5 Hacks To Get Your Funeral Home Website More Visitors
Have you been wondering how to improve your funeral home website and get more visitors? I have some good news for you. It is not going to be difficult. Actually, making a few small changes can go a long way to improving your funeral home’s online presence. Some of them involve nothing more than starting better online habits. Others, simply require you to have the flexibility to edit your site easily. However, all of them are a surefire way to make your site more engaging. In this post, I am going to share five new tips that will bring more people to your web pages and win them over as customers once you do.
Update Pages With Content That Answers Real Questions
Maybe its through email or over the phone. Perhaps its while you are out in the community – but surely there are questions you find yourself repeatedly answering for people. If you make a quick list of these questions, make sure that you incorporate the answers into your website content. Many consumers with general questions will just type the full thing into Google. If you tweak your funeral home website content to directly answer these questions, you will come up in more search results. This will result in more traffic to your site and will help to make your content more informative for those who do visit. If you want more information about how to get your site ranking higher, check out our recent post about SEO tricks.
Create Links On Your Social Media Channels
Social media is a great way to connect with families that are not actively searching for death care information. And channels like Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn are also great ways to attract new eyes to your funeral home website. By incorporating links back to your website in even some of your posts, you increase the opportunity for families to see what you have to offer. Even if you use your social media presence primarily to establish relationships in your community, it will never do you harm to give people an easy way to access your site – that doesn’t require them to Google anything or go looking on the web themselves.
Post Your Obituaries Immediately
It may sound a little odd. But posting your obituaries immediately online does plenty of good things for your funeral home online. For starters, by posting death notices right away, you minimize the opportunity for third-party obit posting companies to use your obituaries to drive traffic to other sites. Secondly, people are not aware of the differences between obits online and will generally choose the first one that comes up. By getting yours up first, you give it the best chance to rank high and thus be the most frequently shared by friends and loved ones. In addition to driving more traffic to your site, the practice of posting obits quickly can protect your funeral home in numerous other ways – but that is a discussion for another day.
Play With Your Call-to-Action’s
This one is less about getting people to your site and more about keeping them there. Bringing new visitors to your website is a home run, but encouraging them to stay and look around is a grand slam. Call-to-actions (CTA’s) can be anything from a headline like “Fill out this form” to a button that says “Contact Us”. These actionable suggestions are one of your website’s most valuable assets and can direct people to your most important pages efficiently. One way to use these effectively is to consistently change the wording, colours and even the page in which they lead. You will have to play with it a little bit, should your website platform allow you to do so. Little changes to CTA’s can have a big impact on how long people spend on your site and the amount of information they consumer while there.
Tell People To Visit Your Funeral Home Website
Sure, in 2018 people should assume that you have a website. But don’t make the assumption that they know you do. While you do not want to be overbearing or repetitive, take every opportunity to let people know they should check out your website. This is less about shameless self-promotion and more about showing people how proud you are of your web presence. You can try any number of online tricks to get people to your website, but sometimes nothing works better than good olde fashioned word of mouth. In addition, add your URL to any print materials, advertising or even your business cards to give people another way to get to your website.
You Don’t Have To Do It Alone, But You Could
The hacks I shared with you today are just a few of the many ways that you can make changes to bring more people to your website. That being said there is nothing more powerful than having a funeral home website platform that allows you to easily make changes. Your website should be a constantly updated part of your marketing strategy and there is no easy way to do that if you need to constantly turn to a developer.
While we are always here to help you and any funeral business improve their website or digital marketing efforts. It’s what we love to do. However, we also feel confident that you have what it takes to bring your website to the next level. With the right tools, the possibilities are endless and you may surprise yourself with what can be done using the latest technology. If you want to take more control and put yourself in the driver’s seat. Book a time with us to chat about our new website platform and discuss what else we can do to help you grow in 2018.
Brandon is the Marketing Communications Manager at FrontRunner Professional. He holds a Social Sciences degree from McMaster University and a Graduate Certificate in Integrated Marketing Communications from St. Lawrence College. His creative writing and innovative ideas bring new life to the company, FrontRunner’s clients and funeral directors world-wide.