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Are you ready to reach even more families? We’re excited to offer a variety of search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing packages that will help families notice and connect with your funeral home. Our social media packages help you connect with families in your community, and our SEO packages help families find your funeral home’s website more easily. Whether you’re looking for a one-time service or more in-depth account management, our marketing packages are designed to fit your funeral home’s needs.
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ISSUE 13
Table of Contents
Ways You 07 Three Can Improve Your Funeral Home Website’s SEO
SEO best practices are always changing, but you can improve your SEO now by doing these three things.
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Help Your Funeral Home Be Found Online with Our SEO Packages Our SEO specialists will implement the best practices to help more families find your funeral home online.
These Factors 11 Are Hurting Your Website’s SEO?
If not done right, these factors can negatively impact your funeral home website’s SEO.
Your Blog 15 Writing with SEO in Mind By following these tips, your staff can save time and make sure your website is easy to find.
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F E AT U R E A R T I C L E
SEO Glossary: Terms You Should Know These are some common SEO terms that you may come across.
36 Employee Features
of 23 Importance Posting Obituaries
Meet two members of our Frazer family — Kip and Ryan — and see what they have to say about SEO.
As Soon As Possible The obituary should be a top priority on the funeral planning to-do list.
Funeral Home 26 Three Marketing Tips We’re sharing a few simple marketing tips for your funeral home.
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With a well-managed pay-per-click (PPC) campaign, your funeral home can gain new client families.
F E AT U R E A R T I C L E
Getting to Know How Paid Search Works Learn the main elements of paid search campaigns and how they benefit your funeral home.
Advertising 28 PPC Basics for Your Funeral Home
10 Reasons 38 Top to Use a Frazer-
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Build an Outstanding Online Presence with Our Marketing Packages Our marketing packages can help your funeral home be found online and better engage with your community members.
Powered Funeral Home Website If your website doesn’t leave a positive first impression, you may be missing out on potential client families.
Generation 44 Lead Techniques for Funeral Homes
These lead generation techniques can help your funeral home find new client families.
Your Website 46 Does Follow This Important Rule of Thumb?
Your funeral home’s website needs to have a mobile-friendly design.
Letter from the Editor Dear readers, Welcome to The Meaningful Funeral magazine, an exclusive publication by Frazer Consultants. Our goal with this magazine is to be a resource for your funeral home and to help you learn new skills, keep up with funeral trends, and serve your current client families in more meaningful ways. This issue is all about search engine optimization (SEO) and how it helps more families find your funeral home online. By focusing on things like keyword use, metadata, links, website design, and payper-click (PPC) advertising, more families are going to find your funeral home when they use a search engine like Google. Along with these factors, there’s a lot more to know about SEO. In this issue, we’ll teach you the basics of SEO and ways you can improve it. We’ll also go over the different SEO packages Frazer Consultants has to offer. Want to read The Meaningful Funeral on the go? Every issue is available for free on our website, all you have to do is visit frazerconsultants.com/meaningful and click “Resources” at the top of the page. I hope you enjoy reading this issue of The Meaningful Funeral, and I look forward to hearing your feedback. If you have any suggestions for future magazine content, we would love to hear them — just email us at marketing@frazerconsultants.com. And if you really love our content, visit frazerconsultants.com/meaningful and sign up for our newsletter to have fresh content and funeral news delivered to your inbox every week!
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Three Ways You Can Improve Your Funeral Home Website's SEO Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of strategically optimizing your website for search engines. A good SEO strategy puts you higher on the search engine results pages and increases your website traffic. SEO best practices are always changing, so it’s important to stay up to date. However, there are three things that your funeral home can do right now to improve your SEO. I N C L U D E R E L E VA N T K E Y W O R D S
The first and easiest thing to do is make sure that your funeral home’s website has relevant keywords. Keywords are what families will search for on search engines. A keyword can be more than one word, it just needs to be three words or less and you can use it throughout your website. For example, funeral register book is a lot more relevant than just register book because that could refer to a wedding or a baby shower or any number of life events. Posting original content is a great way to incorporate those keywords and improve your SEO. You want to update your content frequently, so creating a blog post every other week or every week is a great way to do that. It’s also important that you’re constantly updating the rest of the content on your website so that it’s up to date. H AV E A R E S P O N S I V E W E B S I T E D E S I G N
The second way to improve your SEO is to make sure that your website is mobile-friendly. People are searching on their phones more and
more and it’s important that your website can be found there. Responsive websites are a best practice for being mobile-friendly. By having a responsive website design, your website will adapt to whatever device families are viewing it from. So, whether it’s a desktop computer, laptop, smartphone, or tablet, your website will adjust to fit their screen size and create a user-friendly experience when navigating your website. M A K E S U R E YO U R W E B S I T E I S S E C U R E
The third way to improve your SEO is to make sure that your website is secure. Websites with a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate are ranked higher on most search engine results pages. With an SSL certificate, it’s a more trusted website and users know that their personal information is protected. This is especially important for your funeral home’s website. With families entering their personal information online, such as credit card information to pay for the funeral expenses, you want your website to have a secure connection. T O R E A D M O R E , V I S I T:
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Help Your Funeral Home Be Found Online with Our SEO Packages When marketing your funeral home online, search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) are crucial for potential client families to find you.
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To put it simply, SEO helps your funeral home’s website be seen by more potential client families, and SEM is often less expensive and more effective at finding potential client families than traditional advertising. However, we understand that funeral directors are busy people. We don’t expect you to learn all the ins and outs of SEO and SEM for your funeral home’s online presence. That’s where we come in! We’re excited to now offer SEO packages! With these packages, you can rest assured that our SEO specialists are implementing best practices to help more potential families find your funeral home online. O N E -T I M E PA C K A G E
Our one-time package may be right for your funeral home if you just created a new website and still need to establish yourselves online. Although we recommend ongoing strategies to continue building your funeral home’s online presence, this package can help you get started. This package includes keyword research; directory claiming in the top three directories: Google, Yelp, and Bing; a competitor analysis; a target location analysis; optimization of the metadata on up to five website pages; and more.
entire website will be optimized. It takes time to properly optimize the website pages, so the specialists do them in priority order. Additionally, this package comes with internal and external link building, Google Ads campaign management, and other strategies. PA C K A G E 3
Package 3 is the most extensive option out of all our SEO packages for those who want to focus on working toward getting leads. This is for those who want to stand out from their competition like Package 2, but also want to capture more leads through other lead generation techniques. With this package, you will get everything mentioned above, but you get an analysis of five competitors, an analysis of five target locations, and optimization of the metadata on up to three website pages per month. Additionally, this package comes with access to an exclusive custom content library, website restructuring for user experience, conversion tracking to work toward getting leads, and other strategies.
PA C K A G E 2
This package option is for those who are looking to grow their online presence and gain an edge over their competitors. It includes the strategies mentioned above, but you get directory claiming in the top local and national directories, an analysis of three competitors, an analysis of three target locations, and optimization of the metadata on up to two website pages per month. Note, over time, the
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Are These Factors Hurting Your Website’s SEO? There are many factors that play a role in your website’s search engine results page (SERP) ranking, so it’s important that these factors are helping and not hurting your search engine optimization (SEO). Don’t worry, these things are easy to fix if they’re negatively affecting your funeral home website’s SEO. Let’s discuss what these factors are and how they can negatively impact your SEO if not done right. KEYWORDS
Keywords tell search engines what your content is about. Your website content should have relevant keywords that summarize the information. Aim to use them a few times within your content, but don’t overstuff your content with them. You want your keyword to sound naturally placed in your content. First, write your content normally using the keyword. Then, go through a second time and add the keyword additional times if needed, in places where it flows naturally. Keep your families in mind when choosing keywords. Consider what words and phrases they would use when searching for the topic related to your keyword. Also, make sure your keyword isn’t too vague or too specific. Keep it to three words or less, so that you don’t prevent yourself from being found in a SERP.
M E TA D ATA
Metadata is the data that describes other data on your website. It refers to things like a title tag and meta description for your website, which are what appears to searchers on a SERP. Having low-quality metadata or no metadata hurts your SEO and makes the user experience more difficult. Make sure to add your own unique metadata to your website. LINKS
Broken links — whether the URL is misspelled or the page doesn’t exist anymore — are bad for your SEO and overall user experience if potential customers come across them. There are several tools that find the broken links for you and make this an easy fix. Also, if you’ve moved pages around on your website, then you may want to create redirects to let search engines know the page moved. WEBSITE DESIGN
Not having a responsive website design will cause your SERP ranking to take a hit and cause potential client families to look for services
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elsewhere. Users shouldn’t have to pinch and drag your website around on their mobile device to view everything. Your website needs to respond to all types of devices that people are viewing your website on. If your funeral home’s website isn’t responsive, it’s time to find a new website provider. WEBSITE SPEED
Your SERP ranking may be lower if your website doesn’t load in three seconds or less. And, a slow website speed is a turnoff to many potential customers. For example, some factors that can affect your website speed are large images and video files, such as embedded YouTube videos. WEBSITE SECURITY
Your funeral home’s website should have a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate, which encrypts and protects users’ online data to ensure a secure connection. It protects information like credit card numbers, social security numbers, and any other personal information that users may enter on your website to make funeral payments or apply for
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funeral financing programs. Frazer-powered websites are SSL-secured, so your client families’ personal information is safe. COMMENTS
Even if users don’t click on them, spam comments on your blog and links to spam pages can hurt your SEO. By only linking to reliable sources and monitoring your comments and only approving those relevant to your content, you can prevent spam from affecting your SERP ranking and website credibility. SPELLING AND GRAMMAR
Spelling and grammar errors can damage your SEO and make you look unprofessional and unreliable. Make sure you have multiple people read and edit your website content for errors. Plus, you can install free grammar and spellchecking tools on your computer or mobile device, such as Grammarly, to help make sure you have error-free content. T O R E A D M O R E , V I S I T:
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TRIBUTE VIDEOS
Easy-to-create cinematic-quality memorial videos for familes. With nearly 200 intros and endings, almost 400 licensed songs, 850 high-quality stock video clips, and 500 themes for DVD packaging, you can create a meaningful, completely personalized video for families in minutes. C O N TA C T U S F O R M O R E I N F O , O R V I S I T O U R W E B S I T E TO D O W N LOA D T R I B U T E C E N T E R F O R F R E E !
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Writing Your Blog with SEO in Mind One of the biggest challenges that funeral directors face is time. We understand that focusing on search engine optimization (SEO) can seem like a daunting and time-consuming task. But, by following our tips for writing blog posts for SEO, your staff can both save time and make sure your funeral home’s website is easy to find. Our marketing team has come up with three main tips for writing your funeral home’s blog while keeping SEO in mind. INCLUDE INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL LINKS
It’s important to include external and internal links within your blog post content to improve your credibility and SEO. To put it simply, external links go to outside sources and internal links go to your own content. However, you should only link to reliable sources and information that will be helpful to your readers. ADD KEYWORDS
Adding keywords to your blog post is another way to increase SEO. Keywords are simple words and phrases that explain your topic. Keywords help your readers understand the purpose of your content, and they help search engines find and share that content with people who are searching for that topic. Your keyword should appear several times throughout your blog post but don’t overuse them. W R I T E A C A L L-T O - A C T I O N
Including a call-to-action on your blog post is another way to improve your SEO. A call-to-action is exactly what it sounds like. It’s one to two sentences where you ask your readers to perform an action. For example, if your blog post is about funeral preplanning, your call-toaction could be something along the lines of “At our funeral home, we make preplanning as quick and easy as possible for families. Call us today to set up an appointment.” And as a bonus, that one is not only a call-to-action, but it includes the keyword “preplanning.” T O R E A D M O R E , V I S I T:
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SEO Glossary: Terms You Should Know When discussing search engine optimization (SEO), these are some of the most common terms you’ll come across. If you want to stay up to date on the latest SEO developments, then you need to know these terms. By staying informed, you’ll know what to look out for and always have your SEO working to its full potential.
the alt text of them. They use this information to index an image correctly. Alt text also makes your website more accessible for users who are visually impaired and use screen readers. BACKLINKS
ANCHOR TEXT
Hyperlinks are made up of two elements — the web address (URL) where the link takes you, and the anchor text, which are the actual words that you click on to follow a link. Anchor text is particularly important in SEO. Anchor text with relevant keywords is more SEO-friendly.
A backlink is a link that someone has placed on their website or blog that links back to your website. Backlinks are an important part of SEO, and a quick way to improve your search rankings is through backlinks with relevant anchor text. That’s why your funeral home should have a blog and create regular content that will generate backlinks on other websites.
A LT T E X T/ TA G O R AT T R I B U T E
This is the description of an image in your website’s HTML. This is useful because search engines cannot view images, they can only read
KEYWORD
A keyword is any word or phrase that a person will enter into a search engine such as Google.
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One way to improve SEO is to have relevant keywords on your webpage to draw in visitors who are searching for specific terms. An optimized webpage that uses relevant keywords in the title tags, page headlines, and content will have a higher ranking in the search results for those keywords. For example, if a family searched “unique funeral service” and you’ve written a series of blog posts about unique funeral service ideas, it’s more likely the family will find your blog post and funeral home website in their search.
thought leadership and compelling content. Having an easy-to-navigate internal link structure (meaning families can easily find what they’re looking for on your website) and having good quality and relevant external links are both crucial to SEO. M E TA D ATA
This is data that tells search engines about your website. It includes things like a meta title, meta description, and keywords. M E TA D E S C R I P T I O N
LINK BUILDING
Link building is the process of getting other websites to include a link back to your blog or funeral home website. It’s an important part of SEO strategy and easy to implement. For example, if you want to start improving your link building, you can write a guest blog for another website. LINKS
When it comes to links and SEO, there are two important distinctions — internal and external links. An internal link is a link that occurs between your own website pages. An example includes your links to different sections of your website such as the “About Us” or “Grief Resources” pages. External links are links that will take someone to another website, or vice versa, a link on someone else’s website that will take them to your website. External links (a part of link building) are signs that your website has
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A meta description is a brief description (fewer than 160 characters) that explains the content of a page and why a person should visit. The more compelling and relevant your meta description, the more visitors you’ll attract. O F F - PA G E S E O
When it comes to SEO strategy, there are two components that you have to focus on, and each requires a different strategy. Off-page SEO is simply the optimizing you do outside of your website to improve its ranking. Off-page SEO typically focuses on link building, social sharing, reviews, and local listings. O N - PA G E S E O
On-page SEO is simply the strategies used to optimize your actual website. This includes optimizing your title tags, descriptions, and keyword usage; having an efficient internal link structure; and even things like improving your website’s loading times and mobile-friendliness.
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PAY- P E R - C L I C K ( P P C )
To put it simply, it’s when a business pays to have their webpage appear at or near the top of the search results. PPC ads typically appear at the top and bottom of search engine results pages (SERPs), and Google marks them with “Ad” in green text next to the URL. PPC can enhance your funeral home’s online presence and increase traffic to your website. You can target specific people who search for a service you offer. S E A R C H E N G I N E R E S U LT S PA G E ( S E R P )
This is the page you’re taken to after you search for something in a search engine. For example, if someone searches for “funeral homes,” it’s the page of funeral homes Google, or whatever search engine they used, takes them to. T I T L E TA G
A title tag is the name of a specific webpage, and it’s visible in the browser’s title bar. It’s one of the easiest ways for a search engine to identify what your webpage is about. They are displayed on SERPs as a clickable headline. It’s important to be accurate and to the point when creating your title tags, so families can find your webpage with ease. WEBSITE TRAFFIC
Website traffic is users who visit your website. The entire purpose of SEO is to drive more traffic to your funeral home’s website. While there are many other terms we could cover, this glossary covers the basics and will help you better understand SEO.
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Importance of Posting Obituaries As Soon As Possible There’s a lot that goes into creating a meaningful obituary that tells a loved one’s life story. From the deceased’s personality and pastimes to the little details that capture their essence. While your funeral home’s staff should take the time to learn who the deceased was, it’s also important to get the obituary posted online as soon as possible. However, you shouldn’t just post it right away and sacrifice quality. But rather, the obituary should be a top priority on the funeral planning to-do list. Here are some benefits of quickly posting obituaries online. INCREASES WEBSITE TRAFFIC
The faster you post your obituaries, the more traffic it brings to your funeral home’s website. This not only spreads the word about your
funeral home but also boosts your website’s search engine optimization (SEO). You also can share the obituaries on your funeral home’s social media pages to get even more traffic back to your website. M O R E F U N E R A L AT T E N D A N C E
Posting the obituaries as far in advance as possible also gets the word out faster about the funeral services. This gives families more time to share the information with relatives and friends. For those who live out of town, they have more time to make travel plans for the funeral.
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I N C R E A S E S F LO W E R O R D E R S
The sooner you post the obituaries, the more time for family and friends to order sympathy flowers. For example, with the Tribute Store on Frazerpowered websites, families can easily order flowers directly from a loved one’s obituary on their Tribute Wall. With the Frazer Flower Network, your funeral home can work with your local florists, and you’ll even get a little extra revenue for that project you’ve been waiting to tackle, such as strengthening your social media efforts. M O R E C R O W D F U N D I N G D O N AT I O N S
Like with flower donations, it also gives people more time to make any monetary donations to the grieving family and raise awareness about a crowdfunding campaign. For example, with Frazer-powered websites, people can donate to a Tribute Crowdfunding campaign directly on a loved one’s obituary. With Tribute Crowdfunding, the family can raise funds for the funeral expense, a memorial fund, children’s college funds, or any other important expenses. T O R E A D M O R E , V I S I T:
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RESPONSIVE OBITUARIES
Honoring lives on every device. Making our social Tribute Walls more mobile-focused allows families to honor their loved ones no matter where they are — with photos, messages, virtual candles, flower orders, crowdfunding donations, and so much more. C A L L T O D AY F O R M O R E I N F O R M AT I O N !
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Three Funeral Home Marketing Tips At the 2019 ICCFA Convention, we heard about everything from pet funerals to event planning. But one recurring topic that’s extremely important for your funeral home is marketing.
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Let’s discuss a few of the marketing tips shared at the convention and our thoughts on how your funeral home can put these ideas into action! 0 1 — H AV E A B L O G O N Y O U R F U N E R A L H O M E ’ S W E B S I T E
A blog is an excellent resource for your client families and community members. It’s a place where your funeral home can establish yourselves as thought leaders by giving insight into important funeral-related topics. Blog posts about topics such as healthy grieving, funeral personalization, and preplanning can help your families make educated decisions about their end-of-life arrangements while turning to your trusted staff as a go-to resource. However, your funeral home shouldn’t create a blog on any website; it should be on your funeral home’s website. Having the blog on your own website helps your search engine optimization (SEO), as it keeps website traffic on your own website. This also makes it easier for families reading your blogs to quickly find information about your funeral home’s products and services. Does your funeral home want some help with your SEO? With our SEO package options, our SEO specialists will implement best practices to help more families find your funeral home online. 02 — SHARE ORIGINAL CONTENT ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Although obituaries are good to share on social media, your funeral home should be sharing more posts than just that. So now that you have this original blog content, don’t just hope that families will stumble upon it! Share your posts on your funeral home’s social media pages for even more views! Some other post ideas are sharing photos from your funeral home’s events, creating engaging infographics, and making videos about your funeral home and staff. Do you feel like you’re too busy for social media? Let us help! With our social media packages, we’ll post on your funeral home’s behalf. 0 3 — R E P U R P O S E YO U R C O N T E N T
Don’t create more work for your already busy schedule! Your blog posts and other types of content can easily be repurposed into other forms of content. People take in content in different ways and seeing something multiple times in different forms can help people retain the information. So, don’t be afraid to change up your content. For example, a blog post about preplanning can be turned into an engaging infographic for people who are visual learners. You also can write a video script about how to preplan a funeral and record one of your staff members explaining the process. T O R E A D M O R E , V I S I T:
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PPC Advertising Basics for Your Funeral Home PPC advertising, also known as pay-per-click and paid search, helps your funeral home be found online by potential client families. With a well-managed PPC campaign, your funeral home can gain new business. Here at Frazer, we’re an Ads certified Google Partner, so we want to help your funeral home make the most of PPC advertising. PPC advertising is a large topic to cover, so we’ll only touch on the basics in this article. We’ll also focus on Google Ads since Google is the most used search engine.
can direct them to your funeral home’s online flower store. There are three main elements of a paid search campaign: the landing pages, ads, and keywords. The goal of a paid search campaign is for people to find your ad when searching for the keywords and click the link to the landing page. So, instead of paying for the ad to appear on SERPs, you only pay when someone clicks on the ad.
W H AT I S P P C A D V E R T I S I N G ?
You may already be familiar with search engine optimization (SEO), which is an important strategy for organic search — unpaid, natural search engine results page (SERP) rankings. PPC is the opposite, as it focuses on paid search results. To put it simply, it’s when a business pays to have their webpage appear at or near the top of the search results. PPC ads typically appear at the top and bottom of SERPs, and Google marks them with “Ad” in green text next to the URL. PPC can enhance your funeral home’s online presence and increase traffic to your website. You can target specific people who search for a service you offer. For example, if someone searches for a sympathy flower store, you
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W H AT A R E K E Y W O R D S ?
Keywords are words or phrases for an ad campaign that help Google determine where your ad will appear on SERPs. For example, Search Text Ads contain your keywords and phrases in the ad copy. When deciding your keywords, think of what a person will be searching for. If your funeral home is in Madison, Wisconsin, then your keywords may be “funeral home,” “Madison,” and “Wisconsin.” W H AT T Y P E S O F K E Y W O R D S A R E T H E R E ?
Google uses keyword match types to help determine where to display your ads. Exact matches are for when users search for your exact keyword or phrase, like “funeral homes
in Madison, Wisconsin.” Phrase matches show your ad to people who search for your keyword along with additional words before or after the keyword. For example, if your keyword is “funeral home,” your ad may also show up for people who search “funeral home in (insert city)” or “affordable funeral home.” There also are broad matches that target a combination of keyword terms. For example, let’s say your keyword is “funeral preplanning.” Your ad also may appear in searches for “preplan funeral,” “funeral planning,” and “planning
a funeral.” You can even do negative match keywords to exclude search terms from your ad campaign. Typically, you want to start with broad and phrase matches to bring in traffic and then use your Search Terms report to find relevant keywords to use as exact matches. A Google Ads expert can help your funeral home determine an effective keyword strategy and ad budget. T O R E A D M O R E , V I S I T:
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Getting to Know How Paid Search Works Paid search can take a lot of time and effort. But if done correctly, it can have some huge benefits for your funeral home.
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Let’s start with the main elements of a paid search campaign. The main elements include the keywords, the ads, and the landing pages. KEYWORDS
Keywords are the words or phrases you choose for a particular ad campaign, and they help Google determine where and if that ad will appear on a search engine results page (SERP). When choosing keywords, you should think about what a person is searching for. SEARCH TEXT ADS
Search Text Ads are made up of your keywords and phrases and include other elements. To reach your audience, your text ads should be informative, relevant, and engaging enough so that readers are compelled to click on them. When they do click, they will be taken to your landing page. If your ad contains a keyword that’s relevant to a person’s search query, it will be bolded in the search results. L A N D I N G PA G E S
When someone clicks on your ad, they will be taken to your landing page. A landing page is simply the page on your website to which you are directing traffic from your ad. And depending on your type of ad, you can have different landing pages. For example, for ads focused on cremation services, you can have your landing page be a page on your website that solely focuses on your cremation services and products. And you can have another ad for funeral flowers that can direct traffic right to your Tribute Store. The goal of your landing pages should be to convert the person that clicked on your ad. Conversion could mean many different things, such as buying a product, requesting more information, or setting up a phone call.
To sum it up simply, paid search is about managing keywords and ads, and optimizing them in a way so that they will match your target audience’s search needs and encourage them to click on your ad that directs them to your website. PPC BIDDING
We’ve covered the basics of how paid search works. Now let’s talk about how ads are paid for. We’ve mentioned the term PPC a few times. It stands for pay-per-click, which basically means you aren’t going to be paying directly for your ad to appear in search results. Rather, you’ll only be paying when someone clicks on the ad and goes to your website. It’s important to note that while there are other ways of paying for an ad — such as paying per impression, conversion, or views — PPC is the most straightforward and generally offers the most bang for your buck for your funeral home, where the primary purpose is getting someone to click on your ad and visit your website. So how is the cost-per-click determined? Google lets you bid in an auction-style sale that lets you set the prices for clicks. Bids are placed on keywords. You can bid in the Google Ads auction in one of two ways — automated bidding or manual bidding. Automated is the easiest way to start. You set a daily budget, then let Google Ads adjust your cost-per-click (CPC). It will automatically adjust it to bring you the most clicks possible within your set daily budget. Manual bidding lets you take full control over your bidding, which means you’ll be able to set your bids for certain ad groups, individual keywords, and your ad placements. QUALITY SCORE
Along with your bid, quality score is another important element that determines where your
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ad will show up on the SERP. Quality score is determined by an algorithm that scores your ads for relevancy. What this means is that it looks at how closely your keywords relate to your search ad, and how closely that search ad relates to the content on your landing page. Google does this to ensure that when someone clicks on an ad, it will take them to a landing page with content they are interested in. Google defines quality score as “an estimate of the quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages. Higher quality ads can lead to lower prices and better ad positions.” Quality score is ranked on a simple scale of 1 to 10, with 1 as the lowest and 10 the highest. Quality score is important because if your competitor bids more money on a keyword, but has a lower quality score than you do, you’ll be able to bid on the keyword for less and have a good chance at getting your ad at the top of the search results because it’s more relevant for the searcher. Google’s goal is to make the search experience better for their users, so they reward ads that help users find what they’re really looking for. G O O G L E A D S C A M PA I G N S
Now, let’s put it all together. Your keywords, ad copy, and landing page combine to form an ad group, and multiple ad groups are what make up an entire Google Ads campaign. Google defines campaigns as “a set of ad groups (ads, keywords, and bids) that share a budget, location targeting, and other settings.” While there are several campaign types, three of the main campaign types are search network, display network, and remarketing. They all have different benefits depending on your funeral home’s marketing goals. Let’s talk a little about each. Search network campaigns are the little text ads that show up in relevant search results. Search network campaigns are best for driving traffic directly to your website.
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Display network campaigns are for showing your ads on related websites outside of Google. It works by matching your ads to websites that have relevant content to your own ad or website, or by matching your ads to your audience’s interests and their recent online activity. These types of campaigns are primarily used for branding and raising awareness for your funeral home. For example, let’s say your funeral home recently started offering cremation services. A display network campaign would be useful to help promote your funeral home’s new cremation services within a specific community. The third type, remarketing campaigns, are a type of specialized display network campaign. Typically, this campaign type would show your ads to people on other relevant websites if they’ve spent time visiting your website. However, Google’s policies do not allow the use of remarketing when it comes to personal hardships, such as bereavement. Because of this, remarketing is not typically effective for funeral homes. Google recognizes certain websites, like funeral home websites, as typical for people going through hardship — and they do not want to show ads that remind those users of that hardship or prey on their situation.
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T R I B U T E LOA N S
Offer the flexibility your families need with Tribute Loans. With financing, families can afford to give their loved ones the send-off they deserve. Offering financing directly on your website means one more service you offer families, and it also means your funeral home gets paid up front. C A L L T O R E Q U E S T A F R E E D E M O N S T R AT I O N O F T R I B U T E L O A N S T O D AY !
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Build an Outstanding Online Presence with Our Marketing Packages Online marketing is something your funeral home needs to remain successful. However, we know you often don’t have the time to invest in it, so we’re here to help! We’re excited to now offer marketing packages for search engine optimization (SEO) and social media! Help your funeral home be found online with our SEO packages and better engage with your community with our social media packages. Let’s go over a brief breakdown of our marketing packages. S E O PA C K A G E S
With our three package options, our SEO specialists can help more potential client families find your funeral home online. The first package option is our one-time package. This package is for funeral homes who just created
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a website and need to establish themselves online. Although, ongoing strategies are best to maintain a successful online presence. Package 2 is for those who want to grow their online audience and gain an edge over their competitors. For our most extensive option Package 3, it’s for those who want to stand out from their competitors like package 2 but also want to capture leads through other lead generation techniques. Depending on which package you choose, some SEO strategies include directory claiming, keyword research, optimization of metadata
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on your website pages, internal and external link building, custom content, and many other strategies varying from package level. S O C I A L M E D I A PA C K A G E S
Our social media packages also have three package options ranging from more hands off to in-depth account management. The onetime package is for firms who are just starting out on social media.
With Package 2, we post twice a week on your behalf on Facebook from a bank of successful posts. We also provide Facebook advertising management. For Package 3, our most extensive social media package, we post three to five times a week on your Facebook with completely customized posts unique to your firm. We also do Facebook and Instagram advertising management and send quarterly results reports including growth statistics. 
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Getting to Know Frazer Consultants Meet two members of our Frazer family — Kip and Ryan — and see what they have to say about improving your funeral home’s search engine optimization (SEO).
NAME
Kip YEARS
Three ROLE
SEO, Analytics, and Online Advertising Specialist
W H AT I D O AT F R A Z E R
As the SEO, Analytics, and Online Advertising Specialist at Frazer Consultants, I have the opportunity to help clients like you better understand the who, what, when, where, and why of family interaction with your business online and leverage that knowledge to expand your reach and grow your call volume. From my undergraduate years at MIT in the late 1980s, to my first website consultancy in the death care industry in 2006, to my current roles at Frazer, I bring a good deal of left-brain thinking to the table to pair well with the rightbrain capabilities of the very creative website design and project teams. If you need help understanding what your website analytics are saying, improving how you rank on Google and other search engines, or engaging with online advertising such as Google Ads, then I’m your guy and have the support team, resources, and packages to successfully execute for you. I M P O R TA N C E O F S E O A N D O N L I N E ADVERTISING
Before the prevalence of the internet, people turned to the phone book to look up a funeral
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home, but nowadays, Google is the phone book. Having and maintaining an exceptional website, rich with useful content, as well as online profile and listing information, such as Google My Business (GMB), are essential components to families finding and contacting your business. In addition, many firms have found great success in incorporating online advertising and management of those campaigns as a key part of their marketing budget and plans. With an effective search engine marketing (SEM) strategy that incorporates both SEO and payper-click (PPC) tactics, your firm can expand its reach into surrounding areas and better track where its leads are coming from. HOW FRAZER CAN HELP
Frazer Consultants offers SEO and Google Ads packages that put the weight of navigating the complex worlds of search engines, analytics, online listings, online advertising, and more on us. We employ a combination of on-site (details on the website itself) and off-site (external items like GMB listings, Google Ads) techniques and services to deliver the business benefits associated with this ongoing and challenging, but rewarding, work. With these subscription packages, the Frazer team and I do all the heavy lifting for you to ensure your website is as visible as possible and driving more and more calls your way. And, while I love the opportunity to discuss details of the numbers and inner workings of SEO and SEM with clients who are so inclined (tough to keep the nerd genie completely bottled up), we also strive to minimize any time requirements on your part. No technical expertise is required for successful implementation, and we stand ready to help your business thrive and grow.
I M P O R TA N C E O F S E O A N D O N L I N E ADVERTISING NAME
Ryan YEARS
One ROLE
Sales Development Representative
Some funeral homes have trouble differentiating themselves from their immediate competitors and don’t realize how important SEO is. In the time of grief, families have enough to deal with. The idea of choosing a funeral home can be a heavy burden. The first thing that they will do is look online, so the best thing you can do is make it as easy as possible for families to find your business.
W H AT I D O AT F R A Z E R
HOW FRAZER CAN HELP
As a sales development representative, my job is to reach out to funeral homes that could benefit from the technology resources and business solutions offered by Frazer. I work closely with our account executives and funeral directors to show how our website platform can help alleviate the pain-points of the day-to-day running of a funeral home. A Frazer-powered website will provide more opportunities for your business to succeed in today’s online world.
With an SEO package, Frazer highlights relevant keywords, ensuring that your funeral home is high on the list when using a search engine such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. SEO packages also help those planning on attending the service find the location they are looking for. Oftentimes, most of the family and friends who attend a funeral do not live in the same city that services are being held. They will be looking for your directions online. It is extremely important that these families can easily find your funeral home or cemetery and get the information they require.
I love learning new things! I welcome feedback from funeral directors on every call that I make. That knowledge helps us better understand the problems that funeral directors face and what we can do to help. We pride ourselves in giving our clients meaningful end-of-life celebrations. By offering a wealth of resources through your website and by showcasing those resources in search results, you can be ensured that your business stays ahead of the competition.
I love hearing the stories from funeral directors who are grateful for how much time and effort their Frazer-powered website has saved them. It has been a very rewarding experience to be a part of the team, and I appreciate that I make an impact on communities across North America.
With an effective SEM strategy that incorporates both SEO and PPC tactics, your firm can expand its reach into surrounding areas and better track where its leads are coming from.
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Top 10 Reasons to Use a FrazerPowered Funeral Home Website Your funeral home website is like the face of your business. It’s the first impression many families have of your funeral home, as they search online before calling or visiting.
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If your website doesn’t leave a positive first impression, you may be missing out on potential client families. But with the Frazer-powered website features, you can show families why they should choose you to plan their loved one’s funeral. Let’s go over the top 10 reasons why a Frazer-powered funeral home website benefits your funeral home and client families. 0 1 — E A S E O F N AV I G AT I O N
Our responsive website designs are easy for anyone to navigate, no matter their age or technology experience. A responsive design means that the screen adapts to whatever device the user is viewing your website from — whether that’s a desktop or mobile device. Users can easily find and navigate your funeral planning information, helpful resources, and their loved one’s Tribute Wall to view obituaries and leave their condolence messages. Plus, a responsive design is good for your funeral home website’s search engine optimization (SEO).
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02 — CUSTOMIZED FUNERAL HOME WEBSITE
03 — INTERACTIVE OBITUARY EXPERIENCE
A Frazer-powered website is anything but cookie cutter. Our responsive websites are designed to reflect your brand and show families who you are through the imagery, content, and more. Plus, they aren’t just designed beautifully, they also have several innovative features.
Tribute Wall — our responsive obituary platform — was designed to be familiar, comforting, and simple. Family and friends can view the obituary and funeral service information, leave condolences, memories, photos, symbols, and more to honor their loved one’s legacy. It’s a meaningful online tribute that lasts forever.
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0 4 — A L L- I N - O N E PAY M E N T P L AT F O R M
0 5 — S S L S E C U R I T Y
Frazer-powered websites come with our allin-one payment platform — Tribute Pay. Many families can’t afford to pay for funeral expenses up front, so Tribute Pay allows them to plan the funeral that their loved one deserves. With this feature, you can offer families alternative funeral payment options, including credit card processing, eChecks, crowdfunding, life insurance assignments, and financing.
No need to worry about hackers stealing your staff’s or your client families’ information! Our websites are SSL-secured, meaning that they have an Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate to protect your information. Not only does this protect your information, but it’s also good for your funeral home website’s SEO and search engine results page ranking.
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0 6 — N O L O S S O F D ATA
When you make the switch to having a Frazerpowered website, we take care of transferring your information, like your obituaries. So, you don’t have to worry and can continue to serve your families without an interruption. 07 — PREPLANNING SOLUTIONS
With our online preplanning form, families can easily preplan their funeral wishes. The stepby-step form will guide them through each section, and your funeral home’s staff can help them with the details. 0 8 — S O C I A L M E D I A I N T E G R AT I O N
Family and friends can easily share their loved one’s obituary on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. It’s a thoughtful feature to help make things a little easier for those who are grieving a loss. It not only helps spread the word about their loved one’s passing, but it also lets them express their grief and honor their loved one’s memory. 09 — AFTERCARE EMAILS
As you know, grief doesn’t end with the funeral. That’s why Frazer-powered websites come with our free 365 Days of Healing grief email subscription. Families can sign up to receive daily emails during the first year after their loved one’s passing. 1 0 — T E X T D I R E C T I O N S F E AT U R E
Families don’t have to worry about looking up directions to the funeral service or cemetery. With the Text Directions feature, families can have the funeral location and directions sent conveniently to their smartphone. They can easily sign up to get the directions on your funeral home’s website. T O R E A D M O R E , V I S I T:
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TRIBUTE CROWDFUNDING
Crowdfunding options without the risk. With Frazer-powered websites, your families can host crowdfunding campaigns for memorial funds, medical expenses, charity donations, funeral expenses, and more. The best part? Your funeral home is in charge, traffic stays on your website, and you get paid up front. C A L L T O D AY F O R M O R E I N F O R M AT I O N ABOUT TRIBUTE CROWDFUNDING!
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Lead Generation Techniques for Funeral Homes Lead generation is the process of generating leads — or potential client families — for your funeral home. Easier said than done, right? However, with a well-thought-out marketing strategy, your funeral home can have more success in finding new client families. With marketing, your funeral home will need to test out what works and what doesn’t for your target audience. For example, consider whether you’re targeting at-need or preneed families with your marketing campaign. Then, determine what content is valuable to them and what they’d be willing to exchange their contact information for. Not sure where to begin? That’s okay, let’s discuss a few digital and non-digital lead generation techniques. D O W N LOA DA B L E C O N T E N T
Downloadable content is free, valuable information that users download from a landing page. In return, they give you their contact information for more marketing efforts. On a landing page, you’ll want to include a short description of the downloadable content, callto-action to download the content, form for downloading it, relevant imagery, and visually appealing design. So, what kinds of content would people want to download? A few popular downloadable content types are educational eBooks, checklists, infographics, and case studies. Specifically, for the funeral profession, you can create a funeral
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planning guide or checklist of legal documents needed when someone passes away. You can even repurpose this content from your funeral home’s website or other marketing materials. EMAIL MARKETING
There are many types of email campaigns your funeral home can send out. One idea is an email newsletter. For this, it can be a weekly, biweekly, or monthly newsletter. Just remember that a newsletter is about educating, not selling. Not sure what content to include? Start with your funeral home’s blog! By linking to your funeral home’s blog posts, which is another type of lead generation, you can gain more website traffic as well. Just make sure to use personalized URLs (PURLs) to track who clicked the links in your newsletter. Need some blog post ideas? Some relevant topics include the importance of having a funeral service, funeral flower types, and healthy grieving strategies. RESPONSIVE FUNERAL HOME WEBSITE
For those who are unaware of the term “responsive website,” it’s when the website adapts to a user’s screen size. So, whether they’re viewing your website on a mobile device or computer, the website adjusts accordingly. This way, it creates an overall better user experience for navigating your website.
Having a responsive website boosts your search engine optimization (SEO), so it helps your website get found by more potential client families. There also are little things you can do to improve your SEO, such as fixing broken links and any spelling errors. However, for more in-depth SEO strategies, our SEO specialists can help! We have multiple SEO packages, such as Package 3 that includes setting up landing pages and other lead generation strategies. We also offer social media packages that can be used in addition to our SEO packages to gain more leads.
However, you should still use a combination of both and test what strategies work best. When writing the content for a direct mail marketing campaign, have a narrow, refined message and a call-to-action. Then, design the mailer to fit your funeral home’s brand. For your mailing list, you can use a third-party mailing list to attract new families or an in-house mailing list for families you served in the past. Don’t forget to track the results of your marketing campaign with a PURL or another method, such as a personalized phone number or a unique offer. 
DIRECT MAIL
Direct mail is just as effective or even more effective than digital marketing strategies.
T O R E A D M O R E , V I S I T:
frazerconsultants.com/meaningful
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Does Your Website Follow This Important Rule of Thumb? One of the big design trends that we will continue to see is responsive websites. So, why does mobile matter? To put it simply, it’s how you get found on Google.
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Google will penalize non-responsive websites, causing your funeral home’s website to show up farther down the search listings. Google reported that local searches are now occurring more on a smartphone than on a desktop device. According to Business.com, 75% of consumers judge a business’ credibility from their website design. So not making mobile a priority could be costing your funeral home potential business. To make sure your website is mobile-friendly, this is a quick rule you should know. BASIC RULE OF THUMB
It’s what’s known as the "one eyeball, one thumb, arm’s length" rule. Let’s start with the "one eyeball" part. On a mobile device, all your important basic information should be easy to find. That means that even mobile users who are distracted still easily find important things like your business hours, contact information, location, services, and even obituaries. The “one thumb” part of this rule means that the content and links are easy to navigate and click while just using one thumb on a handheld device. And, the “arm’s length” part means that all content, including pictures and video, can be viewed comfortably at arm’s length. So, how does your funeral home’s website hold up to this test? RESPONSIVE DESIGN
Google offers a few other tips to get the most of your mobile design. First off, make it easier for customers to navigate through your products and make payments. You can measure your website’s mobile-friendliness by how easy it is for a user to complete the most basic tasks. When someone is visiting your website on a smartphone, what are they usually there for? Can they order flowers easily? Write a memory on an obituary?
These days, everyone’s mobile experience is different. Think of all the different kinds of smartphones and tablets out there. So, it’s important to have a responsive website design. Google recommends this so that no matter where someone searches from, the experience on your website will be the same. A responsive design also will boost your search rankings, meaning you’ll grab a higher spot in Google search results. C O N T E N T L AY O U T
Content layout is another important design trend. John Moore Williams of Webflow writes that "design’s ultimate role is to present content in an intuitive, efficient, and 'delightful' way." That means whether visiting from a mobile device or desktop, your content should be laid out in a way that’s easy for users to navigate and find. Immersive storytelling is key to helping families connect with your funeral home. Your website should share your brand — the story of you and your funeral home — with families. Forbes writes that “Combined with bold, visually stimulating design and a whole array of interactive [user interface] elements, immersive storytelling is helping brands to connect with their customers on a more personal, engaging level.” As content continues to play a major role in web design, we will see more authenticity from businesses and their websites. Usersnap notes that this means fewer stock photos and more real, authentic photos. “The important thing to remember however is that your website serves a purpose and therefore everything on it, including the image, must do so too. Images of your people (meet the team) are popular too – put a face to the brand.” T O R E A D M O R E , V I S I T:
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FRAZER WEBSITES
Our websites work hard so you don’t have to. Frazer-powered websites are more than just beautifully designed — we put thought into every aspect of your site so that your families get the features they need, and we’re constantly adding features at no additional cost to your funeral home. C A L L T O R E Q U E S T A F R E E D E M O N S T R AT I O N T O D AY !
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2 5 0 1 PA R M E N T E R S T R E E T SUITE 300A M I D D L E TO N , W I 5 3 5 6 2
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T R I B U T E PAY
Make it easier to get paid up front. Tribute Pay puts your funeral home back in control of your accounts receivable. Offer credit card payments, financing, crowdfunding, life insurance assignments, and electronic checks all in one place — and get paid up front no matter what option families choose. CALL TO REQUEST A FREE D E M O N S T R AT I O N T O D AY !
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