May 2021

Page A6 MAY 2021 FUNERAL HOME & CEMETERY NEWS Se c t i on A www. vischerfuneralsupplies.com XL industries inc. Call: 406-449-4100 • Visit: www.XLIndustries.com Available Through Quality Suppliers Made in USA It’s time to upgrade your Display Stands! Providing the Best-Designed Tools for Your Services Since 1926. Dozens of products that give you years of service and store compactly when not in use. Lightweight and easy to take to gravesides or churches. Portable Folding Display Table Basic Gold Stands Nesting Stands Wall Channel with Shelf Cremation Urns, Jewelry & Keepsakes 941-751-3382 www. BOGATI URNS.com By Welton Hong This month, I’d like to dissect some data points to illus- trate how long a marketing blog post should be for a fu- neral home, cemetery, or other funeral services provider. Yoast is a plug-in app for websites that helps take some of the guesswork out of technical SEO. It’s popular with WordPress users. The reason we should consider what Yoast says about blog post length is that this app has ac- cess to a huge amount of website and SEO performance data. According to Yoast data, the minimum effective length for a post depends on the type of post. For a standard post or page, Yoast recommends a minimum of 300 words. For cornerstone content, the minimum recom- mendation is 900 words. What Do Others Say About Ideal Word Count? Yoast isn’t the only app or site that can turn to data to answer this question. Here’s what other players in the digital marketing industry suggest: • HubSpot says the ideal length for optimal SEO per- formance is 2,100 to 2,400 words. • SEMrush notes that articles with 7,000 or more words drive 400 percent more traffic than articles with 900 to 1,200 words. • Databox puts the ideal blog post length in 2021 be- tween 1,500 and 2,000 words. So What’s the Actual Ideal Length? There’s no singular answer. A perfect one-size-fits-all blog post length doesn’t exist, because it depends on: • What you have to say. If you’re showing up on your blog to explain the difference between a casket and a coffin for curious consumers, thousands of words would be overkill. • Your audience. Not all people want to sift through long- form content. Your audience might prefer short content or videos, and it’s up to you to test various content types and check out your analytics so you know these things. • Your brand style. If your firm is known for posting short, easy-to-read pieces and you suddenly switch to 2,000 words on every topic, you could alienate the audi- ence you’ve built. So why do so many experts seem to call for larger word counts? In some cases, those pushing long-term content have something to sell, and it might be good for them if you’re writing more words. But in most cases, the answers are based on data, such as the average word count of pages showing up in the number one spot on search engine results pages (SERPs). On the surface, it’s tempting to buy into this analysis and start churning out long blog posts. After all, you also want to show up at the top of search results, so mimicking what’s already there is the way to go, right? Not exactly. Word count is only one factor among hun- dreds of things that go into a blog post. And one factor alone won’t drive positive SEO performance. Even the experts calling for long posts know this is true. HubSpot points out that even though it puts the sweet spot at 2,100 to 2,400 words, 16 of its own top-performing posts have fewer than 1,500 words. Analysis of random data also doesn’t tell you about what’s performing in your industry. Neil Patel looked at word count breakdowns by industry and found that the top performing pages in various industries had different word count averages. In financial tech, for example, top performing pages clocked in with average word counts of 2,000-2,150, while top home and garden pages only had 1,100-1,200 words on average. Some of those analytics are also based on total words on page and not the actual content, and that can make a big difference. Consider this quick demonstration: I googled “burial types” and looked at the top three pages (that weren’t ads). Here are the results: • The top page—the one winning the featured snip- pet—only had a total of 466 words. It was a landing page with links to other pages covering each type of burial, and when you strip out menus, CTA buttons, and those lists, there were fewer than 200 words of content. • The next page had 1,968 total words. Stripping out menu elements and other non-content words brought the total to around 1,730. • The third page had 1,508 total words, but taking out menu and other elements brought that to 1,300 words of actual content. As you can see, the word count here varies, and it’s typi- cally a couple of hundred less if you’re only counting the content. It’s Not the Word Count That Counts Google doesn’t care how many words are on your page. It cares that the words are expert, authoritative, and trust- worthy —that they’re relevant to the keyword and do a good job of answering the intent of the searcher. How long does your content have to be? Just long enough to tick all those boxes well. Welton Hong is the founder of Ring Ring Marketing ® and a leading expert in creating case generation from online to the phone line. He is the author of Making Your Phone Ring with Internet Marketing for Funeral Homes . For more information, visit www.FuneralHomeProfits.com. FUNERAL HOME & CEMETERY NEWS www.nomispublications.com Monthly Columns online at How Long Should Your Deathcare Marketing Blog Posts Be? Powerhouse Marketing with Welton The answer may surprise you. First, let me start with a disclaimer, I represent Cremation Metal Recycling, a re- cycler of post cremation metal and I am not a lawyer. Re- cently I was contacted by a Tennessee crematory, asking me about the legality of receiving compensation for post cremation metal. I then reached out to the Cremation As- sociation of North America, who referred me to the Ten- nessee Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers. Here is the Tennessee state law as posted in Chapter 0660-09-01 – Requirements for a Crematory, Section (13). “While the funeral director, embalmer, or crema- tory operator may receive compensation from a recy- cling company for retrieving these materials and shipping them to the recycling company, the funeral director, em- balmer, or crematory operator shall not receive a fee for doing so that exceeds the actual cost to the crematory fa- cility for performing or assisting in the removal and ship- ping costs of those materials.” March, 2019 (Revised) To the best of my knowledge, there are no federal laws, regulating compensation received from a recycler. How- ever, it is clear that at least one state does prohibit com- pensation, subject to the provision stated above. To help ensure that your crematory is in full compliance with state law, I recommend that you contact your appropriate state agency. If your crematory is in a state like Tennes- Is it Legal, or Ethical, to Receive Compensation from your Recycler for your Post Cremation Metal? By Ron Bowman Ron Bowman see, which prohibits com- pensation beyond the cost of removal and shipping, I would still reach out to them for clarification on donating settlement mon- ey entirely to a charity. If your state does not pro- hibit compensation, then the question some might ask, is it ethical to receive compensation from a recy- cler for your post crema- tion metal? Webster’s Dic- tionary defines ethical, as “pertaining to or dealing with morals or the princi- ples of morality; being in accordance with the rules and standards for right conduct or practice, esp. the stan- dards of a profession.” As a recycler, we do not take a stand regarding the ethics of compensation. Some would say that accepting compensation gives the appearance of profiting from recycling materials, while others be- lieve that donating all settlement proceeds to a charity, absolves them of any eth- ical dilemma. Some cre- matories who accept com- pensation use this money to operate the crematory and keep down expenses. Others donate their settle- ments to one or more char- ities and some even create a reserve fund, which is then used to help pay the funer- al expenses of those disad- vantaged in their commu- nity. I have met crematory owners who are adamantly opposed to receiving any form of compensation for their post cremation metal, but today they seem to be in the minority. With respect to how you notify clients of your policy, you must remem- ber to disclose your recycling program on your Crema- tion Authorization and Disposition Form. Recycling has now become the standard for the handling of post cremation metal and most people have a very fa- vorable opinion of recycling in general. If your cremato- ry donates 100 percent your settlement compensation to a charity, or you use it to pay the funeral expenses for the disadvantaged in your community, then you should proudly make these policies known to your clients. Cremation Metal Recycling, along with Responsible Re- cycling Charitable Foundation (our non-profit recycling company), are family owned and operated and support the recycling needs for over a hundred funeral homes, crematories and cemeteries throughout the United States. For more information about their new customer loyalty rewards supply program, free crematory operator training video, free post cremation screen and their recycling pro- grams, contact Ron Bowman at cmrandrrcf@gmail.com or visit www.cremationmetalrecycling.com. S E N D U S Y O U R N EWS ! 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