Welton Hong

What Funeral Homes Must Do Now to Stay Visible in an AI-Driven World Over the past two decades, families searching for funeral services have overwhelmingly relied on Google’s links. But in the last 18 months, the foundation of online search has shifted more dramatically than at any other point in the internet era. Artificial-intelligence-driven summaries, conversational search results, and new platform economics are reshaping how consumers discover businesses—including funeral homes. For funeral service leaders, this moment may feel disorienting, but it is also a strategic inflection point. Those who adapt early will be far better positioned than those who assume today’s search landscape will remain intact. A Different Kind of Search Result—Powered by AI Google’s AI Overviews, which now appear on a rapidly growing share of consumer queries, function like ChatGPT built directly into search. Instead of presenting a list […]

Written By Welton Hong, founder and CEO of Ring Ring Marketing A profound change is taking place in how families discover and evaluate funeral homes, crematories and cemeteries online. For years, digital visibility revolved almost entirely around SEO — appearing prominently in Google’s traditional search results. But with the rapid rise of AI-driven search assistants and generative answer engines, a new discipline is becoming essential for deathcare professionals: GEO, or generative engine optimization. As consumers increasingly rely on conversational tools to ask questions like “What should I know before choosing a funeral home?” or “How does cremation work in my state?”, funeral businesses must ensure their expertise is recognized understood and mentioned d by these systems. GEO is not a replacement for SEO, but a necessary evolution of it — organizations that take steps now will be better positioned to […]

Written by Welton Hong, Ring Ring Marketing One spring morning, a funeral director in Ohio logged into her email and found a pleasant surprise. A family had attended her grief support group the night before, and when she asked how they discovered it, the answer was simple: “We saw a question about it on your Google listing.” That question had been posted weeks earlier by someone browsing the funeral home’s Google Business Profile. The funeral director had answered promptly, and her response wasn’t just seen by the original poster — it became a lasting, public message for anyone searching for comfort and guidance. In a profession built on trust, that digital interaction had a ripple effect, opening the door for more families to connect with her services. But starting this fall, that kind of online visibility may look very different. […]

Written By Welton Hong, Ring Ring Marketing On a chilly Monday morning, the phone at Harrison & Cole Funeral Home stayed eerily quiet. The funeral director, Melissa, couldn’t understand it. Just two weeks earlier, families were calling steadily about preplanning and immediate services. Now — nothing. Out of curiosity, she looked at her website. The pages loaded slowly, and the contact form seemed broken. If Melissa had been watching her analytics, she would have seen the red flags: a sharp drop in traffic, fewer phone-click events and visitors abandoning the site within seconds. Instead, she was flying blind. That’s where Google Analytics 4 (GA4) comes in. GA4 is Google’s free tool for tracking how people use your website. It replaced the old Universal Analytics system in July 2023 — and for funeral homes, it’s more than just a tech upgrade. […]

By Welton Hong, founder and CEO of Ring Ring Marketing When a family is grieving, patience is thin, and needs are urgent. If your website hesitates, they won’t: They’ll leave your website and choose the next funeral home in the search results. Multiple studies show the cost of a slow site. For instance: 53% of the time, someone will abandon pages that take longer than three seconds to load, according to Google. The chance a visitor bounces jumps 32% as load time grows from 1 to 3 seconds, and 123% from 1 to 10 seconds on mobile, according to Google. Conversion-focused research conducted by HubSpot finds the best conversion rates happen between 0 to two seconds, with sharp declines as seconds pile on. If your pages routinely exceed a few seconds to load, the implications are clear: People feel that […]