Not only one time, but 3 times!
This morning I decided to check to see where we are in terms of Google Search, so I entered in the generic "church communications" and this is what came up—3 listings on page one! To the left is a screen grab of it.
I was very happy to see that because I don't buy ad space, use paid SEO (search engine optimization) services, or do any of the dubious key word loading and all sorts of things that some recommend to get a site listed in even the first 5 pages of Google search.
What I work very hard to do is to provide church communicators with worthwhile, useful content. Google has stated repeatedly that is what they are honestly looking for when they rank websites.
I trust the results affirm we're doing some things right.
How this applies to your church
It's really very simple. If you want your church to rank high in search, work on providing good content.
That means more than splashy graphics that link to outdated announcements.
Enlist some of the people in your church who like to write (seniors are a great resource for this) about topics your church is teaching on, why Jesus is the reason for the upcoming Christmas season, parenting and teen-raising tips from a Biblical perspective and any related topic you can think of.
When you have a Sunday School class or any kind of ministry training be sure to put notes from it, outlines, resources, commentary on your website.
Fill your site with worthwhile content and not only will it benefit your church and community, but Google will give you a wider voice to share the messages of salvation.
Here is one more tip. If you want to have more options with GMB posting, check out this website for the platform built to showcase your Google My Business results.
Hi Yvon, glad to see you are ranking well for your top keyword. I agree with you that creating great content on your church website will help its search rankings. However, often it takes more than that to get onto the first page of the Google search results. First, because churches are local organizations, it’s important that they rank well in Google Maps and their Google Maps listing is accurate. This can take some extra work if the church is new, has changed locations or is multi-site. Second, the number of reviews a local organization gets has a big impact on its local search results. Third, while Google is still king of search, there are a several other popular other local search engines including Yelp, Bing Maps, Yahoo Maps & others and each of them requires setting up the listing and making sure all the info is accurate. Fourth, some cities have hundreds of churches, and if you want your church to appear in the top 10, it requires optimizing the meta tags and on-page content. Fifth, most churches are trying to reach people in the cities and towns around their church, and it can be difficult to rank well for searches those nearby cities that church is not located in without some extra effort. Last but not least, the reason why you have 3 listings in the search results you cited is because the bottom 2 are on Google Plus. Social media is another factor in search rankings. Hope this helps 🙂
Paul,
Thanks for your comments–great ones for churches and I’m sure folks will read them.
I was just happy to see the ministry where it is, we’ve been working on a lot of thing and the site and ministry has a long way to go, but this was an encouragement.
Thanks so much for your great comments and love to have them anytime!
Yvon