A few months ago, we explained why providing detailed funeral home information in your newspaper obituaries is important. This month, we dive into why including detailed funeral home information in your obituaries– particularly your name, address, and phone number, or “NAP” as Google calls it – is important to ranking higher on Google.

How does NAP affect my SEO?

Google scrapes your website and other pages online for your NAP when determining which local businesses to show for geo-targeted searches. The more pages it scrapes that include your NAP, the higher up in Google’s search results you’ll be.  Including your NAP correctly and consistently on your website, Yelp pages, Google My Business pages, and social media accounts is critical for your funeral home to rank well in Google’s local search results.

Tip #1: NAP Consistency is Key – Across All Sites

If your funeral home name is listed as MaGuire Funeral Home on your website, but your Facebook page lists it as MaGuire Family Funeral Home & Cremations, this could confuse Google into thinking you are two different funeral homes, and the two pages can no longer work together to improve your SEO. It’s worth your time to make an audit of your website, social accounts, any directory listings where your home is listed, and Google My Business page to ensure your NAP is listed consistently across all platforms.

What Are Citations and How Do They Affect Your SEO?

Citations are mentions of your business on other websites. Citations can come from places like Yelp, Foursquare, and yes – Legacy.com. Google gives priority to citations from popular websites that have higher traffic and visitors. Legacy.com is the #1 online destination for death and funeral service-related information online. With over 40 million visitors each month, it is ranked as a Top 50 domain in the U.S. by Quantcast. This makes Legacy a high value citation for funeral homes.

Tip 2: Take Advantage of Your Legacy.com Citations

In order to take advantage of these high-value citations on your Legacy.com obituary pages, add as much of your NAP as possible to the text of the obituary. When you have multiple locations, this becomes even more important because it helps Google place each location in the most relevant geo-targeted search results.

Here are a few examples of how to best use citations on Legacy.com:
1) “Arrangements under the care of MaGuire Funeral Home.” If you have multiple locations, make sure you list the location name with the Funeral Home Name. For example, “Maguire Funeral Home Chapelhill” or “Maguire Funeral Home Maple Street.”
2) For information, call (123) 456-7890
3) Services at Maguire Funeral Home 123 N. Maple St.

 

If your families do not want to include your NAP in their obituary or it will cost additional money due to the extra characters, contact us at [email protected] and we will add your NAP into the online obituary at no cost.