Winners & losers of SEO visibility in the funeral plan industry

When someone passes away, it can be a very complicated situation for the family— emotionally, logistically, and financially. Whilst having to deal with the grief, there are important decisions that need to be made quickly, such as arranging the funeral, notifying friends and relatives, and handling legal or financial matters. This is where having a clear funeral plan can be so important.

A funeral plan makes it easier to honour your loved one’s wishes and takes a lot of the stress off family members, so they can focus on healing instead of dealing with all the details. According to SunLife, 68% of people make provisions to pay for their funeral before they pass away.

Funeral plans serve as a crucial and important service that people need to find and purchase easily – just like any other purchasable product or service. Which is why ensuring organic search visibility is crucial for these companies.

We have already analysed the winners and losers of SEO from different sectors, such as cruises, and eyecare; In this blog, we’ll explore the SEO visibility for funeral plans and how each company has performed over the past few years.

Winners

Dignity Funerals

Starting with our winners, Dignity Funerals has been doing well when it comes to SEO visibility. Let’s have a look at their visibility graph from the past 5 years:

As we can see, Dignity Funerals’ visibility has grown a lot in 2024, peaking around May 2024, and began declining gradually afterward. However, the visibility levels started to improve slightly towards late 2024 and early 2025 (right after the December 2024 core update), suggesting some improvements may have been made.

What made Dignity Funerals a winner?

First of all, looking at their Link graph and the websites that are linking to Dignity Funerals, we can see that there are connections from high-authority websites such as government (.gov.uk) and well-known organisations (e.g. MoneySavingExpert, Teenage Cancer Trust). These are strong, trustworthy links that can improve the site’s credibility and rankings.

The link graph overall looks positive, especially due to high-authority backlinks and a diverse link base.

Looking at their blog pages, we can see some interesting trends when it comes to SEO:

First, the content is informative, providing a step-by-step guide on procedures following a death. There is also a clear structure and navigation, and the content is organised with clear headings and subheadings, facilitating navigation for users and search engines. They also incorporate images and videos, breaking up the text and adding visually appealing elements for the user.

However, there are also areas to be improved. For instance, the blog does not contain any author information, including who wrote the blog or any information about them. Author bios are important for SEO as they let readers get a sense of who wrote the article, helping build trust with readers.

Their anchor text has some strengths:

They have a mix of branded anchor text, with relevant services that include terms like ‘funeral’, ‘locations’, and ‘cemetery’. These are relevant for the business and indicate that backlinks are contextually appropriate. We can also see some locations where they offer their services, such as ‘London’, ‘Birmingham’, and ‘Greenwich’.

Lastly, we have checked their Site Speed:

Not only they have failed the CWV (Core Web Vitals) assessment but also have scored only 35/100 for its mobile performance, which is quite low. Page speed influences how effectively a site can be crawled. If pages respond slowly and take a long time to load, it increases the time required to crawl the entire site. This can also decrease the site’s overall Crawl Budget, as each page demands more resources.

Farewill

Also featuring on our winners list is Farewill. The below graph showcases their visibility in the past 5 years.

Farewill has had a peak in SEO visibility in late 2021, followed by a big dip, and has been fluctuating a lot recently. But it has reacted well overall to recent Google’s algorithm updates.

Why is Farewill a winner?

Digging around their website, we had a look around what could have made them a winner on the back of recent Google updates.

The last few core updates mainly focused on prioritising high-quality, relevant content. They have also targeted websites using manipulative SEO Tactics, such as keyword stuffing, and low-quality backlinks.

Having a look at their blog pages, we notice some good practices:

For instance, there is a clear structure and content layout. The table of contents on the left side provides an easy-to-navigate structure for both users and search engine crawlers, improving accessibility.

We can also see clear author information, which helps building trust and authority, which can be beneficial for E-E-A-T. They also make use of internal linking to related articles, which improves navigation for both users and search engines.

Looking at their link graph and all the backlinks they have, we can see that Farewill’s backlink profile appears solid and credible, with several authoritative domains contributing value. The domains linking to them come from credible domains like charities and organisations (e.g. alzheimers.org.uk, nspcc.org.uk, rememberacharity.org.uk) that align well with the funeral plan industry.

Looking at their category pages, we can see that it’s also very straight forward and easy to navigate:

They make use of a clear and clean URL structure (https://farewill.com/funerals), clear headings that are informative and that also includes the primary service offering. The page content is clear and customer-focused, emphasising simplicity, affordability, and quality of service.

Other important thing that we noticed is that the website loads quite fast, that’s why we decide to test in on Google PageSpeed Insights:

Not only have they passed the Core Web Vitals Assessment, but they have also had a high score for its mobile performance, scoring 74/100. Improvements could still be made, but this is considered to be a good score. Page Speed is an official Google ranking factor, so having a quick and responsive website is essential not only for user experience, but also to improve search engine rankings.

Losers

Pure Cremation

Featuring first on our losers list, is Pure Cremation. Below, is a graph that displays their SEO visibility from the past 5 years:

Pure Cremation saw some growth after the March 2024 core update (7), but their SEO performance has been inconsistent ever since. By June, during Google’s Spam Update(8), the website experienced a big drop in visibility. This update targeted websites that didn’t meet Google’s standards for avoiding spammy practices. It’s possible that Google flagged parts of their website as not meeting these guidelines. Later in December 2024 (12), another Google update caused their visibility to drop even further.

Why is Pure Cremation a loser?

Let’s dive into what went wrong, and why they may have struggled to maintain their visibility.

A very common reason to struggle with Google’s recent core updates is content quality: Google’s algorithms are designed to reward websites that create helpful, authoritative, and trustworthy content. For example, if someone searches for “affordable funeral options,” Google wants to show pages that provide clear, accurate, and useful information.

By analysing one of Pure Cremation blog pages (e.g. https://www.purecremation.co.uk/articles/the-cheapest-funeral) we can see that for this blog page, they have dropped in positions:

When taking a closer look at this blog, we were able to find some issues that likely contributed to their dropping in ranking: First of all, it is important to mention that the blog was first published in March 2022, but by reading the content we can see that the blog was updated in 2024.

No Author bio: We can see an Author name, but no picture or bios. These bios are important because they help readers trust the content, especially for sensitive topics like funerals.

We also had a look into the website’s technical issues: A Screaming Frog crawl revealed several tech issues that could be addressed:

Heavy Images: Numerous images exceed 100KB, increasing page load times.

Missing Alt Attributes: Many images lack descriptive alt tags, which hampers accessibility and on-page SEO.

Redirect Chains: The presence of unnecessary 301 redirects and problematic 307 redirects suggests inefficiencies in site architecture.

Meta Descriptions: Many meta descriptions exceed the ideal length of 155 characters, reducing their effectiveness in search results.

Deep Crawl Depth: Some pages require 10-11 clicks to access from the homepage. SEO best practices recommend keeping important pages no more than 2-3 clicks away.

We have also noticed that the website does not have a sitemap reference in the robots.txt file. Including a reference to your sitemap in the robots.txt file is a small but essential step in improving your site’s SEO performance because it helps search engines discover all pages on your website.

Another issue that we identified with the website is the mobile page speed. Even though they have passed the Core Web Vitals Assessment, they have scored 50/100 for its performance on mobile devices, meaning improvements still need to be made to their website speed. As we mentioned previously, this is an important Google Ranking factor.

Simply Cremation

The second brand featured on our loser list is Simply Cremation. Below, we can see their visibility graph for the past 5 years:

Simply Cremation was doing well throughout 2024, but things went downhill after Google’s December 2024 Core Update. This big drop in visibility could be indicating that they might have faced problems with their website content, technical setup, or overall, SEO approach.

Why is Simply Cremation a loser?

We had a look at their website to try to identify what might have caused this drop. First of all, we can see that this drop happened recently after the December 2024 core update.

The December 2024 core update emphasised:

• The importance of E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) in content.
• Better alignment with user search intent.
  Improved prioritisation of websites with high-quality backlinks and technical optimisation

Speaking of content, we also had a look at Simply Cremation blog pages: For instance, this blog page (https://www.simplicity.co.uk/advice/what-to-write-in-a-sympathy-card-or-funeral-flowers) highlights some missed opportunities:

No Internal Links: This article doesn’t link to important commercial pages, such as funeral packages or service plans, which could guide users toward conversions.

No related Links: Including links to related articles would improve user navigation and keep visitors engaged longer.

Lack of Imagery: Visual elements like images, infographics, or videos could make the content more engaging and user-friendly.

No Author Bios: As with Pure Cremation, the absence of author bios reduces trustworthiness. Readers (and Google) are less likely to trust content when they don’t know who wrote it.

We have also tested the page speed of the website, Simply Cremation scored 57/100 for performance on Google PageSpeed Insights and failed the Core Web Vitals assessment. This poor performance likely impacted user experience and rankings.

Slow-loading pages can lead to:

• Higher bounce rates (users leaving the site quickly).
• Lower time spent on the site, which signals to Google that the content isn’t meeting user needs.

Moreover, Simply Cremation has a low trust flow score, indicating a lack of high-quality backlinks.

Trust flow measures the reliability of a site’s backlink profile, and while it’s not a direct ranking factor, it does influence a site’s authority. Citation Flow is a metric that measures the quantity of links pointing to a website. Both metrics are part of the backlink analysis tool provided by Majestic. Without strong backlinks, it’s harder for Simply Cremation to compete with better-linked competitors in the funeral plan industry.

Simply Cremation’s drop in SEO visibility following the December 2024 Core Update highlights the importance of technical optimisation, high-quality content, and strong backlinks. While their earlier growth in 2024 shows potential, their struggles post-update reveals gaps in their strategy.

Conclusion

Overall, we have noticed that recent updates have all somehow affected funeral plans websites, and that even the winners have struggled at some point on their visibility journey. While winners like Dignity Funerals and Farewill demonstrate the importance of high-quality, user focused content, strong backlink profiles, and technical optimisation, the struggles faced by Pure Cremation and Simply Cremation highlight the consequences of overlooking these aspects.

However, even the winners still have weaknesses to work on. For example, Dignity Funerals, despite their strong backlink profile and informative content, failed the Core Web Vitals assessment, highlighting the need to improve their website’s performance to meet stronger technical standards. Similarly, Farewill, while scoring well for mobile performance, could still make improvements to achieve even faster loading times and an even better user experience.