Create Your Own Wire Service
Funeral Industry Technology: As a follow up to the Funeral Facebook Formula class in May, I showcased my “Information Gathering Dashboard” and I promised that I would make a video on how you can create one for yourself – here it is…
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Obituary for Newspaper Obituaries
Click on the play button to listen to the sad news of the passing of the Newspaper Obituary
Funeral Futurist, Robin Heppell reports the sad news of the passing of the Newspaper Obituary…
Newspaper Obituary: 1831 – 2010
In the early years the Newspaper Obituary served its community well, disseminating the biographical and funeral service information about its community residents who died. Over the years, Newspaper Obituary became more profitable, sometimes 3 to 5 times more profitable than its cousins, Garage Sales and Used Cars. Eventually it was promoted to the front page of the classifieds and ended up with the honor of its own line item in the Index on the front page of the newspaper.
Many citizens started their day with Newspaper Obituary, fondly referring to it as Obits.
In the last 20 years, Newspaper Obituary became greedy, holding grieving families at ransom. This was the beginning of the end for Newspaper Obituary. It lost the respect of its customers even though they were forced to still use Newspaper Obituary’s services.
Newspaper Obituary’s long-time friend, the Funeral Director, its number one referrer of business, became disenchanted with Newspaper Obituary as the Funeral Director was often the barer of the bad news to the grieving families of Newspaper Obituary’s ever increasing rates.
Ironically, it was the this one-time friend, the Funeral Director who dealt Newspaper Obituary its fatal blow as the Funeral Director has a new friend – its name is Google, and together they can disseminate the same information faster and at virtually no cost to the family.
Good riddance Newspaper Obituary. No service by request. Donations may be made to your local newspaper’s survival fund.
Please share your thoughts below. Also, feel free to add this link to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Digg, etc, by clicking on the little icons below. Thanks.
…Hepp
Does Google Know that You Have Online Obits?
One of the 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…
Case Study – Online Video for Funeral & Cemetery Promotion
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.
Sites uploaded to:
|
|||
Date |
Search Engine Results in: |
Search Engine Results in: |
Search Engine Results in: |
March 16, 2008 |
none | none | 12 |
Videos Uploaded via Traffic Geyser on March 16, 2008 at 12:30 pm |
|||
March 17, 2008 |
1, 3 | 1* | 12 |
March 20, 2008 |
1, 2 |
1* |
6 |
March 23, 2008 |
1, 2, 3 |
1* |
6 |
May 5, 2008 |
1, 2, 3, 5, 7 |
1*, 7 |
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
* denotes graphical image of the video
Sites uploaded to:
|
|||
Date |
Search Engine Results in: |
Search Engine Results in: |
Search Engine Results in: |
March 16, 2008 |
1, 2 |
2, 4 |
1, 2 |
Videos Uploaded via Traffic Geyser on March 16, 2008 at 12:30 pm |
|||
March 17, 2008 |
1, 2, 3, 4 |
2, 4*, 5 |
1, 2 |
March 20, 2008 |
1, 3, 4, 6 |
2, 4*, 5 |
1, 2 |
March 23, 2008 |
1, 2, 3, 7, 9, 10 |
2, 4*, 5 |
1, 2 |
May 5, 2008 |
1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 10 |
2*, 3, 4, 7, 9 |
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8 |
* denotes graphical image of the video
Sites uploaded to:
|
|||
Date |
Search Engine Results in: |
Search Engine Results in: |
Search Engine Results in: |
March 16, 2008 |
none |
none |
none |
Videos Uploaded via Traffic Geyser on March 16, 2008 at 12:30 pm |
|||
March 17, 2008 |
2, 6 |
4* |
none |
March 20, 2008 |
3, 4, 6 |
4* |
4 |
March 23, 2008 |
1, 3, 4, 8 |
4* |
4 |
May 5, 2008 |
2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10 |
1, 3*, 4, 8, 9, 10 |
1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7 |
* 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?