How to Design Your Church Website for People and Search Engines

We have become an image-driven society.

This is a relatively recent development.  For thousands of years human beings primarily communicated verbally.  Then about 500 years ago with the invention of the printing press, human communication shifted from verbal to written.  But, in the last 50 years with the development of TV and the Internet, human communication has rapidly shifted from primarily text to primarily images – pictures and video.

Websites have also changed in the last 10 years from primarily text to primarily pictures and video as Internet providers have increased bandwidth and smart phones have put a still camera and video camera in everyone’s pocket.

Church website design has gone from this…

To this…

This is a good thing.  As communication changes in our culture, it is imperative that we in our churches change the way we communicate.  Today people communicate through Instagram pics, YouTube videos and emojis.  Churches need to do the same.

One word of caution, though…

Search engines don’t speak the language of images.

Most people who are looking for a new church, use search engines to find and investigate churches in their area.  Search engines don’t understand images or video.  They need text to understand what a website is about.  So, when you’re designing your church’s next website, make sure you include at least a paragraph or two of text on the homepage to help your church SEO, like this…

The bottom line is…

People love images. Search engines love text. Therefore, good website design includes both.

Comment & discuss

• What do you think about how our culture has changed from communicating primarily by written text to images?
• Does your church website reflect this change but also the need to use text to get the best search rankings possible?