Search Engine Optimization does take some time commitment, but it is fairly easy to do. Says Social Networking, "Search engines are looking for content, performance, authority and user experience." There are two categories SEO splits into: on-site optimization and off-site optimization.
On-Site Optimization
On-site optimization is mainly creating a website that will help search engines find the right information at the right time to help the user find your church. The website has to be very eye appealing, user friendly, and contain relevant and up-to-date information. Photos, videos and other graphics should be included in your website, but they need to include ALT tags, which would include the keywords that would help search engines to read them.
Most churches have a website that has its own URL. It is important that the church is consistent in using the same name through all Social Media and websites; for example, Mt. Olive Lutheran Church should be consistent at either abbreviating "Mt." or spelling it out as "Mount," because a search engine might have a hard time seeing it as the same place.
According to the Beginners Guide to SEO https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo, "One of the best ways to 'optimize' a page's rankings is to ensure that keywords are prominently used in titles, and text."
Updating the website regularly is a must, as it builds up the authority of the website.
One of the best ways to bring your website to the top of searches is to have a lot of links throughout the site pointing to social media posts, or just moving from one to another page on the website. This is an example of using anchor text throughout your website: Read more about our mission.
The word mission would be a link to the page that talks about the mission of the church. It is far better to use links that direct people to different pages on the website, than just adding click here links.
Adding videos and keeping them up-to-date will help your website increase its rankings as well as its user experience. Many people enjoy watching videos, as it is far more convenient to do on their phones and tablets than reading an article on such devices. It is not very easy to read off the phone, but more than that, it can be very frustrating to navigate the site when pressing small tabs with big fingers. Also, by having videos available on your website, viewers will enjoy watching it. In today's society people multitask on a regular basis, and watching a video is more convenient for them as they do their task while still learning more about your church.
Off-Site Optimization
Off-site optimization is using Twitter, Facebook and other social media to move you up on Google rankings. It is important to have a few social media accounts as younger generations use it and very often some social medium is their only news channel. To make it easy to share the content on your website, create share buttons and put them in the most visible places as people like sharing and by doing it, they will build up your website's authority. Social Networking says, "Since search engines are looking for relevant and authoritative information, social sharing tools can help build authority and ultimately rank your site higher in search." Here are some other examples of off-site linking ideas besides Social Media:
- Post church announcements, bulletins, and newspapers on the website in PDF format.
- If you have a presentation for a Bible study, instead of using Power Point, put in on a slide sharing website like Prezi (https://prezi.com), or put it on the Slide Share by Google and share it with the church members.
- If your church had an event, like soccer camp, and you have many pictures to upload, share it on a photo sharing websites, such as Flickr (https://www.flickr.com)
Having a social media account go along with a website is very important today. According to pew research as of September of 2014, 71% of online adults use Facebook, with about 25% of adults using Twitter and Instagram. The near ubiquity of cell phones, especially the rise of smartphones, has made social networking just a finger tap away; staying in touch with social media is a must.
And so is making websites mobile friendly. A mobile friendly website also helps with SEO. According to web marketing, "On April 21, 2015, Google announced that it would begin using mobile-friendly sites as a ranking signal." That means that if a website isn't mobile-friendly, it will soon see a decrease in search engine rankings. There are companies who offer to make your website mobile friendly. There is a fee, but it is very much worth it as generations change and people want information to be on their fingertips. Making connections and personal relationships on Social Media can go a long way when it is done right, but it takes time and effort. Working on redesigning a website, keeping that website current and investing in Social Media takes time. Sometimes it is beneficial to use a younger member of congregation to help with it all. But being up-to-date is important because if you are not, your pretty website won't work for you if people can't find it because of its position on the Google search pages. If people can find your church easily on search engines, and can look at the website with any form of technology, it is a very positive way of sharing the information and Gospel resources of your church.
Kumar, AJ. "20 Easy, Ethical Ways To Attract More Website Visitors." Forbes. YEC, 31 Aug. 2012. Web. 17 Jan. 2016.
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Discussion
What is the equivalent in todays web site creating?
Yes, Meta is still the top item used for search engine optimization. However, several things have changed pertaining to which Meta tags are worth your while to add.
In addition to Meta elements, you should desire to use alt attributes in your img tags. The value of these alt attributes should describe briefly, often in only one or two words separated by hyphens, the content of whatever image is supposed to display.If you imbed any Flash or Java plugins, provide supplement text in these. Search for examples online. Likewise, you should provide textual transcripts for any imbedded audio and video on your page, should you include any. Again, search for examples. This should be similar to using alt attributes for images. Concerning old-fashioned Meta: The Robots attribute in Meta tags is the most important for search engines. If the value is “all,” you maximize Google Spider crawling privileges, but there may be times when you don’t want this. My host brother, David Stiefel, gave me some more information on this if you would like more technical examples. I hope this helps and let me know if I can answer any other questions. God bless, Nadiya
Hope it helps. Let me know if you need more information on it, and/or if you have any other questions.
Basically you type in <a href="the url you want to link to which can be copied and pasted from your address bar">Some type of text to appear on your page that the viewer clicks on</a> so it would look like this <a href="http://www.facebook/mypage.com">Church Facebook Page</a> make sure to get all the right characters in or it won't work. Missing one of the quotation marks is usually the most common culprit.
One way to draw people to your church is by having a well cared for facility, quality church services, and an inviting atmosphere to visitors when they walk through the door. The challenge, however, can be to get people to walk through your door so that you can share God's Word with them. Instead, you can go out looking for them. That's one of the reasons to do fliers, mailers and knock on doors. When you knock on a door you have no idea who you're going to talk to. They probably didn't wake up that morning thinking they might have a Spiritual conversation with a Christian.
When we first started trying to draw attention to academiacristo.com we focused on creating an attractive page and making sure it showed up high on Google searches. We even used Google Adwords. We got some visitors, but the trouble is that few people in Latin America have ever heard of the Lutheran church. There's not a lot of value to appear at the top of a list few people see.
Almost as a second thought, we decided to try promoting our website on Facebook. Facebook allows you to promote in a way that is similar to handing out fliers and knocking on doors. You can get your message in front of a lot of people who aren't intentionally looking for you. In its first 13 months, our Facebook page has grown to +250,000 likes. We use it to build an audience and bring people to our website. I tell people we use Facebook as a means to hand out hundreds of thousands of digital fliers every day.
Promoting on Facebook is not free. We are able to do it because we repurposed offerings previously used to print and mail a bi-monthly newsletter for Latin America. We made the newsletter digital and are instead using the printing and mailing costs to promote our material on Facebook. Promoting on Facebook does not have to cost a lot. I think a lot of churches could also potentially re-purpose some of their offerings spent on printing costs and use it to reach more people using online forms of promotion.
Anyway, I find your subject fascinating and enjoyed your write-up. I thought I'd share some of our experiences during this past year as we worked to draw attention to our website.
Glad you are doing the work that you are. We pray for your success as you share God's Word in the Spanish speaking world! I also appreciated your paper on our Online Conference--thank you for that!
As you pointed out, I understand that there are unique differences (in culture and technology, etc.) that have helped to facilitate the success of your online ministry in Latin America--but there must be some things that would apply to us in the States. Suppose you were back in the US, serving a church (say in the Midwest...) would you continue Facebook advertising? What do you think an adequate cost would be for a church to give it a try? Would you have any other practical advice or opinions for our American churches looking to use Social Media? Thank You!
ALSO: Thanks to Andy also for your suggestions. Facebook & Twitter, etc. are very valuable in the ways you describe! ...So allow me to clarify my question for Mike...We do have a church Facebook page up and running that we frequently are updating and adding material to--I think we are doing a good job with that aspect of it--updating our members and promoting our Christian Day School. We get many likes and shares of our material. (If you haven't done so already, please go and LIKE our page [we're so close to breaking that 500 Likes mark!] and give us a good review: https://www.facebook.com/mountolive.)
Mike, my question specifically is about the benefit of paying for the advertising on Facebook. Would you suggest (for the sake of outreach) that our churches in the States try paying for advertising through Facebook? Obviously, a local congregation in a specific limited geographical area will have a different approach than the AcademiaChristos.com that is seeking to reach all across Latin America. Sorry for my very vague and general question before... Thanks Andy for your comments...
1) Make sure you define your goal. Does your pastor post sermons on your churches website? Could you use Facebook to draw attention to those? Just an idea. Think about what you're already doing that you'd like more people to know about.
2) Look at your evangelism budget, and try a test. For example, perhaps a church mails fliers to invite people to their Easter service. Could that church instead try promoting their Easter service on Facebook?
3) Consider what forms of online social media are used in Your setting. In Latin America Instagram is unknown. Whatsapp is huge. The pastor of a small congregation in a small Colombian city began sharing devotions on Whatsapp. He now shares his devotions w over 100 people a day. He uses devotions produced by MLP in Spanish. It takes him less than a minute a day to share the devotion.
Blessings on you efforts!