Someone recently asked me how they can make their Church’s website appear first in Google Search Results, so I wrote him an email that turned out to be longer than I expected. I figured I might as well edit that email a bit and turn it into a blog post. I cringed when I saw my Twitter Sheep cloud today–which mentioned marketing in a big font–so here is a guide on Internet marketing your Church.
Get lots and lots of other websites to link to your church’s website. If possible make sure those other sites use either the name of the church, or something that describes the church as the wording of the link. The big thing is getting lots of sites to link to you, but there are a few other things you can do which will help.
Make sure the copyright notice at the bottom of your website is up-to-date with the current year. And if you can include a blog or news section on the first page, that will be good as Google will notice you’re updating the site on a fairly frequent basis (once a day is really good)–make sure each news item has the date listed.
If you’re wondering about how to get your church listed on this list (see screen shot):
You need to go to this page.
To see what keywords people are currently typing in Google to get to your site, use Google Webmaster Tools and also see where your site is ranked for various keywords (also gives advice on how to improve your rankings). Google Analytics is another tool that will give you insights into search keywords.
If you really want to drive traffic to your site you can use Google Adwords. It will show your church’s site on the Google Ads to the right of the search screen, and sometimes at the top of the search if you’re the highest bidder for the keyword. It will also let you target people who are searching from your church’s city. I think there’s also a way to have a map appear next to your ad, which would make you look really important when people search for “[your city] church.” Facebook ads kind of work in a similar way, but I think you can target people based on information they post on their Facebook page. I have never used Facebook ads, but I hear they are effective.
An interesting idea to try is to buy Google Ads and Facebook ads based on the theme of your sermon. For example, buy ads for “divorce lawyers” or “family counselling” for people searching from Barrie when you’re doing a sermon series on marriage.
Next week, Internet marketing your church using Twitter. And then after that, probably a guide on how producing good content on your site could save you the time of having to do everything mentioned above. 
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