I think the future of evangelism is search engine optimized (SEO) online content. By no means, will this replace face-to-face evangelism or other methods. However, online behavior is opening doors of opportunity that will only increase with time.
Optimizing your ministry for search engines is more than trying to show up in the top 10 search results for “your church name” or “churches in your city.” Using Google to answer life’s questions is normal for those with Internet access. Imagine what your church could accomplish if it provided relevant answers in these moments when people are more open-minded and seeking truth.
Scenarios:
Imagine someone in Chicago searching for “Chicago divorce attorney” because she is tired of trying to make her marriage work. What if a Chicago church has SEO content in the first results offering free marriage counseling or advice on how to make a marriage work?
Imagine a teen that is fed up with being the school outcast and begins searching for how to properly slit his wrists. What if a ministry had SEO content offering real time help (a live suicide prevention counselor) or guidance on alternatives to suicide?
What it looks like:
Creating relevant SEO content is not a bait-and-switch tactic. That will only fail.
It is also not about Bible-thumping or aggressive evangelism. That will only turn people off before they listen.
Creating relevant SEO content is providing relevant, helpful solutions to the problems people are searching about online. These solutions may be alternatives to what they thought they would find, but that doesn’t mean these solutions won’t connect with them, help them, and change their lives.
Make your goal to be able to connect with the searcher and offer instant help (i.e., advice, counseling, a team of workers, tangible resources). Equally important is that you make these connections sustainable. Don’t let the relationship die with the initial contact. Provide avenues for you to continue helping and for them to be able to hear the gospel and/or get plugged in to a local church at their own pace as you gradually earn their trust and respect.
Resources to Consider:
Church Web Optimizer
The creators of Ekklesia 360 and Cobblestone Community Network are launching a new church SEO service this year called Church Web Optimizer. From what I understand, it will be a very affordable alternative for churches to hiring a corporate SEO firm. The tools look great, but the tailored advice from a real human is one of the best parts. Features include:
- Google Analytics Installation
- Google Webmaster Tools Installation
- Google Sitemaps Submission
- Church Website Analytics /Pre-SEO Evaluation and Conference Call
- Google Local Search Submission
- Featured Directory Submission on Church Cloud & Sermon Cloud
- Online Targeted Advertising (eg. Google Adwords)
- Social Media Strategy Implementation
- Full SEO Services: Link building, SERPS Monitoring and Custom SEO Implementation
Google’s Keyword Tool
If your budget is $0, Google offers a nice free keyword research tool that identifies what topics people search for the most and how they word their searches. Relevantly sprinkling a few keywords into your content is one of many factors that will help your search engine results.
SEOmoz
If you want to dive into giving yourself a search engine marketing education, SEOmoz is a great place to start. They have a well-respected blog, articles (some free), and tools (some free).
For Discussion:
- What do you think are some effective strategies for church SEO?
- What SEO tools would you add to this list?
I love this idea. I’m afraid that most churches are so hopelessly behind that they will catch up to this point in about 15 or 20 years. Right now I visit church websites and it feels like one of the students did it. It is usually pretty static table based html that I was writing when I was a high schools student and has a mash of less than useful keywords that is the same for every page.
Right now I very strongly feel that most churches would benefit from ditching their current webpage and getting a wordpress site with a good setup for CMS and dynamic content. Then installing the “All in one SEO” plug in along with highly targeted key words for specific articles will result in much better rankings for those pages.
This would be simple enough that even my church secretary could keep it up to date.
Great post Kent. I know our church has seen people become Christians through SEO, for example when we targeted pre-marital counseling and non-believers wanted to be married by a pastor for cultural reasons. During usability studies, Jakob Nielsen found that 88% of web users went to a search engine first to accomplish a task. I pray the church becomes equipped to reach people
when they are most willing to seek change in their life, such as depression, marriage, a death of someone they know, illness, moves and life transition are just a few examples. And more and more they begin their journey online.
I would agree with you. I have been doing this on my company site (http://digitalpure.com/) for a couple of years now, and have been able to witness to a few people via email already. The saddest part is that it does not take anything major to rank for terms as most ministries, and churches see the web as a weak tool for reaching people. I am not sure why when you consider the number of people that are on facebook everyday etc.
I attend a mega church here in the DC area, and over the last 5 years the site design has changed 4 times, but worst still the content has changed 4 times including the links to great items. Now it is very hard to find resources, and the site is quite badly optimized. It is visually appealing, but from a seo angle it is bad. I would even volunteer my time to help them optimize the site but it is not a priority.
In the end the great equalizer is that GOD is in control, and he will utilize the tools that he feels are the best. As a geek, I am just trying to create the tools that I can for his glory as I can.
Kent, very helpful post. I’m still new to SEO, and the more I read, the more I’m convinced that the underlying key is to have lots of relevant, interesting and helpful content. It seems to take time to build up a reputation that will translate to Google Page Rank and increased findability, if I can use that term. We are experimenting with a Wordpress blog (good suggestion, Nick the Greek!) in addition to our main Web sites, and now coming up on a year with the blog, I am beginning to see some “long-tail” terms show up on page 1 in Google (like “following Jesus Christ”). Content is king, but of course getting some links from others is good too! (hint, hint). I will retweet this article!
Great post Kent. I hope that more churches will take your strategic tip of thinking outside the “church in my town” SEO strategy. I believe that if we do, we’ll see some pretty amazing results.
k.
while on paper this theory sounds and looks magical it poses a million backend issues but for the sake of time we can divulge in a few ::
Liability
Last time I checked the USA was still kickin ass in lawsuits and let me tell yah, they do a pretty (explitive) good job in the non-profit/church world too. Encouraging users to engage in this type of activity could be an awesome front pager.
The problem with liability is even if the church and the counselor are all signing wavers, you still now have the press to worry about. There are no waivers for this kind of strategy. I foresee many more dangers than true advantages when you get to the guts of the idea.
i dunno, guess church can become like walmart too.
@ihatechurch
If you find time, I would like you to elaborate. I think I understand what you are saying, but I am not certain with some of the vague, broad generalizations you mention.
So if you have time please elaborate in detail about more of the backend details and liability issues. I think your perspective could add some good balance to the topic.
[...] post asking the question, “Is SEO the future of evangelism.” I’m thinking that this is an incredible [...]
Great article, it would be great if we all could focus on reaching the lost with this mindset.
[...] the socialnomics and seeking to use technology to engage your culture, let me hear your thoughts. Much similar to Kent Shaffer, SEO can carry more potential for evangelism in the future than we [...]
Sadly, I disagree on this…. In a big way.
Most people who post stuff to church websites don’t understand the people outside the core group of church attenders. How can someone who doesn’t understand the people write something relevant to people who would be searching? They may be able to use enough key words to get it to show up in a search but can they write something relevant to people who would be searching? I rarely read anyone writing something effective. This makes the assumption people can effectively understand the audience well enough to communicate to them.
Until people learn to communicate better giving them a way to share something poorly communicated is like giving someone a knife and not showing them how to use it. Someone is going to loose a finger and it’s going to hurt.
One of my online ministries In Britain is helping new Christians (http://www.newchristian.org.uk) and one benefit I have found is that M__lims seeking to convert are finding my site. The main reason seems to be that I am usually in the top 3 results on Page 1 of Google UK results for “christian website”. I have over 900 websites linking to me and over 230 pages of content on my site.
I also have a website “What Is The Gospel?” (http://www.whatisthegospel.org.uk) and again find that I am at the top of the rankings in Google UK, since the site name mirrors the question asked.
As an ex-church webmaster myself I know from experience that most church sites are little more than “here we are and this is what we do” . Seems no doubt that the ideal webmaster should also be an evangelist, but that doesn’t happen very often.
This is an excellent article and it has given me food for thought for my ministry website. We are here to help people. Part of that includes making ourselves relatively easy to find. Thanks for the information.