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5 Tips for Improving Your Church’s SEO Ranking

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Ever done a Google search and NOT found what you were looking for?

Probably not.

It may take a couple tries to find exactly what you need, but thanks to the power of a search engine it doesn't take long to find pertinent information.

Here's how it works:

Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others, search the internet “reading” website content. They review the content, give it a quality rank, and tag it for future use. When someone does a pertinent search they then display the information based on the rank they have assigned to it. The higher the rank, the closer you are to the top of the list.

Why does this matter to your church?

Because the majority of search engine users never look beyond page one of the results. This makes it important to get your church as close to the top of the list as possible.

This is best approached with a plan for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

At its core, SEO is the process of “optimizing” your website content to increase your rank so you appear higher in search results.

A higher ranking equates to more unpaid “organic” traffic to your website. That's why I've put together this list of tips to improve your church's searching engine ranking:

5 Tips for Improving Your Churches SEO Ranking

1) Make Sure Your Website Is Searchable by Google

Before you do anything else, you first want to determine that Google knows your website exists and is indexing it. Just because you have a web address, it doesn't mean search engines are including you in their searches.

The easiest way to accomplish this is to do a quick search for your site.

Example:

  • Visit Google.com
  • Type “site:[domain.com]”
    • don't include any extra spaces, the http:// or www. just type it directly
    • a search of this type for ChurchTechToday would look like site:churchtechtoday.com
  • Hit ENTER
  • Look over the results and determine if there are any restrictions

2) Write website content with a visitor (and Google) in mind

Think about how you search for things in Google. When you want to find a restaurant, you search by food type or location. When you want to find an extra-curricular activity for your child you search terms connected to the activity.

People looking for churches do the same thing.

They don't know the name of your youth group, children's ministry or adult Bible study. They search based on phrases familiar to them – youth group, kids church, bible study, parish meeting, etc.

Explaining the ministry using these familiar “keywords” will help search engines know exactly what you offer. Any additional information you can include about what the ministry is, will help also.

Example:

[Ministry Name] is our [Age Group] ministry. [Group modifier] gather each [Date, Time] for [Event Description].

[The Oasis] is our [Jr. High and High School] ministry. [Students] gather [Tuesday at 6:45 pm] for [fun, games, worship and Bible study.]

3) Claim Your Local Listings

Let online sources know you are authorized to maintain and manage your online presence by claiming ownership. Should you need to update information or make changes to your listing, this will speed up the process going forward.

Each source has it own process that may involve: a phone call, postcard with validation PIN, or an email with verification.

Resources:
Google
Bing

4) Submit Your Website and SiteMap to Search Engines

Help search engines better index your website by verifying ownership directly with them. They offer the ability to submit a Sitemap along with this service. It is a digital listing of the pages you see as most important and worthy of search review.

Resources:
Google Search Console
Bing Webmaster Tools

5) Use SEO Plugin to Improve Tagging

If you are using WordPress for your website there are several tools available to help you manage your SEO. These provide places to assign a “keyword” or topic for each page, and to write a short description of the content included. Search engines use this info to better sort and rank your content.

Resources:
Yoast
All In One SEO

 

Ryan Holck
Ryan Holckhttps://rad-ideas.com
Ryan is the founder of RAD Ideas and Graphics.Church. He works with churches and denominations to grow their ministry through graphic design and marketing strategy. Follow Ryan at RAD-Ideas.com.

16 COMMENTS

  1. There are several software applications for Barcoding, web hosting,Production, accounting, HRMS, DMS, ERP, Trading, sale and purchase, CRM, Approval and inventory management software. You should try few of them and choose the one that suits your requirements the best.VAT ACCOUNTING SOFTWARE DUBAI

  2. Great post. A lot of churches are unaware if how important SEO is to help them reach more people. If they are aware of the importance of it, they often do not know where to start to make improvements.

  3. Great!! You covered all the important fundamentals. However, if we followed all the above given rules except the listing one, will it cause any heavy impact on the ranking in SERP? Thanks in advance

    • Jaden, your content is largely going to dictate your overall search ranking.

      But, by claiming your Listing, you are telling Google you are the verified owner of the website. And, you are then getting extra “juice” from your local listing to help you appear on the search page.

      So, if someone searches “Churches near me” instead of “[your church name]” you have a higher probability of appearing in the listing.

      Hope that helps…

  4. please have a look at my website, i am 100% sure that the content on my site is the most complete, unique and accurate compare to the rest, the site is in Persian language so there is not so many competition but i still rank lower with google search, can you see any problem?
    Thank you

  5. These are the basic ingredients that every site needs. Whenever you are going to start from scratch, all these 5 tips needs to be followed. Yes plugins has made life a lot easier than ever before, but you can only apply it on a CMS based website, so I guess there is still a lot to be done.

  6. Ryan,

    Great post. A lot of churches are unaware if how important SEO is to help them reach more people. If they are aware of the importance of it, they often do not know where to start to make improvements.

    Glad you mentioned WordPress too for SEO. One of the reasons we design our church websites on WordPress is because of how SEO-friendly it is.

    • Ian,

      I completely agree. It’s amazing the difference an SEO tool and a few hours or concentrated research and focus can make on search traffic.

      It’s exactly why I develop with WordPress as well. After hand coding the info it’s so much easier to do it with a plugin tool.

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