The LAST Thing You Should Do for Church SEO

In this blog series about Church SEO, we’ve discussed many things you can do to improve your church’s search rankings.

If you’ve taken these steps, congratulations! You are probably already experiencing a significant improvement in search rankings and seeing more people visiting your website. You deserve to be commended for taking action to help reach people in your community!

But the last thing you should do is stop your church SEO efforts now.

(“The last thing you should do…” is a strange phrase isn’t it? When we say it, we’re not referring to something we should do after everything else, but rather something we should never do.)

Church SEO is never finished

The only constant in life is change. This is especially true of search engines and SEO.

• Search engine engine algorithms are constantly changing.
• Your website is constantly changing. (You are updating your website regularly, right?).
• The way people search (voice search, image search, mobile search)… yep, constantly changing.

Therefore, if you optimize your church website once and let it go, whatever improvements you experienced in search rankings will eventually erode back to where they were (or worse).  So, let’s talk about…

5 Church SEO Management Tactics for Long Term Success

1) Check your search rankings regularly

We recommend checking your search rankings a minimum of once a month and tracking those rankings over time. It’s normal for a website’s position to fluctuate one or two spots, but if your church suddenly drops 5+ spots in a month, that is something to investigate. Perhaps something on your website has changed or perhaps Google has updated it’s algorithm.

2) Check your search traffic regularly

Use Google Analytics to track how many people are coming to your website from search engines, and compare that data to the previous month and previous year. You can also use Google Search Console to see what keywords your website visitors are using to find your site.

A big drop in search search traffic could indicate a problem – maybe a technical issue is blocking search engines, a page was accidentally unpublished, optimization of a page was edited out.

A big increase in search traffic could indicate a growing interest in a particular ministry, issue or topic. You might find ways to capitalize on and continue this growth.

3) Monitor website changes

When we see a church experience a drop in search rankings and search traffic, the most common cause is changes to the website that removed optimized content. For example, someone might go in and change a heading, rewrite the intro paragraph on the homepage, or replace an image that was optimized with one that’s not.

4) Read about SEO trends and changes

Google makes more than 1,000 changes a year to its algorithm. Most of them go unnoticed and don’t significantly impact many searches. But consider this: just a few years ago mobile-friendliness, page speed and SSLs had no impact on search rankings. Today all three are factors in Google’s algorithm.

We here at OurChurch.Com read a lot of news articles about SEO and when we see something important to church SEO, we write about it. You can stay informed and save time by subscribing to our blog.

5) Continue to grow your authority

Earlier in this series, we discussed church SEO tactics that help to improve your church’s authority in the eyes of the search engines which leads to better search rankings. Things like setting up local listings, getting online reviews, and creating quality content.

A good long term church SEO strategy involves continuing to do these things on a regular basis.

The bottom line is…

SEO is an ongoing project, not set-it-and-forget-it. -Rebecca Lieb

Partner with Church SEO Experts

If all this seems like more work than you really want to do, our team of church SEO experts can help. We include all of the tactics discussed in this article – tracking search rankings, reviewing search traffic, monitoring your website, keeping up with search trends – and more in our church SEO service. Complete the form below (mobile) or to the right (desktop) to request a free phone consultation today!

Comment Below and Discuss:

• What are you doing to manage your church SEO for long term success?

Read more about church SEO in The Ultimate Guide to Church SEO