Does Google Know that You Have Online Obits?

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…

Part 4 – Online Video: Relationship Marketing for Funeral Homes

In this section we talk about the power of online video and how it can help you get higher (and more) Search Engine Results. This section is 26:21 minutes.

Resources:

• Traffic Geyser – Upload videos to multiple sites
  

Please give me your feedback below…

Part 5 – Q & A: Relationship Marketing for Funeral Homes

Here is the Q and A section.  It runs 27:48 minutes and mainly focuses on websites, online video, and search engine rankings.

Please give me your feedback below…

Funeral Marketing with YouTube

What is better than being “number one” in Google?  By being number one through ten of course.  To accomplish this Google domination you have to look beyond your website and harass the power of other websites – like the number one content site, YouTube.  Of all websites, YouTube ranks fourth, but only behind the three main search engines: Google, Yahoo, and MSN’s Live Search. No matter how great your website is it is a speck of dust compared to YouTube and the other online video sharing websites like Google Video, Revver, and AOL Video.

If you would like to see real life examples for the funeral industry, you have to check out the case study that I conducted where McCall Bros. Funeral Home now occupies seven out of ten results for ‘Funeral planning in Victoria BC’ – including spots one through four.  The study shows how the videos impacted the search results in Google, Yahoo, and Live Search, within one day and also over a six week period.  To see all of the results along with my commentary, visit:

http://www.funeralfuturist.com/case-study-online-video-for-funeral-cemetery-promotion/

So if you are still with me here, you may be wondering what video content you would use on YouTube.  I always look for the easiest solution first, so I would suggest using those TV commercials that you had to pay thousands of dollars for and upload them to YouTube.  If you do not have a commercial ready to go, you could use the same software that you use to create your DVD memorial videos and create a three minute infomercial demonstrating how you are different than your competition.

Also you might be thinking that it sounds like a lot of work to upload these videos to all of these different video sharing site.  I use a tool called Traffic Geyser that allows you to upload one video to over 30 different sites.  It saves me a ton of time, and they have a lot of tips and training as well.  The guys at Traffic Geyser have also made this guide available for you to download free! Click this link or click on the image to download.

Before you fire that video up on YouTube be sure to read my article titled, “Upload your Funeral Home’s Welcome Message on YouTube.” This will explain how to title your video properly and what to include in the description and your tags to make sure that your video ranks well in Google.  You can read the article hear at:

http://fromthehep.com/2007/08/upload-your-funeral-homes-welcome.html

Please let me know of your successes after you upload your first video.  Also, if you have any other questions or suggestions, please let me know.