I’ve written a lot over the years about how important SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is for churches, such as…
- “The High Stakes of SEO for the Kingdom of God“
- “Who is Jesus…According to Google“
- “Why Aren’t You Telling People About Your Church?“
Not only is it an important source of new visitors, but by out-ranking non-Christian or anti-Christian websites for important topics, it can have a real life effect on what kind of help people get, what people believe about key issues, or even whether people believe in Jesus.
Church SEO is important. So, how do you do it?
Here are the Top 5 Church SEO Strategies to get you started:
- User your address throughout your website. Location is very important in local SEO (which is what your local church is doing). The easiest way to do this is usually to just put your address down in the footer of your website by the copyright info.
- Create listings and citations for your church. Make sure you have listings in Google Places, Bing Business Portal, and Yahoo Local. Then create citations for your church. Citations are any time your church name and contact info (address and possibly phone #) are on a web page. It can include a link to your church’s website, but doesn’t have to. Citations can be gotten by being mentioned on other website or in online news articles. Citations are also gotten by being listed in the important local review sites, like Yelp, Insider Pages, and City Search. You can find more about citations at: “Citations, the Secret Sauce of Local SEO“.
- Get positive reviews. Positive reviews both help with local search rankings and make people more likely physically visit your church. Churches have a relatively unique situation where you have a built in base (your members) who are more than happy to support the church and can easily post positive reviews if you just ask them. You can read more about reviews at: “More Reviews Equals More Visitors“. Some churches are afraid to deal with reviews because they fear negative reviews, but you don’t need to be afraid. You’ll find that negative reviews for churches aren’t all that common and, when they do happen, there are ways of addressing them which can actually be very positive. You can read more about this at: “Be Not Afraid, Research Shows Negative Reviews Can be a Positive“.
- Setup unique, keyword-rich title tags for each page of your church’s website. Title tags are very important in SEO. By using your targeted keywords in your title tags, you can help your church to rank better for those keywords. By setting up a different title tag on each page, you can target many different keywords. The keywords you’ll want to target should both include terms that would describe your church (family, contemporary, traditional, missional, your denomination, etc) and your city. You can also include adjacent cities.
- Produce unique, interesting content. Search engines and people love unique, interesting content. By spending a little time adding new content to your site periodically, you can get people to return to your site more frequently, get links to your site, and increase your rankings. Some common church content ideas are: audio/video of services, Bible studies, Pastor blogs, local Christian event listing, etc.
Alright, you know what to do. Now you just need to go do it. Don’t miss any more visitors to your church. Start your SEO today. If you are still confused about anything, post a question below and I’d be happy to answer your questions. If you don’t have time to do it, I can help with that as well 😉 Just request a free, no obligation consultation today and we can discuss your options.
Share with us:
- Is your church doing SEO? If so, what are you doing?
- Do you have any other church SEO strategies that you would add?
- Do you have any questions about church SEO?
44 Comments
These are the strategies that every SEO contractor wants to know and it will help them a lot to take traffic on the church website. I have been doing SEO since last three years but I never work on citation but I always work on other 4 strategies. Today from your post I realize that citation is also important and I am very happy that you share such valuable information with us.
Hi Kurt,
These are valuable tips! I couldn't stress enough how important it is to produce unique, interesting content. This may sound cliche but it's true, "Content is King." It is also helpful to provide share buttons to various social media platforms and urge your audience/readers to share it so your website's/blog's only visibility increases.
Thanks!
Luther Fenton, White Label SEO and Advertising
Normally people are not familiar about these strategies for church websites. I noted all the strategies and I will definitely implement it and then share my experience with you.
What a really interesting concept. Made me think about lots of SEO applications that had never occurred to me before
Great article I want to get a lot more info out to churches about this stuff
Great stuff, i am glad i ran across this blog as I actually learned soemthing new
I'm going to share this one with my sister – thanks!
That was a precious information actually. Many people who maintain church sites or pages don't even know these strategies which help in ranking their site and to keep among the top. Your post gives a clear explanation for those kind of people. Being a worker at toronto seo company, me too agree with strategies you provided will work. Thanks for the share anyway.
Looks like I need to notify our Church about the importance of SEO for our site. Thanks for the tips.
We can see it all here for the big reasons to follow at certain things to know about it more and even more strategies.