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You cannot ignore the elephant in the room any longer, Church.
We know it’s elusive. It’s confusing. It seems like way more than you can handle.
But it’s not. And we’re here to break down why you need to learn to embrace SEO and make it work for your church’s website.
What is SEO?
You might have heard SEO stands for search engine optimization. And for as intimidating as it sounds when someone abbreviates the concept, the idea of “optimizing” your site for a search engine (think: Google) is not as novel as you might think.
Imagine, for instance (because we know this cannot be your actual situation… right?), you had a church website that did not list the name of your church on it anywhere. Not in the page text, not on the header, not even in the URL.
It would be pretty difficult for Google to help someone who is looking for your church find it, wouldn’t it? Google would search high and low, but without your name listed anywhere, it would not magically be able to infer your church’s ministries, photos, or staff were actually connected to your church.
Now, that’s certainly an extreme example, but the idea is not far off base. Google needs your help understanding who your church is. That’s why we use SEO to optimize our sites for Google to understand it better and show it to more people searching.
- Register Your Church Website
Actually telling Google point-blank that your church exists is one of the best ways to increase your SEO with Google.
One way to do this is by registering your church with “Google My Business.”
This is a quick, painless process that will take your church mere minutes, if not seconds.
You will provide all of the information you would like to be displayed by Google if someone searches for your church. You will then likely be sent a verification card by mail to prove your church exists where you said it does.
Once you’re verified, you’re all set.
Other search engines you can register with include Bing, Yahoo, and even Yelp.
It might seem strange to register your church’s website on sites you typically search for your next bite to eat, but these are the sites people are used to using. And as we often say at Digivangelism, we need to go where the people are.
- Compress Website Images and Videos
People won’t wait for your slow website.
They have better things to do and are probably not invested enough anyway. The more visitors to your site and the longer they stay will improve your SEO ranking. So page load speed is crucial to keeping people interested and engaged.
In an article we posted, 6 ½ Website Mistakes Nobody Should Make, we dive into some of the necessary changes you should make to your website to improve its speed.
One of these important steps was to compress any and all images/videos. This means taking a large file size and shrinking it down so that your website is not bogged down by an unnecessary amount of data.
Tools for compressing images:
Smush (WordPress plugin)
Our favorite tool for compressing videos:
If you want to test how your website is performing, check out gtmetrix.com.
- Know Your Church Website Keywords and Use Them Well
Keywords are words that tell Google who you are and what you are about. As you use more relevant keywords, your church website will improve it’s SEO.
Church leaders can be really wordy in their speech. This can be beautiful, eloquent, and also super confusing for search engines to figure out who they are and what matters to them.
The more you use keywords (and the way you use keywords!) tells Google how important these words and phrases are to your church.
Key words and phrases churches should consider:
Church Name
Church Location (especially the local city or town name)
Denomination (if important to who you are)
Clear Ministry names (specific group title is fine, but make sure a descriptive word or phrase accompanies any acronyms or potentially confusing group names)
To find additional keywords, try searching Google for your church as if you were looking for it for the first time. Pay attention to the way Google autofills your question in the search bar and the additional questions Google assumes you are interested in.
Put these keywords everywhere.
In your titles. In keyword-friendly URLs; . In your website text.
You can even use keywords in your website formatting. These might not be obvious to those viewing your site, but they will help your site be found. A few examples include:
Meta Descriptions: the summary of your web page that will display on Google beneath the url. This helps people decide whether or not your website content will be helpful to them before they even click the link.
Every image should have a relevant content focused “alt” and “title” attributes; not only does this help with search engine results but helps people using screen readers with a textual description of the image. This accessibility will help your page rank well.
Secure protocol or “https” is a must these days, whether or not you have sensitive data on your site. Search engines rank secure sites more favorably and many hosting companies offer the certificate for free so it’s a win-win!
- Ask for Church Reviews
At this point, you already have your site registered on a few search engines to improve your SEO.
That means it’s time to ask for reviews!
Online reviews are not just for your favorite local pizza place and event center. Your potential guests are statistically far more likely to believe the opinions of members and visitors than they are to believe your church website.
Every review offers honest insight into the experience of participants, so be sure to encourage your participants (guests, members, staff, friends, community partners) to review your church!
Again, this may seem a little strange, but this will help potential guests get a feel for what a visit to your community might be like. It will also tell Google, Facebook, Yelp and other search engines you utilize that your church is worth sharing.
- Quality Church Website Navigation
Remember that article we talked about earlier?
In 6 ½ Website Mistakes Nobody Should Make we discussed the need for quality website navigation.
This is important for SEO because simple and efficient site navigation means your website visitors are less likely to give up on your website.
People who encounter complicated or confusing navigation are not likely to be returning visitors to your site. No one likes to struggle or feel lost.
Make your website organized with traditional menu options across the top.
Your visitors’ eyes will travel in a ”Z” pattern across your home page, so you will want to have the most pertinent info in that area.
- Use Anchor Text
Did you notice how in our answers to questions #2 and #5 we linked back to older articles?
When you add urls to website text that links people to other places on your website, you are using anchor text.
Best practice for SEO-friendly anchor text is to create relevant and succinct keywords that describe the content of the link. Be specific, but not too “keyword heavy” because search engines will detect that as spammy.
And as always, the more ways we can help Google promote our content and communities, the better our SEO!
That being said, consider where else you might be able to add links back to your church’s website. Church social media pages and profiles are great places to start!
The more quality links your site has connecting back to it, the more Google will view it as a reputable source worth sharing.
Also, if you link to sources outside of your website, keep a check on these links periodically to ensure they are still “live”. Not only will dead links hurt your SEO, but your credibility as well. There are a number of tools available to monitor this and email you when dead links are detected. This is one of many uses for Google Analytics.
- Google Analytics
As we’ve advised to “know your keywords and use them well” a tool that can help you find them is Google analytics. To be sure, this tool is not for the faint of heart. Fear not! It is very widely used and there is no shortage of youtube tutorials on the topic. We would suggest becoming familiar with at least the basics that should allow you to develop a solid foundation of keywords and phrases to use throughout your site.
Perhaps more visible and easily accessible is search terms that people are using to find your website already. This info can typically be gleaned from the website statistics offered by your hosting provider.
That’s it for this week!
Do you feel more confident with the term SEO and equipped for making it work for your church website? We sure hope so.
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