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November 11, 2010

Easy Ways to Boost Church Website Traffic—Part 1

Little things that church leaders can do to improve online visibility.

 by Joe Dysart


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Editor’s Note: Joe Dysart, a freelance business and technology journalist in Manhattan, recently offered us some ideas about ways churches can generate more traffic to their websites. Outside of the standard answers—an updated, well-crafted site design, a presence on Facebook, and experimentation with Twitter—Dysart offered some additional ideas that might not be so readily obvious to church leaders.

For additional ministry perspective and application, we asked Kevin Hendricks, editorial director for the Center for Church Communication, to share his thoughts as well.

“As Web marketing has matured, a number of tried-and-true techniques have emerged that consistently lure potential visitors to church websites in significant numbers,” Dysart tells us. “The easiest way to home-in on implementing these techniques is to first and foremost ensure you have a high-quality website. Once you’ve got the overall design of your website in place, there are key tactics you can use to ensure your site becomes a promotion engine for your organization.”

Not surprisingly, Dysart recommends churches form pages on Facebook to take advantage of the continued popularity of social networking among Internet users of all ages. “It’s a great place to post church videos, staff photos, coordinate events and be, as they say, ‘where the fish are,’” Dysart says. Dysart says to search for Oasis Church Miami and Hope Summit Christian Church on Facebook for good examples of using Facebook for ministry purposes.

Regarding Twitter, Dysart recommends a more experimental approach. “The key here is to hang back and ‘lurk’ awhile before participating. ‘Follow,’ or sign up to receive messages from a few churches first to see how it’s done,” he says. “The community here responds most favorably to individuals and organizations that have something to add—rather than something to trumpet.”

Beyond these ideas, Dysart also offers the following tips for churches to generate more traffic to their websites:

• Take advantage of Google’s free webmaster tools: During the past few years, Google has released a number of free tools designed to help your site get the best play on the Google search engine. Sign up for a free Google Webmaster account for tools, tips, and tricks to optimize your website for the Google search engine.

This account offers enough help to keep you or your web promotion staff busy for months. And given that Google claims approximately 65 percent (or more) of all web searches each day, it’s critical that your website be optimized for the Google search engine. As an added side benefit, generally speaking, when a website is optimized for Google’s, it’s optimized for all major search engines.

Once you’re optimized, Google also offers a free website analytics service. This online service enables you to see, in great detail, where your web traffic comes from, what pages on your site are working, and what pages need improvement. Google Analytics also enables you to pinpoint the keywords that are bringing the most people to your site. All told, the service is consistently rated one of the top website analytics programs available, even though it costs nothing.

Hendricks’ take: Google Analytics is great, but it's kind of useless if you never check it or don't know what you're looking for—and that's what happens when we get busy. Stats can also be deceptive and elusive—don't put too much stock in them. But, for instance, if you did a newspaper ad with your church’s URL in big type and you don't see a blip in your stats, you better rethink that ad.

• Ensure your web videos are search-engine friendly: Your site’s web videos—currently the Internet’s hottest promotional medium—will rank higher on the search engines if you give the videos plain English titles that clearly describe the content. Also be sure to use your website keywords in links that lead to the videos on your site, as well in any description of the videos that you offer anywhere on your site.

Hendricks’ take: More than search engine friendly, make your videos user friendly. I can't scan your video like I can text, so give me a quick, useful description that will convince me to hit play. Usually the video player will do this, but make sure your users can see how long the video is. I'm much more likely to watch a shorter video when I know it's shorter. Also be sure you're putting your videos where people will watch them—YouTube, Facebook, and so on. In the days of social media, hosting media on your own site is anti-social.

Read Part 2 of “Easy Ways to Boost Church Website Traffic” on Tuesday.

Joe Dysart is an Internet speaker and business consultant based in Manhattan.

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Posted by Matt Branaugh on November 11, 2010 8:00 AM

Related Tags: Communication, computers, Facebook, Google, social media, technology, Twitter, websites

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