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 blog post. We’ll also focus on Google Ads since Google is the most used search engine.

What Is PPC Advertising?

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 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.

What Are Keywords?

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.”

What Types of Keywords Are There?

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 “pre-plan 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.

Interested in learning more about PPC for your funeral home? Download our free PPC eBook!