Want to grow your Church?

When people use Google to find local businesses, including churches, Google is able to differentiate between a general information search and a destination search. For example, if you search the term “orthodontist,” you’ll get a completely different type of result than if you search “Johnny Depp.” In the former search, Google will likely give you the address of an orthodontist near you. With the latter search, however, you’re not likely to get the address of Johnny Depp (although it would be very cool if somehow you do.)

In order for your church to show up effectively in a location-based search in Google, we must optimize what we call Local SEO (Search Engine Optimization.) There are three primary actions that determine whether or not your church will have a high rank in local search queries.

Perhaps you have little to no budget for advertising, or you’d like to expand your reach beyond what your current budget allows for. Let’s review one underutilized and highly impactful option: the Google Ad Grant. Google offers a grant for non-profits that can be used for pay-per-click advertising campaigns. Churches that qualify can receive up to $10,000 per month in FREE advertising value!

However, the grant comes with a lot of regulations to ensure that it is being used correctly, and the vetting process is strict. Among many other rules, the grant eligibility criteria require your church to have a 501c3 status and a secure website. We offer a Google Grant Eligibility Checker Tool for Churches and can also help you with your grant application and ad campaign management.

As social media touches every demographic and streaming becomes a preferred method of watching TV, people are spending more time than ever online. Smart businesses understand the need for digital advertising and churches, in particular, must learn to build brand awareness through online channels. In today’s world, online advertising isn’t just an “extra”, but should instead be a standard part of any major church service or event budget.

Statistics show that 75% of American adults are on Facebook every day — if we’re aiming to meet people where they are, this is it! Churches with an outreach orientation have traditionally spent thousands of dollars mailing postcards or flyers and advertising in newspapers and on billboards. Facebook advertising allows a much more strategic and targeted audience at a fraction of the cost. This is both good stewardship and smart business sense.

Every person's reason for visiting your church website is different. People are coming from different places and looking for different things. Understanding your church’s website traffic is a powerful way to learn about individuals interested in your church.

Utilizing statistical data from Google Search Console and Google Analytics allows you to better understand your audience as well as evaluate your digital marketing spend. By finding out what keywords people have used to end up on your website, you can gain valuable insight and start tailoring your content to meet these needs. Finding out what pages have the highest and lowest bounce rates can also help you improve your church website.

Google can also see what happens after someone lands on your church’s website. When visitors bounce (or leave quickly without engaging anywhere deeper into the site), that suggests to Google that your website didn’t meet their needs. When they engage in your website, that signals to Google that your website has met their needs. So when structuring your website, keep in mind that each page should have a compelling reason for people to stay longer and click deeper.

Google Analytics offers the ability to establish customized conversion goals that record the completion of very specific desired actions by your church website’s users. Here are the top 5 conversion goals you should be tracking:

In the business world, it’s no secret that generating regular content on your website will attract more site visitors. Yet in the church world, even though we’re creating new content every single week that’s shared through our services and ministries, we often miss out on the best ways to use it in order to reach people online. Landing pages built around specific keywords can increase organic traffic to your site and help connect those searching with meaningful ministries made to address their specific needs.

Here are two frequently underutilized ways to take your existing content and optimize it for search engines:

Google speaks a specific language. If you choose to speak Google’s language, then it will gladly pass on your relevant information to anyone searching for it. A church website that doesn’t speak Google’s language is like an English-speaking American inviting people to church in a public square in China. A few people might show up, but not nearly the number you’re going for.

There are three things that Google loves on a church website: security, speed, and crawlability. Let’s look at each of these in detail:

Every time someone visits your website and engages with it, you’re acquiring SEO “juice.” Your website and pages are gaining authority online over time. When you move to a new website, whether through a website migration or a rebuild, you risk losing all the search engine rankings you’ve established, and the resulting loss of web traffic could be devastating to your organization’s growth. Simply put, this risk is the reason for a 301 redirect.

301 redirects act like a forwarding address for the post office. You probably spent years building up trust and SEO value with Google, and 301 redirects will pass on all that existing SEO “juice” to your church’s new URLs. When building a new church website, it’s essential to implement 301 redirects from the old site to the new one, pointing forward that all-important SEO value. Without a plan for 301 redirects, your church can lose a meaningful amount of SEO value and its associated web traffic, making it one of the biggest mistakes a church can possibly make when investing in a new website.

In terms of first impressions, your two most important pages are the homepage and the Plan a Visit page. New visitors navigate to these pages first, and quite often they’re the determining factor in a visitor's decision to attend your church in person. Remember, you always want to think about your website from the user’s point of view.

With that in mind, let’s review what makes a great user experience on these two pages:

We hope this list of pointers proves useful, but we also want to leave you with a few greater takeaways.

Firstly, try not to be overwhelmed by all there is to do on your church website to grow traffic. Prioritize steps, assign responsibilities among your team, and map out where you’ll need to outsource additional help. Figure out what you’re willing to spend on advertising and where else you can cut back for a short time in order to focus your efforts on growing traffic. Break down each of these steps into bite-sized items on your to-do list to make them more manageable. And finally, remember that you don’t have to go it alone. Missional Marketing offers a vast array of services to help manage every phase of your church growth and we’re always here to help.

Reach out to us if you’re interested in enrolling our church growth experts to execute any of the steps above, or if you’d like to find out more about what we do. We’re here to serve you and use our expertise to help your church connect with those who need it.