10 Tips to get Google to Like Your Church Website

There are some structural frameworks to keep in mind for your church website that can curry favor among the search engines.  There are professional Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firms that can help.  But here are the basics:

1) Identify the right keywords - must-haves are your church name and city. You may also want to include your denomination (ex. Presbyterian) and demographic (ex. Korean) if appropriate.  You can use tools like Wordtracker or Overture to guesstimate how often certain keywords or phrases are searched.

2) Avoid heavy use of frames, graphics, or flash - especially on the front page.  Google doesn't crawl the text embedded in flash files, images, or java applets.  If you're going to get fancy, realize you're taking a hit in search-engine friendliness.

3) Use 301-redirects to point churchname.com to www.churchname.com. This consolidates any links that might go to either URL, and it clarifies the "right" home page for Google who might be confused with duplicate content on different URL's.  This should also be done to default pages like churchname.com/index or churchname.com/home

4) Clean URL's.  Keep your URL's descriptive yet brief.  Try to use keywords in the actual URL, and show the file structure and hierarchy in the URL.  For example, churchname.org/media/sermons/the-prodigal-son/ instead of churchname.org/m=040507&s=9am&mode=short

4a) Keep URL's limited to no more than 2 dynamic parameters.  For example, in the bad URL above, there are 3 dynamic parameters (m=040507&s=9am&mode=short)

5) Optimize your <title> tag.  Google uses the title tag as one of the most important pieces of info to judge the page's content.  The <title> is also displayed on the search engine result page. 

           a) Use Title Case in <title>
           b) Each unique page should have a unique <title>
           c) Use the keywords identified from #1.  Put the most important words in the beginning.
           d) Keep the <title> short and sweet (Google only displays 66 characters of your title in its results)

6) Optimize your <meta> description.  <meta name="description" content="Description goes here."> Your meta description (or snippets of it) is what gets displayed under the title on a search result page.  Use 1 or 2 sentences that contain some of your keywords and elicit a call-to-action (to entice people to actually click-through to your site)

7) Create a sitemap for Google to easily crawl all your pages.  The ideal sitemap should link to all of the internal pages in your site.  If there are more than 100 links on the sitemap, create a hierarchy of sitemaps through categories.  And then put the top-level sitemap on the homepage so that every internal page is at most 3 clicks away from the homepage.

8) Use H1 header tags to make a keyword-rich headline for your pages.

9) Use the <alt> tag to describe pictures with the appropriate keywords identified in #1.

10) Keep text on a page between 200-400 words.  Write naturally, but put your most important keywords identified in #3 at the top.  The pros intentionally sprinkle the keywords a couple more times further down the body, and bold keyword phrases.

This is a technical checklist that is aimed for your webmaster.  In a future post, I might follow-up with some tips aimed more towards the marketing and promotion of your church website.  I should note that I'm not an SEO expert by any stretch of the imagination.  If you're looking for SEO consulting services, I can recommend some very knowledgeable folks in the industry.

Question for church webmasters - what keywords and phrases are folks typing into search engines to find your church website?  Are there any non-obvious long-tail keyword gems that you can share?

Question for everyone - what keywords and phrases do you want your church to rank for?  Is my list in #1 missing anything important?

Comments

[James Cooper]

Good article with helpful stuff, but I've got a couple of comments:

On #3, you can sort of set this within google sitemaps under 'Tools/Set preferred domain'. Not as good as a 301, but for less techy people, perhaps an easier option!

With #9, although having filled up 'alts' may help SEO, in can be less than good accessability wise: http://www.webaim.org/techniques/alttext/ rule of thumb (as told to me by a blind web-designer friend) "If it's eye candy, use a blank alt!"

Keep up the great work!

James

[Joe]

Thanks for the comment James.

I didn't know about the preferred domain setting within Google sitemaps. Certainly an easier way to do it as you noted!

Regarding the alt tag, I skimmed through the link you sent me. I think we're on the same page... I'm not promoting useless keyword stuffing for meaningless pictures. But a good description with keywords if it makes sense. For example, "Grace Church's annual picnic in Oakland, Ca" instead of simply "Picnic 040507"

[James Cooper]

I'm glad the google tip was helpful!

On the alts, yes those are good, but if the rest of the article is about the picnic and to a blind veiwer "Grace Church's annual picnic in Oakland, Ca" doesn't add anything new (and in fact probably repeats things - possibly in the middle of some other text) do you need it at all?!

Just my £0.02p!