New Article - The God of Search (and I Don't Mean Google)

[thejenn]

Full Text: http://www.searchengineguide.com/laycock/005041.html

Some Snippets:

"While the growth of small to mid-sized businesses advertising via paid search advertising is no longer news to anyone, the gradual adoption of paid search and other online marketing techniques by churches comes as a bit of a surprise to many within the industry."

"Many ministries are finding that they can reach their target audience (or even potential donors) at a much more reasonable cost using paid search than they can using more traditional media outlets. "

[David Wallace]

Great article, Jenn!

I like this part:

However, those within the industry realize that attention to paid search will mean little if the web sites that searchers are directed to are not built in a user-friendly manner. Thackston goes on to explain that all the PPC ads in the world won't help if the ministry isn't also focusing on the quality of their site.

This is so true. Most church web sites, well excuse my grammar, suck!

They lack aesthetics, do not usually provide much info and are outdated. A good church web site should be aesthetically pleasing, provide a good amount of info to the seeker and also serve as a point of communication to its parishioners. One example we have here in Arizona is www.ccvonline.com. They of course are a huge church here and have resources to develop and maintain a site like this but if most churches would simply keep their sites up to date, that would be a huge step in the right direction.

[obinstitute]

A small church that does an excellent job on their site is http://www.dountoothers.org

Michele

[Robert]

After reading the article I searched for our church by name and location. Nothing. I think I need to print that article out and take it with me Sunday.

[thejenn]

Robert...

I know a great web designer and a great SEO if they decide to hire someone.

Some of this was sparked by that blog post at ChurchMarketingSucks.com (a SUPER site!) but another was sparked by the fact that our church is hiring a full time Webmaster and it took them a good month or more to come up with a job description.

I think a lot of churches know that they need to have a Web presence, but they don't really know how to go about doing it.

Ours isn't doing a bad job, but I can think of so many things that they could do better... (though I see that without trying, they rank 5th for "Columbus church") http://www.vineyardcolumbus.com

[St0n3y]

Our church recently put together a web development team (consisting of myself, associate pastor, children's pastor, and a web designer). The goal was to take their very poor looking and virtually useless website, and turn it into something that is worthwhile to church members and that would also bring bring in people searching for what the church offers.

Before we did anything we mapped out the site based on the churches overall ministry strategies and were able to build what I would guess is probably one of the best church web sites I've seen.

Its not optimized yet, so don't go searching for 'church reno', but when it is we feel we'll be able to provide a great experience when visitors do come.