Here at First Rank Funeral Home Marketing, we’re big advocates of SEO as a digital marketing tool.
SEO is unlike traditional marketing in a number of ways. SEO is an ongoing effort – it’s not like shooting a commercial or recording a spot for radio. And one of the reasons that SEO never rests is that Google is constantly updating their algorithms.
One algorithm update that isn’t live at the time this blog is being written, but may be live by the time you read it, is the page experience update – also known as the Core Web Vitals update.
So what are Core Web Vitals? And how do they affect how funeral homes should design and maintain their websites? You’ll learn all that, and more – right now.
What are Core Web Vitals?
The Core Web Vitals were designed to help Google (and web developers) understand and measure a user’s experience when they land on a page. There are three Core Web Vitals:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), which measures loading time
- First Input Delay (FID), which measures the speed at which users can interact with the site
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), which measures the visual stability of a page
This is a ranking algorithm update, which means how well a web page (and the website overall) scores on the metrics we just laid out will affect how highly it ranks in Google’s search results.
Google announced this update over a year before it rolled out. That’s not something Google does often. Most of us in the digital marketing space take that to mean the update will have a serious impact on websites that aren’t scoring well on the Core Web Vitals metrics.
How to prepare for the update
Funeral homes need to prepare for the update – in fact, every website owner should prepare for the update if they get clients through search results.
How you’ll prepare for the update depends on whether or not you’re a web developer. If you are a web developer, we’ve made a full guide to Core Web Vitals. It’s comprehensive, and will talk you through measuring Core Web Vitals, diagnosing problems, troubleshooting, and repairing.
For those of you who aren’t web developers, preparation is going to involve hiring a web developer – or better yet, a digital marketing company.
Why preparing for Core Web Vitals is so important for funeral homes
Local SEO is a specific type of SEO that targets “near me” searches. Funeral home searches are inherently local – no one is looking for a funeral home to ship products to them from halfway across the world.
That means ranking ahead of your competitors will give you more clients, while limiting the client acquisition of other funeral homes at the same time. Many funeral home clients are loyal – that makes acquisition incredibly important, as retention is simpler when you’ve built a trusting relationship with a family.
When you’re prepared for the Core Web Vitals update, and your competitors aren’t, their rankings may drop, while you’ll stay on top.
At First Rank Funeral Marketing, we offer website and marketing services for funeral homes (it’s right there in the name). We’ll improve your Core Web Vitals – and we’ll optimize your website for the other page experience update changes. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Want to improve your rank, get new clients, and bury the competition? Give us a call.