Google Search. . . . and why funeral homes need Ring Ring Marketing

October 17, 2023/Business/

Part of my daily routine is to get a run (or some tell me it is a jog. . . or even a slog) in early in the morning. However, even before I do that I log onto my computer to check to see if Funeral Director Daily was distributed overnight as expected. I also take a quick peek as to how many readers and page views FDD had the previous day.

When I looked last Saturday and Sunday I was shocked to see that readership, unique visitors to the website, and page views were off the charts and surpassed all records that I had for Funeral Director Daily over the past five years.

I looked at the previous day’s articles from Funeral Director Daily. . . one about educational opportunities and one about client family satisfaction and couldn’t believe that they would have drawn that type of interest. . . .And, there were other peculiarities about the readership such as more people using mobile devices to access our stories than desktop computers which is also out of the norm. . . . So, I did a little searching and researching.

Here’s my conclusion. . . . Funeral Director Daily was the recipient of having published a story about a subject a while back in the funeral home world that on Friday, October 13, 2023, was an answer for many “Google searches”. It turns out that back on January 5, 2018, Funeral Director Daily published a story entitled “Flashback to the Loewen Case“.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

And, that article was the answer to many a Google search on Friday, October 13, 2023, and Saturday, October 14, as the movie about the conflict and court case, entitled “The Burial” hit Amazon Prime for release. As a matter of fact, writing this on Sunday, October 15, if you put the phrase “Loewen funeral home case” into a Google search the top two responses will more than likely be two different articles published by Funeral Director Daily.

In other words, FDD had the good fortune of the proper Search Engine Optimization for a current event which allowed our story to become, not necessary viral, but relevant to the searches commissioned. That good fortune for page views resulted in the Loewen story being Funeral Director Daily’s #1 read story for the month by an 8.2 to 1 margin over the second highest read story which dealt with the recent Park Lawn widthdrawn offer to Carriage Services.

So, I’m guessing that our much higher than normal numbers for those days came from people who were either thinking about watching that movie or watching that movie at the time. . . . that also explains the high number of mobile device users as FDD usually gets our viewers with their desktop computers while at work with their death care jobs.

We are happy to “build our numbers” but know that this is an anomaly for us. Funeral Director Daily has a history of slowly and surely building our readership numbers and not really spiking at any given time. And, we will eventually get back to that slow, sure climb in readership, but here’s some of what happened this past weekend. . .

Total Unique visitors to FDD numbered 1,021 last Friday and 2,339 last Saturday. . . FDD usually has about 7,200 per month.
Page Views jumped from a 30-day rolling record high of 18,956 previously to 19,969 on Friday and to 21,727 by Saturday — a 14.6% monthly increase in only two days.
FDD recorded a one day page view record of 1,333 on Friday. . . a 14.5% increase over our previous daily record of 1,164 and then again smashed that record on Saturday with a daily page view number of 2,664 — that was double Friday’s new record and almost 2 1/2 times our previous record.
And, all of these numbers happened on a weekend. . .when we generally record our lowest page views.

Here’s why this is relevant to your funeral home business —

More so now than ever, your funeral business is dependent on what people in your community are hearing and learning about your funeral home. More so now than ever, potential clients are shopping funeral homes online. More so now than ever, new people who have never heard of your funeral home are moving to your community and have no allegiance to one funeral home over another.. . . . .

This recent experience has given me no doubt that by showing up at the top of a Google search a business can have exponentially higher numbers of referred searchers coming to your website rather than your competitor’s website. . . .And, if they find what they want at your website, they will never even look to your competitors. . . . High SEO optimization has the ability to be the deciding factor on your level of profits in today’s world. Because of that, at least in your community, you should be striving to be in that #1 position.

The good fortune that happened to Funeral Director Daily this weekend because we showed up at the top of the Google search list needs to happen to your funeral home when searches for death care, funeral homes, cremation, and other related funeral business opportunies are searched by the potential death care clientele.

Failure to be at the top or near the top of those listings could be devastating to your business. . . . .it’s the new yellow pages, television advertising, radio advertising, and public relations all rolled into one and you cannot afford to be missing, especially if you are in a competitive environment.

Fortunately for you there is Ring Ring Marketing — it is also not very often that Funeral Director Daily so readily has a solution in mind for your business. However, today it is apparent that we have the chance to promote one of our Funeral Director Daily sponsors who can so easily help you with this process. Our friends at Ring Ring Marketing are promoted as the “Masters of Google” and dedicated to the Death Care industry.

If you want to be at the top of that search list in your community, here’s the website for Ring Ring Marketing to help get you on the road to that goal.

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