Case Study: Funeral Business

Client Overview

Industry: Funeral Services / Direct Cremation

Primary Location: Sydney & Northern Beaches, NSW

Service Focus: Direct cremation, affordable funeral services

Funeral services operate in one of the most trust-critical local markets. Decisions are often made quickly, emotionally, and increasingly with the help of AI-powered search and recommendations.

The Challenge

Search behaviour in the funeral industry has shifted significantly.


Families are no longer browsing dozens of websites. Instead, they are asking AI-powered platforms questions such as:


  • “What’s the most affordable cremation in Sydney?”
  • “Who offers direct cremation near me?”
  • “Which funeral provider should I trust?”

AI platforms summarise options and guide decisions — often before a family ever visits a website.


The challenge was to ensure the business was:


Clearly understood, trusted, and recommended by AI — while still communicating empathy, clarity, and reassurance to people. Traditional SEO alone could not solve this.

The Strategy

Digitaldoor implemented a next-generation local business marketing framework, balancing human trust with AI understanding.

1. Human Creativity (Clarity & Reassurance)

We refined their digital presence to clearly communicate:


  • Direct cremation and funeral options
  • Transparent pricing
  • Local service coverage (Sydney, Northern Beaches)
  • Calm, empathetic messaging aligned to sensitive decision-making
  • Beautifully designed and emotionally connected website

This ensured families could quickly understand services and feel confident engaging.

2. AI Visibility (Understanding & Recommendation)

We then engineered AI-Ready Digital Architecture, including:


  • Structured service and location pages
  • Clear entity signals for funeral services and direct cremation
  • Optimisation for conversational queries used by AI platforms
  • Alignment with how Google AI Mode and ChatGPT interpret trust and relevance

This allowed AI systems to accurately interpret, summarise, and recommend the business.

The Results

Strong AI-Driven Visibility Growth

Google AI Mode rankings included:


  1. 2 keywords ranked Position #1 in Google AI Mode
  2. 5 keywords ranked Positions 2–5
  3. 1 keyword ranked Positions 6–10

High-intent keywords included:


  1. “cremation services sydney”
  2. “direct cremations”
  3. “funeral director northern beaches”

ChatGPT Visibility & Referrals

ChatGPT performance confirmed real AI-driven discovery:


  • 2 keywords ranked Position #1 in ChatGPT
  • 5 keywords ranked Positions 2–5
  • Direct ChatGPT referral traffic recorded

This confirms the business is being actively recommended — not just indexed.

Search & Engagement Performance

From the website performance overview (pages 1–3):


  • 29.3K total impressions
  • 125 total clicks
  • 98 engaged sessions from organic search
  • High average organic engagement time, strong for a sensitive, decision-based service

Technical & Authority Foundation

  • 22 pages indexed, 0 indexation issues
  • Growing backlink profile 
  • Low spam score
  • Clean technical foundation for AI interpretation and summarisation

Despite competing against much higher-authority domains, the business achieved strong AI visibility through structure, clarity, and relevance — not brute-force backlinks.

Why This Matters

This case study highlights a critical shift in high-trust services:


AI doesn’t just rank funeral providers. It influences who families feel confident choosing.


By being structured correctly, our client became present in AI-led recommendations at the exact moment families are seeking guidance.

The Takeaway

By combining:


  • Human-centred clarity and empathy
  • AI-Ready Digital Architecture
  • Next-generation local AI optimisation (AIO)

Our client secured meaningful visibility across Google AI Mode and ChatGPT — in one of the most sensitive and trust-dependent markets.