30 to 200 pages indexed by Google and some of these firms are 500 to 1,000 call firms.

In the video below I share with you a case study that I just conducted, plus I show you how to check to see how many pages you have “indexed” by Google and I give you some tips on how to improve your chances.  Please let me know your thoughts.

More more details about being more “Google-Friendly” visit, www.FuneralFuturistWebsites.com for a Free Report.

Please give me your feedback below…

In preparation for my presentation at the ICCFA Annual Convention in San Diego, I am conducting a live Case Study on how to use online videos to promote your services and your website. I have selected three terms to rank for – two are geo-targeted, one for a funeral home and one for a cemetery – both in my home town. The third is for a more general term for my new service, Preneed Referrals. I have created images for the search terms so that the text doesn’t get picked up by the search terms and skew the results.

* denotes graphical image of the video

* denotes graphical image of the video

* denotes graphical image of the video

Notes and commentary

March 16, 2008: Within 6 hours Revver videos were ranking very high in Google and Blip TV was in the middle of the pack for P.L. on the 1st page:

• B.P. in Vic: # 1 Revver
• F.P. in Vic: # 1 Revver
• P .L.: # 3 Revver; # 6 Blip

March 17, 2008: Yahoo videos appeared on Yahoo near the top. AOL Videos (not sure how they got their hands on the videos) but who cares as they started ranking in the middle of the first page. Still no sign of YouTube & Google Video and the search spiders must sleeping at MSN.

March 20, 2008: Revver fell as quickly as it rose. AOL videos are in their place. Interesting that the destination website pages are climbing in MSN but not the videos. I guess they accept the link power from the descriptions in the videos – Always remember to use http:// with your URL.

March 23, 2008: Still no sign of YouTube, but Google Video is starting to appear. MSN Live Search seems to be hard to crack – good thing that over half the people use Google. Speaking of Google, in all cases, videos gradually climbed up the ranks into the Top 10. I will leave the final date open for awhile and then see how long the videos stayed in the top SERPs.

May 5, 2008: YouTube has not only arrived, but it is at or near the top on the first page on Google. Also, all three search engines filled out over the month especially MSN’s Live Search. All three search terms dominate the first page of Google with at least 50% of the results. In particular, McCall’s has 70% of the “Funeral Planning in Victoria BC” results including #1 through #4.

June 30, 2008: A few results have slipped, but YouTube is dominant.  One thing that I noticed was other Funeral-Related videos that I have uploaded to my accounts were becoming the “Indented Result” which could be the cause for some of the results being pushed down.  Time to upload a second set of related videos – check back soon!

Please ask your questions or leave your comments below about this case study. Is there another topic that you would like me to tackle?