Church websites search engine marketing   by John Smith

What is the best marketing strategy for a church website? I guess that the ideea is the same as for any other website. A church website should not make any difference. You could start by building a website for your church that is easy to navigate, friendly to all your visitors, not only to those that are familliar with a computer!Think of the fact that most church members will surelly not be IT specialists, so the best thing you can do it to build your church website as easy to navigate as possible.

Try putting all common information in a visible place. You know that there are some spots more "visible" than others when it comes to user attention?Top-left side of the page has a high visibility, I explain more about information visibility in my article Christian websites heat map

Have a visible menu, don't make a menu that is that fancy that your user can not figure it out!Your church website menu should be plain and easy, don't use animated javascript or Flash menus, I would suggest that you choose a plain text menu. This is a very good advice when you think of the search engines, because there is nothing that a search engine loves more than text.

Use a lot of text for your church website no matter where: in the menu, in the context, etc. Use descriptive links full of keywords. Suppose that you chosed Saint George Church as keywords, then when you describe your church, don't use a link like description.html with a text like Description. Instead use a link like saint-george-church-website.html and the visible text on the links should be something like Saint George Church description.

Link your church websites as much as possible to other websites. The more external links pointing to your church website, the better. But not all kinds of links, try to build quality links, meaning that you should get links from quality church websites, church forums, church groups and church blogs. Links from bad websites will not help. The same thing is true for non-church websites, if you receive a link from a car website will not rank you high in search engines, you better get a link from a church website instead!

Church websites should buil trust in the eyes of your visitors. So there is not enough to make internet user find your website, you also need to make them stay on your church website and read on, you must convince them to come back another time also!Try using a nice color scheme, my article Christian websites(christian website and color schemes) gives some good advices on this matter, I recomend you to read it.

Try to gain the trust of your visitors, keep them as close as possible to your website and to your church!Inform them about what you do and most of all, make them see that your church website is usefull for them, that they can stay informed by visiting your website as often as possible!

About the Author

John Smith is the editor of MagicTemplate.com (www.magictemplate.com) a place where you can find free Christian templates,Christian news and a lot of Christian articles