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How to Get Your Website Noticed

June 17th, 2009 by Doug

Church planters are always asking me, “How do I get my site to show up on Google?”  When you publish a new site, it’s like being a bottle in the ocean.  The object can found, but the odds are low.  Getting your site to rank on Google is the art/science of Search Engine Optimization or SEO.  There are services you can pay to do the work for you, but I don’t recommend it because you can do all the work yourself.  If you are the kind of person that pays to have gas put in their car, or pays the UPS store $10 to put your item in a box for you, then you might be a good candidate.  But if you are a church planter on a tight budget (which is redundant because every church plant budget it tight), do a little research and do the work yourself.

Step 1:  Add your URL to Search Engines.  Google and Yahoo are the two most used.  Click the links for instructions.

Step 2: Place free online ads.  Here’s an old post about this step.  In addition post a free listing on the following sites:

Step 3: Get Social.  Social Media is your friend.  At a minimum the church should have:

  • A Facebook Page: Facebook provides lots of places for you to link to your website and for others to link to your website.  Links are king with SEO.  Think of links like votes in a popularity contest.
  • Twitter: Every calendar event, every blog post, every new page created, every church announcement should be tweeted.  Every tweet should have a link back to the website.  Remember links are king.
  • YouTube: I personally am not a big fan, but did you know that YouTube is third in search?  That means only Google and Yahoo are used more for searches on the internet.  Setup your own YouTube channel and put all your church videos there.  In the description of the video put a link to your site, because links are king.  Vimeo is another great site to upload video too.  Both of these sites have applications for Facebook so your videos will go right to your Facebook page.
  • Flickr: Post photos to Flickr.  Just be careful of putting photos of kids up.  Make sure you have parental permission.  There is also a Facebook app for Flickr that will post your photos to your Facebook page.
  • Blog: If you’re not blogging you should be.  Blogs are an easy way to make annoucements, teach the Bible, share your story and contribute to the community.  And of course with each post you can have a link to the website, because links are king.

There are literally hundreds of social media sites.  My advice: pick the most popular and stick to those.  If you have teens in the church that want to start a social media ministry, then let them update to their hearts content.  But you don’t want to spend all your time online and not in the real world.  Think of each of these social media outlets as another bottle in the ocean with the same message.  You get enough bottles out there and people are going to start finding you.  Don’t expect that by doing these things you will show up first on Google.  It takes time.  Remember to be diligent about keeping your website current and posting new content to social media sites.  Do this and over time you will show up and you might even win the popularity contest.  And if you only take away one thing, remember links are king.

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