At Funeral Director Daily we are very fortunate that we have so many Death Care profession industry experts that read our material.  And, we are also very thankful that many of them will offer their expertise to our readers if asked.  Learning what they know can help progressive funeral homes increase their own business.

Today, I have asked one of those experts, Welton Hong, founder of Ring Ring Marketing, and an expert in the technical marketing of funeral homes on the internet and social media to give us some advice about how to get your business to come up “higher” and “more often” on Google searches.

Here’s a short article with that advice from Welton: 

Using Google’s free keyword planning tool helps you discover which phrases people are using to search for deathcare services and information.

Selecting a relevant primary keyword with a decent number of monthly searches is good practice for search engine optimization, as that lets you target the phrases people are using.

But did you know you should also include zero-search keywords and low-search keywords in your content?

What Are Zero-Search Keywords?

These are phrases that show up with little to no average monthly searches. For example, the word “cremation” has 10,000 to 100,000 average monthly searches.

By contrast, the phrases “cremation-only funeral,” “cremation only cost,” and “basic cremation” have 10 to 100 average monthly searches each. They would be considered very low-volume or even zero-search keywords.

Why Include Zero-Search Keywords in Content?

On their own, these extremely low-volume keywords won’t do much for your SEO. But when you use multiple zero-search keywords together on a page with other relevant keywords, you increase the overall power of the SEO on that page. That’s due to several factors:

• Your page is more likely to show up in search results for any keyword combination relevant to the topic because you’re using multiple options.
• You cover more subtopics that are of interest to searchers because you’re relying on more keywords to inform content creation. This can lead to increased time on page and other positive behavioral metrics that improve SEO.
• Google may be more likely to consider your content semantically complete (which can help it rank higher) because you’re using phrases and topics it thinks are relevant to your primary keyword.

Where Do You Find Low-Volume Keywords?

If you use Google’s keyword planning tool to find keywords, you can sort the list by the average number of monthly searches. Sort it least to greatest to see zero-search and low-volume keywords at the top.

Many other keyword research and SEO tools, including options like SEMrush and Surfer SEO, provide a list of semantic or relevant keywords you can use. These aren’t always the same as zero-search keywords, but they accomplish some of the same SEO functions when you include them in your content. 

Welton Hong is the founder & CEO of Ring Ring Marketing, a full-service digital marketing firm recognized as a leader in educating the funeral industry on cutting-edge techniques to increase at-need calls and preneed sales. He is also the author of Making Your Phone Ring with Internet Marketing for Funeral Homes, Second Edition.  To learn more about Ring Ring Marketing click here.

 

 

 

More news from the world of Death Care:

• Loved ones look for answers after burial plot mistakes at Kanawha County Cemetery.  Video story and print article.  WCHS Fox 1 News (WV)
• Why families prearrange:  What funeral professionals need to know.  Homesteaders Life
• Akron pastor who operated unlicensed funeral business sentenced to over a decade in prison.  Columbus Dispatch (OH)
• The weird Wunsche Graveyard in the shadow of I-45.  Houston Press (TX)
• They once fought to defend South Korea.  70 years later these foreign veterans are choosing to be buried there.  CNN Travel
• Cremation stones latest in keeping loved ones close.  Bay Times and Record Observer (MI)

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